I’m a big fan of Kagi. I don’t know about blog post you mentioned. I know the Proton CEO said some pro Trump things that I don’t love.
I’ll be pretty bummed if I find out Kagi is the same.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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I'm team Kagi. Everytime I'm forced to use something else, it's now painful to me.
I do want to go back to Kagi, but I may have to compromise on me not wanting to support a company based in a country that I can't support
It wouldn’t surprise me to see them move to another country. They just opened their first office in Belgrade.
Are you not using ad blockers? You mentioned ads on multiple sites that I genuinely never saw any on. Ublock.
I do but still on search results from qwant and Ecosia the top results are always paid results
I've never used Qwant or Ecosia, but I'll wager their ads are as easy to block as the ads in Google search.
Wonderful day! Have you checked out metasearch engines like the following?: SearXNG (...is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled...)
SearXNG is a fork of the well-known searx metasearch engine which was inspired by the Seeks project. It provides basic privacy by mixing your queries with searches on other platforms without storing search data.
Source
Is the a public instance you recommend? Because since Google broke their Api, the main one I used is always rate limited and only returns completely unrelated Bing results (no matter what settings you use or other engines you enable). I started trying other instances on the list, and gave up after about 5 when they all had the same problem, and last I checked they haven't been able to work around the changes Google made, at least as of a week or 2 ago according the updates on the github issue.
Have you checked out the following issue case:
- FYI, I spun up an instance of 4get since I needed an alternative. It has worked flawlessly with all included search engine sources, including Google.
- Thanks, 4get is also good...
- I was using it for the last couple of days and I didn't get any captcha.
Source
That's the exact issue I was talking about, and the last comment I read when I last checked was the one right a one what you linked lol.
I tried 4get before and the catches were extremely 4chan cringe, kind of turned me off it, but I'll have to try it again if they have a fix.
It's nice to see the searxng atleast has a possible temp work around that looks like it will be merged soon.
Thanks for the helpful info!
I have heard about this, but every time i've looked into it, it is a link to github, and I am not very technically versed. I do use Linux, but just have Mint installed and it seems to work. I would want a webbased search engine though, that I can use across all of my devices, without having to host a search engine.
Hosting your own is optional.
SearXNG can be added to your browser’s search bar; moreover, it can be set as the default search engine.
Source
---
This website shows the SearXNG public instances. It is updated every 24 hours, except the response times which are updated every 3 hours....
Public instances listed here may yield less accurate results as they have much higher traffic and consequently have a higher chance of being blocked by search providers such as Google, Qwant, Bing, Startpage, etc. Hosting your own instance or using an instance that isn't listed here may give you a more consistent search experience.
Source
Thanks! I'll try one of the public instances and see how that goes!
Try one out. My default on all devices
SearXNG is cool, but the scrapers don't work half the time.
What do you think of Ecosia? Don't you want to plant a tree?
I used to use Ecosia but lately they've been blocking me with Cloudflare.
"Don’t you want to plant a tree?" Guess not.
(regarding the comments)
i am NOT trying to troll anyone here. I'm just trying to say that there's not really a good search engine.
I've been using Kagi for a while, but even that isn't great.
I miss Google from 20 years ago. I could find anything with 3 or fewer words.
I think part of the problem is the size of the internet is a lot bigger and has a lot of "trash". Nowadays, if you search for images you're just gonna get a bunch of Pinterest results, no chance to get to the origin of that Pinterest post.
Deploy Seax, route it thru gluetun with a VPN. Bam.
Relevant, about Kagi: https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/doubting-your-favorite-web-search-engine/
That was a good read, thank you. Wonder if anyone ever tried to correct or debunk any of the claims here
@paequ2
Now distracted by the non-Latin url. How to do that?
copy-paste
Sometimes you'll see the punycode instead of the actual characters though.
I’m using Qwant and have no complaints so far.
In terms of search results it’s quite accurate and I’m happy.
But time will tell if I stick with it or not, as for now I’m still test driving it.
It sells data to microsoft.
Wait what?!
I guess I need to look for another alternative. 😞
That's the neat part, there isn't
@cosmicrookie
Thanks for the post, which prompted a quick search (ddg): #^https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html
The benefit of avoiding the amgaf system is to become aware of alternatives. Try to maintain a list and be prepared to change. Personal search engines: duckduckgo, ecosia, mojeek, startpage, qwant, base-search
Sadly, each have their own issues:
- DDG: AI.
- Ecosia: HORRIBLE TOS
- Mojeek: Search results are very lacking.
- Startpage: Recently started toying with AI, has more captchas
- QWant: Data collection.
- BASE: It's for Academic searches.
@somerandomperson
Agree, therefore the personal preference to keep using alternatives, changing, being aware of new options.
Together with anonymous proxy, extensions 'muorigin', 'privacybadger', 'ghostery', it is considered that minimal useful data goes to amgaf.
What do you mean by "anonymous proxy"?
@somerandomperson
There various proxy servers, vpn ip addresses that can be used with 'proxychains' configuration
Yeah - this is the post that keeps popping up every time someone mentions Kagi.
To me it seems more like a personal issue between the writer, and the owner of Kagi.
For me, I don't find it quite as suspicious, and have used it with great results some time ago. My main issue is that it is based in the US
What's amgaf?
I guessed gafam written in a different order. So amazon, microsoft, google, apple, facebook
I'm interested in GOOD search now, located in Germany, it looks good, but I wanted to do some more research.
GOOD uses Brave for its results, but anonymizing the search, as the others.
Attention, there is a GOOD search and a goodsearch (located in the US), they are diffetent!
self-host 4get and get all of them.
except Kagi, I think
They also use their own Index, so no reliance on Google/Microsoft
ah yes, the bigoted search engine
What am I missing?
The CEO of Brave, Brandon Eich, has anti-gay rights views and donated to getting Prop 8 passed in California (ban on same-sex marriage that was overturned later).
Brave also runs their own ad network. On the browser, they block 3rd party ads and insert their own ads.