Dec 9, 2025

I’m a big fan of Kagi. I’ve been paying for it for years. Any time I have to use a different search engine, it’s a frustrating experience.

Kagi just sent me three invitations for three free months of Kagi. I forwarded it to one friend who I thought might be interested. But when I tried to think of a second and third, I was at a loss for names.

For a moment, I imagined being any one of them, imagined how it must sound coming from me to suggest to them that they pay money for something that has been free their whole lives.

And then I pictured explaining to them that not only will they have to pay, but they will have to install browser extensions on any device on which they intend to use it. They’ll have to log in on all those devices, too. And I realized that would probably be more of an obstacle than the subscription fee.

Convenience can be a greater factor in a purchase decision than cost. For Kagi to be successful, it would have to be very nearly as easy to “set up” as Google. “Setting up” Google, of course, requires no effort, as it is the default search engine on the vast majority of browsers in use.

Asking someone to pay money for the privilege of managing and logging into a browser plugin — that’s a tall order.