Kagi Expands to Curate a Human-Made 'Small Web'
Original: Kagi Brings Back Old-School Search, One Human-Made Website at a Time
Why This Matters
Kagi's human-centric search model challenges the ad-driven paradigm dominant across the search industry.
Paid search engine Kagi has expanded beyond its Google-alternative search tool to curate a 'small web' of human-written sites. Plans start at $5/month for 300 searches, with unlimited searches at $10/month and a 100-search free trial available.
Kagi, a privacy-focused search engine that charges users directly rather than monetizing via ads or data collection, has launched a new initiative to curate what it calls a 'small web'—a collection of sites created and maintained by humans, intended to revive the spirit of the early internet. The company argues that search always has a cost, whether paid in dollars, personal data, or time spent filtering ads and sponsored links. By charging subscribers directly, Kagi says it can surface 'relevant, high-quality results' from noncommercial sites without influence from paid promotions. Kagi maintains its own web and news indexes. Pricing starts at $5/month for 300 searches (with a standard AI assistant included), $10/month for unlimited searches and more AI tokens, and a 100-search free trial requiring only an email address. Search results include filters for images, video, podcasts, maps, and news, as well as time and language filters. The company is positioning itself as an antidote to an increasingly monetized and AI-summarized web, aiming to reconnect users with content written by hobbyists, academics, and independent developers.