I've been a paying customer for more than a year, in my experience DDG is not even in the same league as Kagi. DDG provides a noticeably worse search experience than Google for most queries, whereas Kagi is either just as good or often better than Google.

It sounds hyperbolic, but using Kagi reminds me of back in 98 or 99 when I first discovered Google. I can get results I want every single time without wading through garbage.

I’m happy to pay for it.

Echoing what others have said. When I used DuckDuckGo, I would have to resort to using Google all the time because Google's results were often better. Since switching to Kagi, I never feel the need to use Google anymore.

I've heard about it, signed up the other day, didn't use it. I tried it today on a medical condition that's been hard to get good info on, and while it wasn't the first hit, there was a great reference fairly high up that I didn't find on Google. I'm working on budgeting for yet another subscription as I figure kagi will be my next go-to if AI doesn't outstrip it first. And probably even then(sometimes you have to use the Dead Internet).

In my experience.

DDG 6/10

Brave Search 7/10

Google 8/10

Kagi 9/10

Basically all I want is a search engine that does what I tell it to do, and doesn't try to be smarter than me, because it is not. My killer Kagi feature is the forum search. The only way to get real human opinions on things, rather than regurgitated blogspam that's pervasive on Google and even more on DDG and other smaller engines.

Been paying for a long while now, I expect I'll keep paying a lot longer. It's very, very good.

Occasionally, I'm on someone else's computer where I'm not signed in to Kagi, and I try DDG first, but I frequently resort to pulling out my phone and just searching there.

Previously i used DDG and fell back to Startpage/Google constantly. With Kagi, i can't remember the last time i did that. I also get a lot of value out of FastGPT (a labs search thing from Kagi).

Overall, i'm very happy with my starter subscription.

Been paying for Kagi for about a year now. It’s great and worth it. As good as google for search, but with much better tools and basically zero ad spam.

i really wanted to ditch google and gave my best shot to DDG and just couldn't use it, had to go to !g all the time. been paying for Kagi close to a year and I only do !g when I am proactively seeking to look at SEO spam

Been a paying customer for a year now, it's very much worth it.