(In your opinion)

I’m using DDG, but I’m not satisfied with it. The quality of answers is subpar and I find myself switching to google or LLMs when I’m researching some things where community opinion matter (for some reason reddit and forums are undervalued by DDG algorithm).

I could try daily driving alternatives, but I know I will be biased and it will noticably slow down my workflows.

  • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
    391·
    5 days ago

    Kagi in my experience is the best, but $$

    Brave is a close second, but crypto bro

    SearXNG is great, but only if you self host to avoid throttling

    Most of the rest use Bing under the hood so they’re all about the same

      • asudox@lemmy.asudox.devM
        17·
        5 days ago

        10€/mo for unlimited searches is a bit too high. They could lower the price by selling the AI features under an additional subscription.

        • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
          10·
          5 days ago

          I mean I certainly wouldn’t mind paying less, but it is something I use every day, I get way more value out of my Kagi subscription than literally any other subscription I have except maybe Home Assistant.

          I haven’t tried it so I can’t speak to the value proposition but Uruky is the new competition, weighing in at half the price: https://uruky.com/

          • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
            6·
            5 days ago

            first time i’m hearing about uruky. this policy in their main page is very interesting

            True ownership and validation After 12 months as a paying customer, you get a copy of the source code.

          • asudox@lemmy.asudox.devM
            7·
            5 days ago

            I have tried Uruky, it is nowhere near as polished or good as Kagi, but at least it is european.

            If the search index gets better, I could consider it. But at the moment the european search engines and the european search index it uses are not good enough for daily use, at least for me.

        • grinning_serpent@lemmy.world
          2·
          4 days ago

          I guess I’d have to check my habits but I bet 300 searches would easily last me a month. Half of my “searches” are me just going to look up the thing on Wikipedia anyhow. If you’re using web search professionally though, I can see 300 barely lasting a couple days.

          I’m not sure how to feel about an AI heavy service talking about privacy. They feel mutually exclusive to me.

        • theherk@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 days ago

          Fair enough; I respect that. But I’d pay twice as much if they asked, because I value it so much. Not just the results, but the dedication to keeping the results uncluttered without forcing advertising or selling my eyes to advertisers. I dig it.

          Like sending Wikimedia money every time they ask; worth it.

          • Dave@lemmy.nz
            1·
            5 days ago

            They have a plan for $25 if you want to pay them twice as much 😋

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
          2·
          5 days ago

          Do you need unlimited searches? You get 300 searches a month for $5.

          Plus it’s 10% off if you pay annually.

          • Luc@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 days ago

            I tested it and there’ll be months where I do 400 queries and months where there’s maybe 200. Since it doesn’t carry over, I’ll simply have to use alternatives on a regular basis. Especially across all devices (all my work is on a computer, most of the time with unfamiliar technologies as the customer has a new project for us to pentest), I’ll be out of queries most months. My employer is too scrooge to pay for our primary internal communication tool (we pay for various crap where it’s mandatory, even if we barely need it, but not for a donation-run hosted service that we heavily use). They’re never going to subsidise the searches I do during work time so long as competitors are “free”. So I’ll be stuck with other engines regardless, or have to pay as much as for a streaming service. It just seems like a lot, especially when part of it goes to Russia and burn-the-world AI bros

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
              2·
              2 days ago

              Well I’m not trying to push you, you make your own choice, but you could just not use it at work (or only use it at work) and have something different on other devices.

              It just seems like a lot, especially when part of it goes to Russia and burn-the-world AI bros

              Yeah I get that, but I guess it depends on how you count. Kagi has some of their own index, but mostly it’s a search aggregator (like searx). They pay for queries to google etc, and use the Russian Yandex for Russian results because it’s apparently the only one that gets good results in Russian. From my understanding, not searching in Russian/Russia location wouldn’t trigger a search to Yandex so wouldn’t give them money, so I guess it’s more a principle thing than literal money to Yandex/Russia.

              For AI it’s the same, they pay per query. No queries means no money to AI companies, so it’s more about principles than actual your money going to them (if you don’t use it). Kagi doesn’t force AI results on you (by default it will show AI if you end your search with a question mark, but you can disable that too).

          • holy_scroller@lemmy.zip
            3·
            3 days ago

            I hate paying for search, but Google, Meta, Amazon have long since proven, if you are not paying for a service, you are the product.