We had a thread last year here: Tell me about Kagi search
I’ve been using it for about a year now. I started out with maybe 90% Google, 10% Kagi, comparing them side-by-side. After a few weeks it got to 50-50 as I tailored Kagi’s results more and more (this is one of their best features, the ability to see the domains others have chosen to block or highlight, and to do the same for your account… for example, people generally block Pinterest and heavily promote Wikipedia and reddit). Now Kagi is about 99% of my searches, and it’s completely replaced with Google Search for me both at home and at work. (I still use Gmail and Gdocs, though.)
I don’t think they use the Google index (Google doesn’t allow that) but they do combine both third-party indices (like Marginalia) and some of their own results: Search Sources | Kagi's Docs
(Edit: I was wrong. They do use Google results, among others.)
I like it a lot too. It’s important to me that I pay for this, because that means Kagi’s interests are aligned with mine rather than advertisers’. There are no paid ads on Kagi. (There is still, of course, SEO spam. And AI slop, these days. But they also have a handy “flag AI spam” button next to every result.)
I also don’t use their AI stuff (just because I already have Gemini and Claude, and formerly ChatGPT). They don’t push their AI on you like Google does, trying to shove Gemini into every orifice and pore on your body.
Would strongly recommend Kagi to anybody dissatisfied with all the Alphabetical enshittification. They have a free 100-search trial and the unlimited plans are affordable and worth the peace of mind of not having to deal with Google’s increasing spamminess and general user-hostility every day.