Yes, I did the same result in one or the other for all my searches before I committed to paying and it was always as good or better than Google. (I even gifted a year's subscription to my friend.)

In terms of "basic" search results, yes, at least marginally. I don't find them to be revolutionary but it comes with many improvements, manual control over upranking and downranking domains, it respects logical query filters such as "AND", "OR", +, -, and quotation marks. It reduces clutter of "Top X products in category" type results by grouping them in their own section of the page.

For the downsides, it requires linking a payment card so it's impossible for them to guarantee privacy (cryptocurrencies could save the day here) and it completely relies on other search engines like Google and Bing for search results which is a questionable long-term strategy in my eyes.

> completely relies on other search engines like Google and Bing for search results

Got a quote on that? I was pretty convinced they (Kagi) did their own indexing, and results are significantly different from both Google/Bing.

Sure, they're completely transparent about it. You can find the proportion of external search results right under the filters, with further information in their FAQ. They integrate their own indexers but I believe bulk of the results come from Google, Bing & others (hence the relatively high per-query cost).

https://kagi.com/faq#Where-are-your-results-coming-from

I meant that they were "completely reliant" on these APIs in terms of utility, not that 100% of search results are external. I'd love to be proven wrong on this but my impression is that without Google, Bing, and other APIs Kagi wouldn't be a functional and competitive product.

Thanks! Hopefully with all the (monetary and word of mouth) support they are getting, they can move in the direction of becoming completely independent.