Yeah I was actually hoping for an answer that doesn't require blind trust.

So the correct answer seems to be "we absolutely could link your searches to your identity, but we promise that we won't; however, you cannot verify that we are keeping that promise".

Which I'm afraid is not good enough. To be clear, I'm not saying that they are lying, and indeed I have no reason to suspect they are. But I'm looking for technological privacy, not contractual privacy.

Why not just have a payment method that isn't linked to you?

How do you realistically do that online, short of getting into crypto ?

I wonder if they'd even accept crypto, but their FAQ has nothing on their accepted payment and so it seems it needs an account even to just see that.

There are pre-paid credit cards you can buy in Safeway and such for a small premium. I'm not sure how to use them for paying online though (i.e. how to provide name/address/phone that match).

Well, they could do it like Mulvad VPN and allow cash payments + whatever your account number is. (Account number isn't tied to you)

Do they support any such payment methods? Only Monero and cash come to mind.

No, just debit/credit cards, handled via Stripe IIRC.

This is not unrealistic at all. For curious people, here's how the Posteo email service does it:

https://posteo.de/en/site/privacy#anonymisedpayment

Posteo relies on you trusting them to remove your identifying data after payment. There is no way to make sure they actually do

Any promises made by a company can disappear with a change of management/ownership.

Don't rely on company promises if you can avoid it.

In that case, you really can't use any hosted search engine because they could be logging all your queries, the time you made them, and associating them with your IP and any other information they can get their hands on. Are you familiar with any search engine that is technically incapable of logging your IP???

You can use a privacy-focused VPN like Mullvad to conceal your identity from the search engine. In most markets having a credit/debit card requires personal information so there's nothing you can do if they don't provide a privacy-friendly payment alternative.

Anyway, GP's question was simply:

"Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way?"

And the correct answer is no.

If you're going to use Mullvad to conceal parts of your identity, why not use prepaid cards or a service like Privacy.com for your payment details?

For the record, I'm signed up for Kagi with a disposable email, though I didn't bother to anonymize my payment.