They also made it very clear on that early-days pricing that it was essentially arbitrary as they just had no idea of how the economics of their business would develop, and that they'd need to revisit it. So it really seems unfair to use that as an anchor.
They're also being extremely open about everything. Anyone can join their Discord, and there is a channel there about pricing that had been going for months, prior to the change, where people could contribute to discussions and meaningfully get their grievances heard if they had any.
- Stay at Professional - $10 + $49.5 query cost = $59.5 total (495% price increase)
- Use grandfathered - $10 + $37.5 query cost = $47.5 total (375% price increase)
- Use Ultimate plan - $25 + $0 query cost = $25 total (150% price increase)
With absolutely 0 guarantee ultimate plan will be ultimate. Would I pay for search engine 25$? Of course. Does Kagi delivers 25$ of search quality - no. As I mentioned I did metrics. 50% of the queries had to be moved to other search engines, so Kagi simply didn't deliver.
It's like anti-marketing. Target the paying customers most likely to talk a lot about your product – power users with heavy search workloads – and do stuff that makes them unhappy. And that's you, I guess: I'm reading your comment because you're the sort of person who *would* write HN comments reviewing their new search engine. And now I'm unhappy with it too, by contagion.
(30 searches/day is for illiterate gibbons)