I recently switched to Kagi after years of using ddg and have been very happy with it. You get 100 free searches. Before I made the leap, I spent a period of time with Firefox set up to use kagi if I typed `k <query>`. I found myself using kagi for the vast majority of my searches pretty quickly, the signal:noise ratio is substancially better, especially for technical subjects.

> The thought of paying a subscription for search is abhorrent

I've found myself paying for more and more products that I used to get for free. Given how expensive running a search engine is ad revenue is necessary for a free product. Advertisers pay more if they are getting clicks and conversions... Obviously this ends up impacting search results. Additionally, the tradition SEO model went from bad to worse with LLMs.

Anyways, up until very recently I would've agreed with you, but ultimately this was a pretty easy expense to justify after a short trial.