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submitted 2 days ago by pahulf@lemmy.world to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

I've been using DuckDuck Go since leaving Google Search, but that seems to be the first step away. I'm not keen on their AI assist. I tried Start Page, but the first four results were ads. I don't mind paying a small fee for good search. So Brave Search or Kagi?

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[-] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

If you don't mind keeping a cookie around, DDG has search settings that let you turn off AI Assist and advertisements.

https://duckduckgo.com/settings

[-] ganksy@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Have you tried adding the no AI version of Duckduckgo to your browser search options? I believe it's just adding "https://noai.duckduckgo.com/".

It's definitely been a QOL improvement for me.

[-] pahulf@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago
[-] ganksy@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

I did it a week ago and it's been great not having that AI summary at the top. I don't know if this also disregards AI for image searches as there seemed to be an additional fix for that.

[-] pewpew@feddit.it 6 points 1 day ago

I'm sticking with DDG, it's not perfect but still better than Google

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

I am a kagi user on the $5 plan and love it.

[-] johnwicksdog@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

I tried Kagi because I was excited by the hype and would gladly pay a fee for superior search thats not google. But, my experience wasn't great:

  1. Couldn't reliably give me local results. E.g., searching for "pizza near me" would render results from a combination of my local city, Sydney and those in Singapore.
  2. UI needs some basic improvements. Rules of font spacing for starters.
  3. It was slow. like at least 500 ms for me to get a page of results, even though I was pretty sure it was using my closest AWS region.

I hope this doesn't come off as too negative--I don't want to be disparaging. Contrarily, I would love to hear your thoughts as a supporter of the platform. It could be that I was using it wrong, or theres some mitigating features that I missed. As I said, I would gladly pay to not be the product.

[-] JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

What a nice thread!

I add here https://www.ecosia.org/

[-] SeraphimNova@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Absolutely Kagi. Its worth the small fee and has so KANU useful features that make combing through the bullshit way easier. We use it daily.

[-] Substance_P@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Searx has been excellent for me, but it's not the best option if you want to search by date relevancy. I'll find that I combine DDG and Searx mostly because of this.

[-] arin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You can just enable ddg within the searxng instance

[-] rando@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

I use Kagi and honestly I really like it… I am a paid user though so yeah to get the most out of it you gotta pay

[-] pahulf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Which subscription tier do you use?

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 day ago

I also use Kagi. Just start with the trial, upgrade to the $5 starter tier when you run out, then upgrade to the pro $10 tier if you hit the limit. It appropriately apportions things if you've only used half your month.

I'm on the $10 pro tier as I use over the 300 searches a month in the $5 starter tier ($10 is unlimited).

Kagi has AI on request. If you put a question mark on the end of your search query, you get an AI response. No question mark, no AI.

I think Kagi is worth trying for other reasons, but probably only for people who $10 a month is not a significant cost. It's not better than food, but it does let me block all Pinterest results so I never see them.

[-] rando@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah I would say start with the smaller one and its very easy to upgrade/downgrade. For me I do the highest tier one because I work in tech and I want to use all the premium LLM stuff hah

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

SearXNG is good. If you're not self-hosting, make sure to have a shortlist of alternative instances. I like instances that pull from google, but those also tend to suffer from rate-limiting.

[-] Captain_Baka@feddit.org 8 points 2 days ago

Maybe take a look at Qwant.com.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago
[-] TidBit@mander.xyz 6 points 2 days ago

SearXNG all day!!

[-] MxRemy@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

It's funny I was literally just posting about my search setup today lol. So that's all what I use, if any of that works.

[-] Krudler@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I'm glad for this thread because I use duck duck Go but I hate it. Become trash in the last year.

[-] DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

searxng or metasearxng is yhe way to go imo

[-] medem@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 day ago

Try Mojeek. I don't like, at all, that it's based in the UK, but at least it's not Gringoland. Easy-to-use, own web index, truly independent company with own ad syndication (no Bing).

[-] jcr@jlai.lu 0 points 1 day ago

ononoki , or any other free instance of searxng on the web.

[-] MasterBlaster@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 days ago

If you don't mind paying, Kagi's the gold standard imo. Been using it for years. The pricing has been pretty garbo at times but they've settled on a good model now. Used it extensively for research back when I was a freelance writer and it's stuck around as my general-use search engine. It's great for research, functionally really well designed.

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
44 points (94.0% liked)

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