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I use both but cancelled my Perplexity subscription.

Kagi is the better version of Google search, especially if you learn how to use lenses, bangs, and all these features. Kagi Assistant is great if you‘re happy with basic no-frills chat, i.e. no usable voice input, no image gen, no canvas.

Perplexity is not bad, but somewhat stuck in the middle between ChatGPT/Gemini and search. They provide sources for search results which are somewhat more spot-on than what I‘ve seen elsewhere. For example it could find EV chargers with restaurants for a trip I made along a route, which ChatGPT, Gemini, Kagi Assist failed greatly).

I found refining searches with Perplexity terse and it kept forgetting context once you started to reply. They have an AI generated news feed which lured me into more doom scrolling.

Also, be aware that Perplexity free-tier may collect data about you, which Kagi does not.

Tldr; Kagi is a superior search engine worth paying for. Perplexity seems good at queries that require context but quite expensive.

▲ mjamesaustin 5 days ago | parent [-]

Any suggestions for how you got your lenses, bangs, assistant set up the way you like? I recently subscribed to Kagi and feel like I don't really know how to get in the habit of really using all the features.

▲ Zambyte 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

For redirects I like to create a rule to direct versioned sites (like documentation) to either "latest" or the version relevant to me. I also like to redirect sites to a more user friendly version when applicable (like reddit.com => old.reddit.com).

If a site leaves me disgruntled when I visit it, I block it. If I find it too useful to block entirely (reddit) I lower it. I apply the inverse to sites I enjoy.

I find there are certain sites that have built-in search that sucks. One such example is Dockerhub. In that case, when I want to search for a container on Dockerhub, it may be tempting to use the built-in !dh, but that is no good. Instead I favor the "snap" search: @dh, which will just add "site:hub.docker.com" to you query. This will give much better results than !dh. This can also be combined with the "I'm feeling lucky" bang (!), so you can search for something like "nats @dh !" and end up on the Dockerhub page for NATS - without ever even seeing Kagi if you do it from your URL bar. I do this pattern all the time, usually with Dockerhub and GitHub.

You'll find with the above pattern that you'll start to want to apply this to sites that aren't natively supported as bangs. One such site for me has been Ollama. I added a !ollama to be able to search for models directly. It's also nice because just searching "!ollama" will bring me right to the homepage too, which is useful when I want to check to see if I'm on the latest version.

You'll also find there are subjects where you tend to prefer a small set of sources. Maybe it's some software or tool, or some hobby or something, where you prefer official documentation, maybe some known personal sites you trust, a reddit community, something like that. That's where custom lenses comes in. I personally have a lens for the operating system I use (GNU Guix) (as well as a !p bang to search for packages) which includes official documentation, mailing list archives, IRC archives, things like that. I'm sure there are probably similar subjects in your world that you would enjoy having a more focused search for :)

As for the Kagi Assistant, I pretty much have just wired up an Assistant to use my Guix lens as a search source. That is pretty nice, because I can just ask it general questions like "how do I install nginx?" and get focused and relevant answers, instead of having it go off on how to install it on irrelevant distros.

▲ notpushkin 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can start by looking at https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard and adjusting domains that make sense to you. E.g. I have all Pinterest lowered, as well as w3schools.com as I prefer developer.mozilla.org (which I raised instead).

For bangs I’m pretty sure the default ones might be enough – just use them! Some of my go-to bangs are !gh, !gm for Google Maps (Kagi Maps are sometimes not as good in Asia), !yt, !mdn, and !amo for addons.mozilla.org.

I also have this redirect rule:

  ^(https://www\.nytimes\.com.*$)|https://archive.ph/2025/$1

So that if an NYT article comes up in the results I can get a version without paywall directly. You can set it up in https://kagi.com/settings?p=redirects.

	▲	tstrimple 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I just stumbled across cooked.wiki recently. It allows you to convert any bullshit online recipe to a no-frills ingredient list and instructions. I've only tested it a couple times and I know I'll rarely remember to use the shortcut (https://cooked.wiki/<recipe-url>). But setting it up as a redirect rule from search results might be the thing that pushes usability over the top.

▲ loehnsberg 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I did not customize bangs and the standard lenses are already useful. I have two custom lenses for travel and academic papers, each searching specific domains. What I meant is that you learn how to use them. What is there by default is already quite good, like !yf !yt !uk etc.