I find Kagi pretty good - I'm UK based.

I upgraded my phone a few days back and when search defaulted back to Google I realised how worthwhile my subscription is.

It's not all perfect, for instance I would love to figure out how to stop all map searches sticking with them: sorry Google is just lightyears ahead there so I'd always prefer that. But generally they're about the right amount of customisability.

The killer feature for me is being able to bury sites so you never ever get results from them ever again and to slightly bump up/down results for particular reasons (your own, not due to someone else paying an ad placement fee!)

Yeah I’ve just set any search starting with !m to redirect to google maps. It’s in the custom search settings somewhere.

I also find Kagi good in the UK - it wasn’t amazing when I first subscribed but got a lot better quite fast. I do occasionally add “uk” to a search when shopping but I did that on Google too.