> Kagi This seems to be true, but more indirectly. From Kagi’s blog [0] which is a follow up to a Kagi blog post from last year [1].

[0]> Google: Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.[^1]

[0]> The current interim approach (current as of Jan 21, 2026)

[0]> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.

I’m an avid Kagi user, and it seems like Kagi and some other notable interested parties have _already_ been unable to do get what they want/need with Google’s index.

[0]> The fact that we - and companies like Stanford, Nvidia, Adobe, and the United Nations - have had to rely on third-party vendors is a symptom of the closed ecosystem, not a preference.

Hopefully someone here can clarify for me, or enumerate some of these “third-party vendors” who seem like they will/might/could be directly affected by this.

[0] antibabelic > relevant https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search [1] https://blog.kagi.com/dawn-new-era-search > [^1]: A note on Google’s existing APIs: Google offers PSE, designed for adding search boxes to websites. It can return web results, but with reduced scope and terms tailored for that narrow use case. More recently, Google offers Grounding with Google Search through Vertex AI, intended for grounding LLM responses. Neither is general-purpose index access. Programmable Search Engine is not designed for building competitive search. Grounding with Google Search is priced at $35 per 1,000 requests - economically unviable for search at scale, and structured as an AI add-on rather than standalone index syndication. These are not the FRAND terms the market needs

I believe they try to indirectly say they are using SerpApi or a similar product that scrapes Google search results to use them. And other big ones use it too so it must be ok...

That must be the reason why they limit the searches you can do in the starter plan. Every SerpApi call costs money.