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App$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.Kagi

Kagi

Paid search engine with no ads, where you can rank or block domains yourself

Kagi sells web search by subscription instead of advertising. Tiers run from a few dollars a month for a capped number of searches up to unlimited, after a free trial of 100. Nothing on the results page is for sale, so ranking is the only product. You can raise, lower or block individual domains. The results then reflect what you actually trust. Bangs pass a query straight to another site or engine when Kagi's own results fall short, usually on local search.

Who backs it

Sorted by strength of stance

  • David SparksDoes it

    Apple productivity writer · MacSparky

    Ten dollars a month buys the unlimited tier at Kagi, which he uses instead of ad-funded search. He has blocked a handful of content farms that used to clog technical queries and pinned a few sites he trusts. Local results are the weak spot, so about once a week he passes a query on to Google with a bang.

    Source: MacSparky: Why I Pay for Search

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