Kagi Alternatives

My first free Kagi alternative is Searx Party for searching several engines from one page. MetaGer is the stronger choice if you want prepaid access. Kagi's subscription and email account are reasons to look elsewhere, but its personal ranking tools are harder to replace. These picks come from official documentation, current pricing and linked user discussions.

Why people look for Kagi alternatives

• They want ongoing free search. Kagi's pricing page lists a 100-search trial, then paid individual plans. Professional costs $10 billed monthly, or $9/month billed annually as $108/year, plus sales tax.
• They prefer a service without an email account. Kagi's Privacy Protection guide explains its email-based account model. MetaGer's homepage describes a key with no account or email signup.
• They want a different relationship with the results. A July 2025 discussion about Kagi alternatives includes suggestions for SearXNG, Brave Search, DuckDuckGo and Startpage, alongside replies from people who still prefer Kagi's results.

I wouldn't leave just because another engine is free. The deciding question is which part of Kagi you want to replace: broad search, personal ranking or the occasional trip into the small web. The Kagi project page links the service; the existing Kagi vs Qwant comparison covers the paid-versus-free decision in more detail.

Quick picks

• My first free starting point: Searx Party, a public SearXNG instance.
• Best prepaid choice: MetaGer, with a balance attached to a key.
• Best for shared access: MetaGer, whose homepage explicitly allows a key on multiple devices and sharing with friends or family.
• Best open-source community project: Mwmbl, if helping build search interests you.
• Best for independent personal pages: Marginalia Search.
• Best for an old-web detour: Wiby.

Compare the six alternatives

Official pages were checked October 9, 2026. “No paid tier shown” means the public consumer pages reviewed didn't list one. It doesn't promise free infrastructure for someone hosting the software themselves. The table also separates an open-source component from a completely open hosted service.

Searx Party: start with a public metasearch page

Searx Party runs SearXNG. You can open its search box without building a server, and its Preferences page gives you controls over the instance's search behavior. That makes it my first stop when the immediate goal is to replace a paid search tab with a free one.

SearXNG retrieves results from other services; it isn't a promise that every provider will answer every request. The project's public-instance guide explains how upstream blocks and CAPTCHAs can reduce the returned results. A public instance is a convenient starting point, but the operator controls its configuration.

In the Kagi-alternatives Reddit discussion linked above, one reply liked SearXNG less than Kagi and returned to Google for some searches. Other replies recommended it. My recommendation is narrower: use Searx Party if a hosted, configurable metasearch page is what you want. It doesn't reproduce your saved Kagi domain rankings automatically.

There is no subscription price on the public Searx Party search interface reviewed for this article. Self-hosting the underlying software is a separate option with its own server work and costs.

Switch if you want a free public metasearch page and accept instance-dependent results. Stay with Kagi if you want one paid account to manage your personal search preferences across devices.

MetaGer: pay for searches with a key

MetaGer is the closest pick here for someone who accepts paying for search but dislikes a subscription. Its key holds a prepaid balance. You can use that key on several devices, and the official homepage says you can share it with friends and family.

The interesting part is the access model: no email account is needed to obtain the key. That is different from simply putting a privacy label on an ordinary signup form. MetaGer's help also documents OPEN ANONYMOUSLY, a route for opening results through its proxy.

Its Prices page says a default web search costs one token. The public packages are priced in euros. The number of selected search services can affect the token cost. A prepaid key supplies paid access.

A January 2024 Hacker News discussion titled “I've been lately using FOSS metager.org as my main search engine” praises the results and on-demand payment model. My reservation is the extra credential to manage. A lost key and a recoverable email account are different situations; the key is the thing that carries access.

Switch if prepaid access and avoiding email signup are your main goals. Stay with Kagi if your priority is domain promotion, blocking and lenses inside one familiar account.

Marginalia Search: find pages outside the commercial center

Marginalia Search gives you its own crawler and index, with an explicit focus on noncommercial content. It also offers Sites and Explore routes alongside ordinary search. That's why I would add it as a second search option even if I kept Kagi as my default.

The project describes the technology as simple, with no AI in its search approach. For a query about a niche hobby, the appeal is discovering an enthusiast's page you didn't already know existed. My example would be a search about repairing an old synthesizer, where a personal repair log may be more interesting than a store page.

The December 2023 Hacker News comparison discussion has praise for keyword search and criticism of missing expected destinations. Marginalia's developer also describes its results as uneven across queries. That is the real weakness for a full switch: a discovery engine and a general lookup engine don't always reward the same question.

Its public search page has no consumer subscription price, and the code is AGPL licensed. The homepage offers an older interface for text-based browsers, which is a practical detail if your browsing setup doesn't handle the newer layout well.

Switch if discovering independent pages matters more than finding the obvious commercial destination. Stay with Kagi if you need broad everyday lookup and saved personal ranking controls from one default engine.

Mwmbl: search that you can help build

Mwmbl describes itself as independent, open source and nonprofit. Its public homepage separates ordinary search from Seed Search, which asks you to log in. That distinction matters: the community project is bigger than a single anonymous search box.

The Book of Mwmbl documents curation, including approving results and adding a URL to an existing query. If you know a good reference page for a narrow topic, helping the index is a concrete action you can take. My pick would be a documentation page whose answer closely matches the query, rather than a broad homepage that merely mentions the subject.

The tradeoff is an index still being built. Issue 338, opened in June 2026, reports that Super Search didn't include all Mwmbl results. A July 2022 Hacker News discussion, “The world needs a non-profit search engine,” praised community crawling while questioning missing basic results.

The hosted public interface doesn't list a consumer subscription. The source is AGPL-3.0. Search participation is the reason to choose it; paying nothing isn't enough on its own if your work depends on finding a particular page immediately.

Switch if helping build a shared search index is part of the appeal. Stay with Kagi if you mainly want a finished daily-search service with personal controls.

Wiby: browse the simpler web

Wiby is built around simple pages, including personal and hobby websites. Its About page says it also helps vintage computers browse pages that fit their capabilities. That is a much more specific aim than “another private search engine.”

I would choose Wiby for a topic that invites browsing: a retro computer, a garden hobby or a collection someone has documented for years. A surprising personal page can be the result you want, even if it would be a distraction during a workday lookup.

An October 2022 Hacker News discussion praises finding hobby projects and questions judging content by how simple its presentation is. That's the weakness I would carry into the decision. A plain page can be excellent, but plain HTML doesn't guarantee accurate information or accessible design.

Public search is available without a consumer plan shown. Wiby is free software under GPLv2 and documents JSON output for applications. I wouldn't turn that technical openness into a claim that its index has the same coverage as a large general engine.

Switch if your goal is wandering through personal and hobby pages. Stay with Kagi if your usual searches need a mix of current reference, commercial and specialist sources.

Presearch: choose it for the search community

Presearch combines consumer search with a community-node model and the PRE ecosystem. Its public product site now also describes an independent index called Indee and AI services. The older documentation describes nodes retrieving results from existing sources, so I would read the current product page before assuming every query follows one fixed route.

That community structure is the reason it belongs in this list. Its advanced-features documentation separates basic search from account features and an AI assistant. The ad-free search guide lists Ad-Free Standard at $2.49 a month, paid with PRE or a credit card. Basic search is free with or without an account.

A June 2026 Presearch discussion includes replies supporting the privacy and decentralization idea while criticizing results and the mobile interface. One reply says the footer banner can be closed with its X control. Those comments put the actual search page ahead of rewards in my decision.

My weakness for this pick is the extra ecosystem around an ordinary query. If you just want a search box, tokens and node operations may add topics you didn't ask to manage. This recommendation is about search access, with no promise of token value or earnings.

Switch if a community-operated search network is something you want to support. Stay with Kagi if you want a straightforward search subscription and don't want a token ecosystem attached to the choice.

Other common picks

DuckDuckGo is a free search starting point if you want to try another default without buying a search subscription.

Brave Search is another general web-search option, separate from installing the Brave browser.

Startpage belongs on a private-search shortlist alongside the metasearch picks.

Mojeek is worth considering if an independently built web index is the main attraction.

Moving away from Kagi

Changing a default engine doesn't move your saved Kagi setup. Make a list of the domains you promoted or blocked, then keep the intent beside the corresponding setting in your new tool. Don't assume that a named feature in another engine has the same rules.

Lenses deserve their own list of included and excluded sites. The Kagi lens guide explains what a lens contains. Keep a copy of your lens's domain list for the switch. Bookmarks, downloaded documents and browser history live outside that lens configuration.

For the initial change, keep a second search option in the browser while you choose a new default. Give each engine a real job: ordinary lookup, private metasearch or small-web discovery. The Search & Discovery directory and Presearch alternatives offer more paths if one replacement doesn't cover both lookup and exploration.

FAQ

Is there a free Kagi alternative?

Yes. Searx Party, Marginalia Search, Mwmbl and Wiby have public search interfaces without a consumer subscription shown on the pages reviewed. Searx Party is the closest general metasearch starting point in this selection. The other three have narrower or community-built indexes, so their best role may be a second engine for a particular kind of query.

Which alternative uses an independent index?

Marginalia Search and Mwmbl explicitly describe their own independent search work. Wiby also builds its own collection of pages, while SearXNG is metasearch software that retrieves results from other services. An independent index gives you another source of pages, but it doesn't guarantee that a specific website or topic has already been crawled.

Can I use MetaGer without an email address?

Yes. MetaGer's current homepage says its key needs no account or email signup. You add prepaid credit to that key and can use it on more than one device. Its default web-search cost is one token; packages are shown in a regional currency. The payment method you choose may still involve a separate payment provider.

Will a replacement search engine stop tracking on every site I visit?

No. Choosing a search engine doesn't change every destination website's behavior. MetaGer documents a separate anonymous-opening route, while ordinary result clicks can open the destination directly. Browser settings and the site you visit remain part of that visit. Decide whether you want privacy during the search, during the destination visit or both.

Sources

Kagi Pricing and Privacy Protection; SearXNG's public-instance documentation and Searx Party's interface; MetaGer homepage and Prices; Marginalia Search homepage; The Book of Mwmbl; Wiby About; Presearch's public product and advanced-features pages. Official pages checked October 9, 2026. Linked community discussions and the Mwmbl issue supply the feedback described here.