Searx Party vs Kagi

Kagi wins for most readers who want an ad-free daily search service with personal domain controls and can pay for it. Choose Searx Party if free access and selecting upstream engines matter more. The Searx Party vs Kagi decision starts with who controls the results: you choose sources in one and rank domains in the other.

Kagi's monthly Starter plan is $5 for 300 searches; Professional is $10 for unlimited searches, plus sales tax. Annual billing is 10% cheaper. Its pricing page also promises a full account credit for an unused month, applied to the next billing cycle. Searx Party has no advertised search subscription on its public interface.

Searx Party vs Kagi at a glance

The Searx Party directory page and Kagi Search directory page give you the two listings. Their official facts above come from the live instance and Kagi's documentation.

Source selection and domain ranking solve different problems

Searx Party's Engines preferences let you choose among the sources that its operator makes available. If one source repeatedly gives you poor matches, remove it from your saved selection. Categories such as General, Images and Science have their own lists. That is direct control over where a request goes.

Kagi's website controls sit beside individual search results. You can block a domain, lower its position, give it the normal ranking, raise it or pin it. This is the stronger choice when you repeatedly see a particular site you don't want. You don't need to replace an entire source engine just to suppress that one domain.

For example, a reader tired of a content farm can make a domain-level change in Kagi. A reader wanting to compare Qwant and Mwmbl results can select those engines in Searx Party. Neither control guarantees that the page you need has been indexed. They change different parts of the route from your query to its result list.

Kagi's built-in domain blocking doesn't support path wildcards or regular expressions. Someone wanting to block one section of an otherwise welcome site has a finer-grained problem than the native domain control handles. Browser extensions can fill that role, but they add another piece to maintain.

Searx Party's limitation is the configured engine list. A source supported somewhere in SearXNG isn't automatically offered by this instance. If a particular search engine is essential to your work, check the live category list before making Searx Party your default.

Winner: Kagi for controlling unwanted domains; Searx Party for choosing source engines.

Free access removes the bill; paid access buys a managed service

Searx Party makes the budget decision easy: its public search interface doesn't ask you to subscribe. That makes it a sensible first step if you're considering a move from an ad-funded search engine and don't yet know which controls you'll actually use.

Kagi gives you 100 trial searches to judge that question. The trial isn't a permanent monthly free allowance. Starter has a fixed 300-search allowance, while Professional removes that search cap. Assistant usage follows separate plan rules, so unlimited search shouldn't be read as unlimited access to every AI feature.

The right plan depends on query volume as well as what you're searching for. Someone who uses the browser address bar to look up even familiar sites can use a small allowance differently from someone who keeps bookmarks. My pick for a frequent daily searcher is Professional; Starter makes more sense for light use.

Free metasearch can cost attention when an upstream engine stops working. The public operator maintains the instance, and the source services can change their responses or block requests. Paying Kagi doesn't make every result correct, but it puts the service relationship with the company you're paying.

If the only reason for switching is to avoid a monthly search bill, choose the public instance. If you want persistent personal ranking rules and a commercial service to handle search infrastructure, Kagi's price has a clear purpose.

Winner: Searx Party for a zero-dollar start; Kagi for frequent searches with account-based controls.

A privacy feature can change which controls you keep

Searx Party's About page describes SearXNG's privacy design. That is different from seeing a working statement about the public operator's hosting and logs. On October 9 the footer's operator privacy link returned 404. I wouldn't turn a software description into a guarantee about every server layer.

Kagi says it doesn't log searches or connect them to a specific account. Accounts still exist for subscriptions and settings. Its separate Privacy Pass feature authenticates with cryptographic tokens and, according to the docs, stops those searches being linked to the account or to each other.

Here is the tradeoff that changes this comparison: Kagi Privacy Pass disables personal search features such as customized domain rankings, custom bangs and lenses. It's available on Professional, Ultimate, Family and Team plans, with Starter excluded. Someone paying specifically for personalization needs to choose between that normal search setup and the extra anonymity mode.

Privacy Pass also has browser limits. Safari isn't supported in the current guide; Orion has its own integration, and other supported browsers use extensions. This is a feature to compare against the browser you use, not a label to assume works identically everywhere.

Searx Party doesn't require a subscription identity for its ordinary public interface. You still send the query to its operator, which in turn contacts selected search sources. The identity and trust questions therefore differ from account-based search without disappearing altogether.

Winner: Kagi for documented optional token authentication; Searx Party for access without creating a search account.

A mixed result list needs a different reading habit

Searx Party combines material from multiple sources. Source attribution can help you understand why a result appeared and whether a source is worth leaving enabled. Engine status and response columns help investigate missing results, but transient statistics shouldn't decide a permanent default on their own.

Kagi presents its own combined search experience, with domain settings following the account across devices. A saved ranking rule can be more convenient than recreating an instance's cookie preferences in another browser. The weakness is that personalized search is something you must actively shape; the subscription alone doesn't know which sites you value.

For technical searches, I'm more interested in finding the original documentation than in how long the result page looks. In either service, compare the title and destination with the project's official name. A large number of near-duplicate pages is less helpful than one correct maintainer guide.

For discovery, a specialist engine can change the material you encounter. Marginalia Search and Wiby are worth considering for personal and noncommercial websites. Their focus makes them companions to a daily engine when the query needs current mainstream information.

Winner: Searx Party for visible source experimentation; Kagi for keeping a personal ranking setup across devices.

What users say

A March 2026 self-hosted search discussion praises SearXNG's cleaner result pages and shortcuts. One reader still questions whether Google would find a better match; another prefers Kagi while admitting that it creates another monthly expense. That is the result-quality-versus-cost decision in ordinary language.

The discussion covers self-hosted SearXNG setups, so its setup stories don't describe Searx Party's operator. Its reading complaints do explain why a free result aggregator appeals and why some readers still pay for a daily service.

Choose one

Choose Searx Party if…

• You want browser search without a subscription.
• You want to enable or disable particular available sources.
• You're comfortable adjusting the engine list after a source fails.

Choose Kagi if…

• Repeated unwanted domains are your main problem.
• You want personal settings to follow your account.
• You use search enough to justify a monthly plan.

Other options

Qwant offers a free search interface without managing a metasearch instance's engine list. MetaGer takes a prepaid token approach. The search-engine category covers the wider set of listings.

FAQ

Is Searx Party free?

Yes, Searx Party's public browser interface has no advertised subscription charge. That doesn't give you a fixed uptime promise or every engine SearXNG supports. The operator decides which sources are available, and a source can reject a request even when the public instance itself is working. Its live Engines list is the clearest view of the current choice.

Can I move Kagi's domain rules to Searx Party?

There isn't a documented direct transfer of Kagi domain-ranking rules into Searx Party's engine preferences. One list ranks website domains; the other selects upstream search engines. Keep a separate record of important domains if you switch, then choose the available sources that help with your queries. Treat the new result mix as a different setup.

Is Searx Party the same as self-hosting SearXNG?

No, using Searx Party means searching through someone else's public instance. Self-hosting gives you the server-side configuration and maintenance work. The public Preferences page lets you adjust browser choices within the operator's setup. It doesn't let you install an engine, change server logging or select the server's hosting location.

Sources

Kagi pricing and Kagi Privacy Pass documentation; Searx Party About and Preferences, checked October 9, 2026. Personalized Results and integration documentation supply the additional table facts.