In a special edition of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter, Gergely announces a new perk for paying subscribers, offering free multi-month trials of Kagi and Perplexity, two search engine tools he has personally used. He emphasizes that this is not a paid advertisement but a personal recommendation, initiated by his own advocacy for better search tools. After a year of using Kagi as his primary search engine and Perplexity for in-depth research, he wants subscribers to experience these alternatives to Google Search. The offer marks a rare promotional step since the newsletter's inception.
For about a year, I've been using Kagi Professional as my default search engine, after deciding to drop Google Search. Meanwhile, for deep research and highly nuanced web search, my choice is Perplexity Pro.
I haven't been paid to mention these startups - in fact, I reached out to them! I'm actually a long-term user of both products, and want to give subscribers the opportunity to discover them, too.
I'm pleased to say that Kagi and Perplexity were each open to offering multi-month free trials to subscribers of The Pragmatic Engineer. For Kagi, it's the first time they've made such an offer via a third party.
Let's tackle the elephant in the room: why would you pay for search? I certainly never thought I would. But the reason I do so today, is that I'm tired of being "the product" for search engines.
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