I tried Kagi, but the results just seem like Google being re-sold, and there’s no way I could get away with anything other than the unlimited plan which is $25/month. Also I’m pretty sure it’s a company of one guy - I’m not sure if this is anything other than a pet project or how they would actually improve the results or become independent of google. Also not sure how I could trust their privacy claims as you literally need to be signed in to search. It’s frustrating though because I want to love their business model, and the presentation is very clean.
If you sign up with a masked address then they only have that. You can likely sign up for more than once if you’re needing a new pool of searches, though obviously paying for searches might out you.
I did a bit of comparison… they’re at LEAST using Google and Bing, probably a couple more. I tested with searches I’d already done outside of Kagi and it identified most of the relevant results I’d had to ID across multiple engines before. I do think the price is ah, pricey though, and I’d want more info before I used it for sensitive stuff.