Kagi Translate Is Back(blog.kagi.com) |
Kagi Translate Is Back(blog.kagi.com) |
> After that, they will move to the free version of Kagi Translate.
As a pro subscriber since March of 2024...this doesn't feel nice. So I either need to fork up another $8 a month on top of my pro subscription or upgrade to Kagi Ultimate which would cost an extra $15 a month.
Because I'm willing to assume hitting the limit is going to be a whole lot easier even using the default translation settings and my sporadic usage of the service. Its not a service I rely on, but it was definitely nice to have. I'd rather not double my monthly subscription just to have (usable)access to kagi translate.
I feel like it'll be quite restrictive. I use Translate maybe once every two to three months, but for those one or two days or a week I use it a lot. I'm not signing up for the translate service simultaneously just for that.
The reason for this boils down to the following observations:
- Cost of operation at scale varies wildly between these, making it complicated to operate and manage cash flow
- Complexity for the consumer gets unruly as arbitrary things are limited to our fixed brackets of standard/pro/ultimate, we'll need some crazy matrix to explain what is included in each one
- Apprehension in our customer base about paying for things they don't want, chiefly AI related features. Some people just want search and don't want to pay for anything else, even if its included for free.
Itemizing our ecosystem addresses each of these by letting people pay for what they want, and ignore what they don't. If you want Kagi mail, you just get Kagi mail - there is no gymnastics of "I want Kagi mail, but I need extra storage so I need ultimate, but I don't need Assistant stuff, ...". From a business POV it will cleanly fund each initiative without everything competing for the same $10.
This is still on the whiteboard and not set in stone - so don't take what I'm saying as gospel - but it is generally where our heads are at in terms of managing the complexity of our offerings, cost of operation, and consumer piece of mind. It's a very difficult problem to navigate!
Edit: I mention Kagi Mail here, some people may not know but it is in a closed-ish beta at the moment - we hope to bring it to market by EOY!
I definitely don't use all of it from my duo plan, and it's passing through external costs.
Just charge the translate usage to that budget!?
Edit: and why am I reading about this on hacker news not in an email several months ago?
2026-06-02 https://kagi.com/changelog#10959
2026-06-25 https://blog.kagi.com/translate-update
The above two only disabled free access, due to costs. They mention that Kagi Translate would become a subscription service (so I pessmistic'ly assumed it would no longer be part of my existing subscription).
The 2026-29-10 announcement includes "As we roll out our unified Fair Use system, usage across Kagi Translate and Kagi Assistant will count toward a shared allowance.".
I think Kagi's product team actually uses their own software. I often have a small frustration with something and wish for some mitigating setting or change, then go look in the settings and find exactly what I want.
For example: automatically choose Japanese when entering kanji, and automatically strip HTML markup from pasted content.
We added AI features to the existing plans at no extra charge. The only thing we preempted was our Ultimate plan (which we initially offered with literally zero extra perks!), anticipating that LLMs would become more capable and popular and require a higher margin to operate at scale.