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True, but there's also the reality that maintenance costs increase over time for software projects as upstream vendors change their pricing models and codebases grow in size and complexity. I can see why a product like Kagi wants to keep their traffic tied to recurring revenue instead of selling a bunch of credits upfront.

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People would need to buy more credits. I’m not asking for an eternal membership where I pay once and am done.

There would be many customers buying on different schedules and that would aggregate into a predictable cash flow.

This is a solved problem as companies have sold software for 50 years.

Subscriptions are more profitable, that’s why companies do it. Not because there’s any realistic business reason (other than wanting more money for less work).

The incentive for the company is also different depending if they sell subscriptions or credits/usage. Kagi doesn't have competition in the paid search so space so they shouldn't need to go the subscription route yet as a differentiator.

Using dark patterns like subscriptions at this point seems to me that kagi doesn't trust their product or its users.

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