I pay for Kagi and I honestly feel that I get more than my money's worth out of it. YMMV, of course. Maybe it isn't worth it to you.

But for me, Kagi opened up the web again. I can finally find what I'm looking for. I can make sure that my results never include BS websites. I even got serendipity back in my searches.

In a sense, the $10/mo I pay is really for access to the web itself. Without Kagi, most of parts of the web I was interested in were almost entirely unfindable.

But... you don't have to pay for it. You do need an account, but Kagi has a free tier.