Yes it’s paid, but the quality is worlds above Bing, DDG, or Google. The best description I can make is that it’s what Google Search was about 15 years ago, back when there were no AI results, no ads, no artificially promoted results, and you could vote on results and block domains from appearing in your searches. Back when Google Search was actually good.

So it doesn’t do anything new or groundbreaking, it’s just what a search engine is supposed to be, in a time when every other option has abandoned that goal in the endless search for more revenue.

I've seen so many people talking about it that I tried the free trial. It has been giving good enough results. My reference is usually duck dck go since that's what I've used for years, and I only fall back to google when really need to expand my search, but google has been so useless about almost everything that anything else is a win.

I'm not sure if I'll pay or keep using or not, but for now I activated it as the default on my browsers and devices to get a feeling.

I like the idea of a proper business where the business model is clear and where they are making their money. They even have changelogs with their updates and it seems they keep improving things focused on the user, which is nice.

Here's a 30day free trial with their professional tier

https://kagi.com/p/EVOLVE

it's paid, but you get 100 free searches if you wanna check it out