Get free access to Perplexity Pro and Kagi Ultimate

New perk for paid The Pragmatic Engineer subscribers

Hi, this is Gergely with a bonus issue of the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter — with a special announcement. Note that this is a personal recommendation — and a deal I initiated with two tools I’ve been using as a paid customer to replace my Google Search usage the last year. It is not a paid advert: I have not received any monetary or other compensation for sharing this offer. I have no affiliation with either of the companies mentioned below. See more in my ethics statement. It’s the first-ever such announcement since the start of The Pragmatic Engineer three years ago — and I do not plan to do these frequently.

I’m excited to share a unique perk for all annual paying subscribers to The Pragmatic Engineer. Starting today, you now get access to:

• Perplexity Pro for 12 months (worth $200)

• Kagi Ultimate for 3 months (worth $75)

You don’t need to share credit card details or payment information to access this deal.

This deal only applies to new Perplexity and Kagi customers. Annual subscribers are eligible. Cancelling a newsletter subscription deactivates the code supplied.

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber to The Pragmatic Engineer, you can upgrade here.

How did these offers come about?

Some background: for about a year, I’ve been using Kagi Professional as my default search engine, after deciding to drop Google Search. Meanwhile, for deep research and highly nuanced web search, my choice is Perplexity Pro.

I want to mention that I haven’t been paid to mention these startups – in fact, I reached out to them! I’m actually a longterm user of both products, and want to give subscribers the opportunity to discover them, too. So, I approached the companies about offering trials.

I’m pleased to say that Kagi and Perplexity were each open to offering multi-month free trials to subscribers of The Pragmatic Engineer. For Kagi, it’s the first time they’ve made such an offer via a third party.

Let’s tackle the elephant in the room: why would you pay for search? I certainly never thought I would. But the reason I do so today, is that I’m tired of being “the product” for search engines. Every time I execute a search, I have to scroll through sponsored results that are mixed into organic ones. I also have a nagging sense that search engine results are degrading over time. The likes of Google care more about maximizing ad revenue than they care about serving up high-quality, helpful search results.

Finally, as a tech professional and someone who believes in the benefits of competitive markets, it’s refreshing to see startups challenge the monopolistic Big Tech dominance of search with new, alternative approaches. Perplexity is barely two years old, and already a challenger to Google. And Kagi offers unusual transparency behind their exact usage numbers and customer numbers by sharing realtime platform stats.

Perplexity has built a product that feels like a new type of search; one which delivers research to your fingertips via a search engine, complete with references (links) about where the information has been sourced from. This lets you double check how legitimate the sources are, and so using such a tool can strengthen the credibility of your work.

Meanwhile, Kagi is building a privacy-first, user-first version of Google search without VC funding or ads. The results it serves feel much more like “hits”, than the “misses” I’ve come to expect from Google. Check out the Kagi team’s view on the real cost of “free search.”

What you get from Perplexity Pro and Kagi Ultimate

What you get with Perplexity Pro:

• Pro searches. A Pro search conducts thorough research to provide in-depth, accurate responses to questions. It’s particularly useful for summarising, data analysis, debugging, and content generation, making it the perfect tool for developers and data scientists. More about Pro search features.

• Powerful AI models. Search using a choice of advanced AI models, each with its own unique strengths. Choose from GPT-4 Omni (advanced reasoning), Claude 3 Sonnet and Haiku (natural-sounding responses and file uploads), Sonar Large 32k (conciseness and accuracy). You can even use the new DeepSeek R1 reasoning model (hosted with Perplexity) and OpenAI o1 reasoning model.

• Document Analysis: Upload text and data files to search the web and also internal knowledge bases.

What you get with Kagi Ultimate:

• Unlimited Kagi searches. Lightning-fast, no ads and no tracking, and the ability to block domains. Popular domains users block include Pinterest, Daily Mail, and Quora.

• The Assistant access. The Assistant by Kagi combines top large language models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google and Mistral) with optional results from Kagi Search, making it the perfect companion for creative, research, and programming tasks. More details about The Assistant.

Next up: deepdive on both startups

Tomorrow, we publish a deepdive on the engineering cultures of Perplexity and Kagi. Both these startups are building alternatives to Google Search, and each has its own distinct approach and engineering culture. Stay tuned!