To be honest, you can also pay with crypto which I imagine makes you less tied to the purchase.
I also don’t love being logged in, and I separate work and innocuous searches into kagi. And like I said work searches are noticeably better in kagi for me. But I’m more interested in the 40 plus dollars a month of AI access thrown in with search for the 25 a month. That makes it a steal. (for people using AI stuff)