Kagi Search

Kagi Search in context

Kagi Search is a search engine crawler operated by Kagi. In plain terms, it builds a search or answer index. Our database files it under search engines and ranks it Tier 3, mid-priority crawlers with a clear purpose but a smaller audience. 62 of the 63 search engines in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is critical. So Kagi Search is both well behaved and costly to lose: the strongest case for allowing it. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Kagi Search

Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track Kagibot as a named token, so we do not publish an adoption figure for it. If you run a large site, your own logs are the best evidence of how often it visits.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Kagi Search's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kagi Search rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

Kagi crawlers and close alternatives

Kagi Search is one of 2 Kagi crawlers in our database. A User-agent: Kagibot group controls Kagi Search only; the other Kagi tokens below need their own lines.

• Kagibot: this crawler (Tier 3)
• kagi-fetcher: Kagi Assistant, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)

To give Kagi Search the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: Kagibot with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Kagi Search differently, give it its own group.

Other search engines that do the same job (builds a search or answer index) include Amzn-SearchBot from Amazon, Applebot from Apple, baidu from Baidu, Baiduspider from Baidu, Baiduspider-favo from Baidu, Baiduspider-image from Baidu. Deciding about Kagi Search is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded Kagibot on September 22, 2026. Kagi documents it on kagi.com, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Kagi Search actually follows

Kagi Search reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names Kagibot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: Kagibot
Disallow: /drafts/

1. Find the group. Kagi Search looks for a group naming Kagibot. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
2. Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
3. The surprise. /private/ is open to Kagi Search, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Should you allow Kagi Search? Decide by situation

Check Kagi Search on your own site

1. Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for Kagibot. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
2. List the Disallow lines in the group Kagi Search follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
3. Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Kagi Search even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
4. Run our robots.txt AI crawler test to see how Kagi Search and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.