The thing is, subscriptions do add up. Lots of folks are carrying a bunch of $10 a month subscriptions that individually are no big but when added up start tacking on $100-$200 a month to their bills.
I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi -- but I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments that make me think hard before signing up for a new one. $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a musician's Patreon, $10 a month to support Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments... plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.
Ideally if more people were supporting these things the monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and getting people to pony up is hard.
I think it’s important to divide your subscriptions into different categories to make wise choices. My categories are utility, tools, entertainment, education, and 501c.
I have no problem paying for tools if the value is there, so I minimize my spending in other categories. Every quarter I review subscriptions, switch some from monthly to yearly to save money, cancel some, adjust levels on others.
If your point is that buying many things can add up to be expensive...yes? At what price point would you stop saying that is true? If it's 2 dollars someone would be listing all the things they buy for 2 dollars that add up to get expensive. Let's leave out the price of all our only fans subscriptions and consider the thing we're talking about
I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi -- but I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments that make me think hard before signing up for a new one. $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a musician's Patreon, $10 a month to support Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments... plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.
Ideally if more people were supporting these things the monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and getting people to pony up is hard.