My first thought. I'd think that first N searches being free each month would fix that for me. Paying for the full month for 1 search feels off, but paying the same for 10 searches dilutes the feeling by factor of 10.
But then it becomes a question of where exactly draw the line? And if you're going to do that, why not just charge per search so that you're not wasting money on searches you aren't using? Now you just have metered billing.
We've seen how that plays out with cloud computing: a few people wayyyy overpay and subsidise a lot of people on the free/cheap tiers
10 free searches a month would work well for me, I think. A small free tier might be enough to get me to pay for Kagi. Currently I'm just not sure I'm missing anything and I don't have a way to test that, last I checked.
