Kagi vs Rephrase

Rephrase is a focused macOS utility: it lives in your menu bar and hooks into any native text field. You select text, press a global hotkey, and get grammar fixes, tone polishes (polite, concise, professional), translations, or custom prompts like turning bullet lists into tables. It works offline with zero latency because it runs locally, and it’s privacy-first—no data used for training. Integrations include Slack, Notion, Mail, Discord, Xcode, Obsidian, Outlook, and more, all via the system-level hotkey. Kagi is a completely different beast: a user-funded search engine with no ads or tracking. Its AI Assistant offers GPT-5.5, Claude 4.8, and Gemini 2.5 Pro, grounded by search results, and can be toggled on/off per search. Beyond search, Kagi includes Orion browser (built-in ad-block), Translate (240+ languages), Summarize (articles/videos), and Small Web (curated non-commercial sites). Recent news added search widgets (coin flip, dice roll) and a rebuilt Assistant with folders replacing tags. Kagi’s AI is more about answering queries from the web; Rephrase is about perfecting your own writing in real time.

Rephrase offers a one-time lifetime purchase of $49.99, with a free trial covering 50 fixes. That’s a single payment, no subscriptions—ideal if you plan to use it for years. You own it forever. Kagi is subscription-based: a free tier exists (limited searches?), but paid plans start at $5/month for personal use (Standard) and $10/month for professional with more features. Teams and libraries have custom pricing. Recent news: Kagi Translate temporarily disabled free access and will become a subscription service. So Kagi’s costs add up over time—$60/year for personal, $120/year for professional. If you only need text polishing on Mac, Rephrase is cheaper long-term. If you need search + AI across devices, Kagi’s subscription might be worth it. Rephrase has no cloud sync or web companion; Kagi does.