alt Hacker NewsKagi has a little over 50k paying users.
Hacker news has 5 million monthly unique users [1].
Given how hacker news constantly complain about google’s decline and the constant virtue signaling on the need to pay for software, you would expect a sizable chunk of the users (the vocal ones, at least) here pay for Kagi. And yet we are here. GP is absolutely right about it being all-talk.
In general, 95% of users in any site are passive lurkers. So that leaves Hacker News with 250k active monthly users that comment and engage (which is likely still a massive overestimate). Of those, in the wide variety of comments and discussions, complaints about search and google in particular are again about 5% at most (being generous with numbers once more). That leaves us with 12500 people on HN who should potentially pay for Kagi. Seems like four times that many are doing it by your numbers.