Opportunities › Premium search engine with traditional relevance ranking › Proposed app
Plainfind
Paid web search ranked by relevance, with no ads and no AI answers
- Score
- 43
- confidence 59
- Evidence
- 6
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 2
- named in sources
- First version
- 60 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop app
- PWA: runs in the browser, installs on Mac and Windows
- Market since
- 2022
- Emerging market · AI estimate
ScreensConcept
Desktop app: Research workers conduct in-depth queries, tune ranking settings, and review multiple results over long sessions at their desk. Sample screens on a computer, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
Results
0 ads · 0 AI answers- 1 postgres.orgDocs, match 96
About this appAI proposal
Plainfind is a subscription search engine for people who research for a living or for fun. It returns a plain list of links ranked by how well each page matches your query and how much other sources rely on it. No ads, no sponsored slots, no generated answer on top.
Because you pay for it, results don't have to serve advertisers. Pages heavy on affiliate links, thin rewrites and machine-generated filler are pushed down, and you can see why any result ranked where it did. You can pin, block or boost sites, and those choices stay yours.
It installs as a web app and can be set as the default search in your browser. It is built for readers who want to find the source, not be handed a summary.
- Tagline
- Search that ranks pages, not advertisers.
- Voice
- PlainDirectCalm
- Why this name
- Plain says what you get: ordinary ranked links, nothing layered on top. Find is the job. Two simple words, easy to say and spell.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
Relevance-first ranking
Results are ordered by query match and link authority. Money paid, ads and AI summaries never affect position.
No member yet
No generated answers
The page is ten links with short snippets taken from the pages themselves. No chat box, no summary box.
No member yet
Why this result
Tap any result to see the signals behind its rank: match, citations from other sites, freshness and commercial weight.
No member yet
Commercial-weight dial
Set how strongly affiliate-heavy and sales pages are demoted, from off to strict, per lens or for everything.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#2F5D50Pine · primary#F6F1E7Paper · surface#1F2421Ink · text#C8742BAmber · accent#5B6B73Slate · data
Typography
Aa
Plainfind
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
Search that ranks pages, not advertisers.
PricingAI proposal
Kagi's pricing page (verified) lists 2 paid plans from $4 to $12 by usage, plus quotes for larger customers. These tiers sit in that range as a starting point to test, not a validated price.
Trial
Free
- 100 searches to try it
- Ranking dials and why-this-result
- No card needed
Plain
$5 a month
- 1,500 searches a month
- Unlimited pins, blocks and lenses
- Browser default search
- Export your lists
Heavy
$12 a month
- Unlimited searches
- Everything in Plain
- Priority support
- Early access to new ranking options
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$194,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- No loop in the product. Searching is private and produces nothing shared. Growth comes from word of mouth among researchers, writing about the ranking approach, and Hacker News style discussion.
- Do they become customers?
- Readers of content are the buyers, so reach equals acquisition. Test whether people who complain about search quality will pay after a 100-search trial.
- First customers
- Independent researchers, journalists and software engineers who search many times a day and already complain about result quality.
- Where to reach them
- Hacker News: Post a Show HN with a side-by-side ranking comparison and a free 100-search trial.
- Developer newsletters: Sponsor or pitch two or three newsletters read by engineers and researchers.
- Research communities: Offer trial codes in journalist and academic forums where search quality is discussed.
- First milestone
- Fifty trial users, with at least ten paying $5 a month and still searching after 30 days.
Why people already pay for this
- Public claimUsers are willing to pay for search quality and would switch from free services to subscription alternatives
- Public claimCurrent search results have declined in usefulness, particularly regarding commercial and AI-generated content
- Public claimExisting premium search alternatives do not adequately serve all user preferences regarding AI integration in search
- VerifiedKagi's pricing page lists 2 paid plans, from $4 to $12 by usage, plus prices on request for larger customers
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · Web index sourceLicensed web index or crawl APIBuilding a full web crawl is far beyond a small team. A licensed index gives current pages to rank.
- This app · Ranking serviceSearch engine with custom scoringNeeded to re-rank candidates with link, freshness and commercial-weight signals and explain each result.
RisksAI inference
- DataIndex access and its per-query cost may eat the margin at $5 a month. Terms of any licensed index may also limit re-ranking or display.
- TechnicalRe-ranking someone else's candidates may not beat Google for rare queries, and results could feel worse than people remember.
- CommercialWillingness to pay for non-AI search is only a public claim. Kagi already holds the paying-search niche.
- AIDetecting generated or affiliate-heavy pages is error-prone. Wrongly demoting good pages would hurt trust.
- PlatformBrowsers may limit setting a custom default search from a web app, so setup could take manual steps.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.