# agent-browser vs TinyFish

> TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against agent-browser's 66.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. agent-browser leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do browser automation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against agent-browser's 66.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. agent-browser leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do browser automation.

- agent-browser: grade B, 66.6/100, rank #263 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agent-browser.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agent-browser.json
- TinyFish: grade B, 67.7/100, rank #227 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tinyfish.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tinyfish.json

## Which one, for what

### agent-browser (B)

Good for: Coding agents with a shell that want short commands and compact snapshots.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 67 against 57
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 55

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: The ten most recent CI runs on main, 1 to 8 October 2026, all concluded in failure. In the newest, Windows Rust tests and native end-to-end tests failed

### TinyFish (B)

Good for: Agents that want one account for a goal-driven web agent, a raw CDP browser, and free search and fetch.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 60 against 48
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 70

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: The terms of 17 August 2026 allow Tiny Fish to train and improve its models on customer data. No opt-out was found in the reviewed pages


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | agent-browser | TinyFish | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 48 | 60 | TinyFish +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 85 | TinyFish +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 79 | TinyFish +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 57 | agent-browser +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 55 | agent-browser +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 80 | TinyFish +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 59 | agent-browser +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.6 · B** | **67.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | agent-browser | TinyFish |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Vercel Labs | Tiny Fish, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://agent.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Tiny Fish's terms of service. The MCP proxy `@tiny-fish/mcp` and the cookbook are MIT. The SDK packages state no licence in npm or PyPI metadata |
| Tools exposed | 158 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 44k stars, 2.1M npm/wk | 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**agent-browser.** Snapshots with element refs, a 29-tool default MCP profile and opt-in domain allowlists, action policies and content boundary markers suit agent use. The project is at 0.38.2 with no stable release, the ten most recent CI runs on main failed between 1 and 8 October 2026, and every security control is off by default.

**TinyFish.** OpenAPI documents are published for five APIs, errors carry typed codes and request IDs, and Search and Fetch are free within daily allowances. The terms let Tiny Fish train its models on customer data, run creation takes no idempotency keys, and the status page shows an hour or more of downtime on several days for the Browser and Search APIs.

## Before you call either

### agent-browser

1. Run `agent-browser install` once after `npm install -g agent-browser`. It downloads Chrome for Testing
2. Take a fresh `snapshot -i` after any navigation. Refs survive same-document changes only
3. Pass `--json` for machine-readable results and `--max-output` to cap page text
4. Set `--allowed-domains`, `--action-policy` and `--content-boundaries` for untrusted sites. None is on by default, and the allowlist rejects `--profile`, `--cdp` and `--restore`
5. Start MCP with `agent-browser mcp`, and add profiles such as `--tools core,network` only when needed

### TinyFish

1. Check `result` as well as `status`. A run can be `COMPLETED` while the goal failed, with `result.status` set to `failure`
2. Don't retry `POST /v1/automation/run` blindly after a timeout. There are no idempotency keys, so list runs first to avoid duplicates
3. Use `/v1/automation/run-async` or `/run-sse` when a run may need cancelling. Runs started with the synchronous endpoint can't be cancelled
4. Allow 60 seconds for Browser session creation, connect Playwright to `cdp_url` (not `base_url`), and `DELETE` the session when done because billing is per minute
5. Never put passwords in `goal`, which is logged. Pass `use_vault: true` with `credential_item_ids`, or `use_profile: true` for saved login state

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, agent-browser or TinyFish?

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against agent-browser's 66.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. agent-browser leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Do agent-browser and TinyFish need an API key?

agent-browser needs no key. TinyFish takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call agent-browser and TinyFish without installing anything?

agent-browser runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. TinyFish has a hosted endpoint at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

### Are agent-browser and TinyFish open source?

agent-browser is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "agent-browser", "b": "tinyfish"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare agent-browser tinyfish`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agent-browser.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tinyfish.json

## Other comparisons with agent-browser or TinyFish

- [agent-browser vs Airtop](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-airtop.md)
- [agent-browser vs Anchor Browser](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-anchor-browser.md)
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- [Anchor Browser vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-browser-vs-tinyfish.md)
- [Browser Use vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browser-use-vs-tinyfish.md)
- [Browserless vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-tinyfish.md)
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- [Notte vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/notte-vs-tinyfish.md)
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- [Skyvern vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/skyvern-vs-tinyfish.md)
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- [Browserbase vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserbase-vs-tinyfish.md)