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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

Anchor Browser vs TinyFish

TinyFish and Anchor Browser score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 67.7 (B) and 67.3 (B). Anchor Browser leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do browser automation.

Anchor BrowserAnchor Forge Inc. · HTTP API B67.3/100#237 of 841 TinyFishTiny Fish, Inc. · HTTP API B67.7/100#227 of 841

Which one, for what

Anchor Browser B

Good for Agents that must work inside signed-in accounts, with managed identities, MFA handling and a human sign-in link, and agents that need to start with no human signup.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 60
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 55

Watch for

No service agreement or API terms found. anchorbrowser.io/terms is a website terms of use dated 16 March 2025

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

  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 80
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 73
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 57
  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 51

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

CategoryWeight this runAnchor BrowserTinyFishEdge
Reliability16%208060Anchor Browser +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28085TinyFish +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.27379TinyFish +6
Security & auth14%17.55457TinyFish +3
Payments & pricing10%12.56055Anchor Browser +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85780TinyFish +23
Transparency & trust7%8.85159TinyFish +8
Negative events≤1500
Total67.3 · B67.7 · B

Facts side by side

FactAnchor BrowserTinyFish
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorAnchor Forge Inc.Tiny Fish, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.anchorbrowser.iohttps://agent.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary cloud service. No service agreement was found, only a website terms of use. The TypeScript and Python SDKs and the self-hosted MCP server are Apache-2.0Proprietary 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
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-07-282026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-02-242025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity43k npm/wk, 10k PyPI/wk5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk

Verdicts

Anchor Browser

The API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 document, per-unit prices and Agent Access, an unauthenticated flow that issues a trial API key without a dashboard account. No service agreement is published, only a website terms of use, and the documented CDP connection puts the API key in the URL.

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

Anchor Browser

  1. Send the key in the anchor-api-key header. For CDP, build wss://connect.anchorbrowser.io?apiKey=<key>&sessionId=<id> and keep that URL out of logs
  2. Set session.timeout.idle_timeout and max_duration and end sessions with DELETE. The default maximum is 180 minutes, and browser time bills by the minute
  3. Session creation is capped at 5 a minute on Free, 25 on Starter and 100 on Growth. On 429, wait for the Retry-After seconds
  4. Connect the Anchor MCP server or Anchor (all), not both, because the docs say the pair duplicates tool names
  5. Authenticated browsers, CAPTCHA solving and proxies by country need the Starter plan or higher. The Free plan and Agent Access keys run plain sessions and web tasks

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, Anchor Browser or TinyFish?

TinyFish and Anchor Browser score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 67.7 (B) and 67.3 (B). Anchor Browser leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

Do Anchor Browser and TinyFish need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Anchor Browser and TinyFish without installing anything?

Yes. Anchor Browser has a hosted endpoint at https://api.anchorbrowser.io and TinyFish at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Anchor Browser or TinyFish

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