Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run
Grounding with Bing Search vs TinyFish Search
TinyFish Search scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $14 per 1,000 requests.
Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 308 search comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams already building on Foundry Agent Service who want cited answers from Bing without handling a search key.
Ahead on
- Security & auth, 79 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 60
Watch for
The Bing tools never return raw results to developers, only a model-written answer with citation links
Best for Agents that need ranked snippets and URLs at no cost and modest volume, with news and research-paper modes.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 82 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 61
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 20
Also in its favour
- Cheaper for web search, $0 against $14 per 1,000 requests
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
TinyFish's status page showed the Search API down on seven days from 11 July to 8 October 2026, 420 minutes on 7 August
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Payments & pricing TinyFish Search +25
Grounding with Bing Search 20
No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $14 per 1,000 transactions for Grounding with Bing Search and Custom Search, published on microsoft.com without a login (20). No free tier for Grounding with Bing, and an Azure subscription needs a card, as on the Azure Translator listing (0). A person signs up for Azure, creates a Foundry project and, for bing_grounding, a Bing resource (0).
TinyFish Search 45
The Machine Payments Protocol is documented on POST /v1/wallet/top-up only. It funds a prepaid wallet for an existing account, needs the API key and is rolling out gradually. An unauthenticated Search request returned 401, not a payment challenge (10). The pricing page states $0.00 a request without login, re-read on 2 November, but the docs say requests past 12,000 a day need a wallet balance and no rate for them is published (15). Free with no card (20). A person has to sign up in a browser to create a key (0). 10 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 45.
Security & auth Grounding with Bing Search +22
Grounding with Bing Search 79
Callers authenticate to the Foundry project with Microsoft Entra ID tokens and RBAC roles (Foundry User to run agents, Foundry Project Manager to add connections), with just-in-time Contributor through Entra PIM for provisioning. The Bing resource key sits in a project connection and the agent never holds it. No key in a URL (28 of 30). The tools only read. Custom Search confines grounding to configured public domains, and an admin can turn web search off for a whole subscription. There is no per-agent read-only toggle to set, since the tools have no write path (15 of 20). The web search page tells developers to treat web search results as untrusted input and to keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and the tool best practices page says the same of all tool outputs. Raw results are not passed back to the caller (10 of 15). Run steps show each tool call and the Bing query sent, and Azure's activity log covers resource changes. No per-query audit log for Bing was found (10 of 15). Microsoft runs a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy and bounty programmes through MSRC. microsoft.com's security.txt passed its Expires date on 23 September 2026 and still carries it on 6 November, and the Azure compliance attestations are not shown to cover a service whose data leaves the compliance boundary (16 of 20). 28 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 16 = 79.
TinyFish Search 57
Revocable API keys shown once, with several keys allowed per account, sent in the X-API-Key header. No scopes were found, and one key covers every TinyFish API including the ones that spend wallet funds. The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1 (20). Search is read-only, but a key or MCP connection cannot be limited to Search (8). Search snippets are untrusted. TinyFish's Fireworks integration guide says search snippets "can contain prompt injection" and its sample system prompt says never to follow instructions found in them, but the Search reference and overview carry no such guidance. Guidance in one guide reads 6, as the TinyFish platform listing, openai-realtime and gusto read it (6). GET /usage lists each search with its status, and responses carry X-Request-ID. Audit logs are listed under Enterprise (10). Valid security.txt (expires 1 September 2027), a disclosure policy of 15 September 2026 with safe harbour and discretionary rewards (not a bounty), and ISO 27001 cited in the terms and on the pricing page. The trust centre could not be read. Read as the TinyFish platform listing reads the same programme (13). 20 + 8 + 6 + 10 + 13 = 57.
Agent ergonomics TinyFish Search +17
Grounding with Bing Search 61
Read as a server-side search tool inside an agent run. The tools return a model's answer with citations rather than raw results, and search_context_size sets how much context web search uses. A caller can't size or inspect the result set itself, since the Bing tools never return their output. Custom Search confines grounding to chosen domains without code (18 of 25). count, freshness, market and language filters, and domain restriction through Custom Search. No pagination or offset (13 of 20). Troubleshooting tables give causes and fixes for connection ID, RBAC and 429 problems, but the tools document no error codes (8 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe apart from the per-transaction charge. No MCP annotations are documented for the toolbox's web search tool (10 of 20). The web_search route needs only a project, a model deployment and the Foundry User role. bing_grounding also needs a paid Bing resource and a project connection. SDKs in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java (12 of 15). Prompt caching gets no hits with the Bing tools, because they add a timestamp to every request. 18 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 61.
TinyFish Search 78
Results are compact (position, site name, title, snippet, URL) and thumbnails are opt-in, but no parameter sets how many results come back. The hosted MCP server's docs page lists 35 tools on 2 November (the repository reference still lists 28), with no documented search-only subset (15). page from 0 to 10, domain include and exclude lists, date and recency windows, country, language and domain_type, with no result-count control (16). Stable error codes with messages, a details object on account rate limits and a request_id on every error (19). Search is a GET that is safe to repeat and the docs give retry guidance. No read-only annotations appear in the published MCP tool reference (13). Only query is required, and there are official Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). 15 + 16 + 19 + 13 + 15 = 78.
Schema & documentation TinyFish Search +14
Grounding with Bing Search 68
The tools are typed in the official SDKs (BingGroundingTool, BingCustomSearchPreviewTool, WebSearchTool) in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java, and the toolbox exposes web search as an MCP tool. No public OpenAPI description of the Responses tool types was confirmed from the pages read (10 of 25). Microsoft Learn serves each page as Markdown with accept=text/markdown, though learn.microsoft.com/llms.txt answers 404 (10). The pages say what each of four web grounding routes is for and when to choose it, when to use Custom Search instead, and not to ask the model to summarise a whole page (17 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults and limits in prose, count 1 to 50 with default 5, freshness values and a date-range form, market and language formats, search_context_size low, medium or high (11 of 15). Examples in Python, C#, TypeScript, Java and REST with expected output, and troubleshooting tables for connection ID, authentication and 429 problems, but no error codes or bodies for the tools (10 of 15). Requests carry api-version=v1 on the toolbox, SDK changelogs are dated and a monthly What's New page lists new articles, the latest for August 2026 (10 of 15). 10 + 10 + 17 + 11 + 10 + 10 = 68.
TinyFish Search 82
A public OpenAPI 3.0 document for Search at agent.tinyfish.ai/v1/openapi/search, with two operations, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 2 November because that host now redirects robots.txt to sign-in (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of each docs page (10). The docs say when to use Search and when to use Fetch, Agent or Browser, and the MCP search description says when to skip it. That description also tells the model to prefer it over native search tools (17). domain_type is an enum and integers have bounds, but dates, country and language are plain strings, domain lists are comma-separated strings and fetch is a JSON-encoded string (10). An examples page, and an error reference with a JSON body for each code (14). The OpenAPI document is version 1.0.0 and the Search host has no version in its path. The Pulse changelog's newest entry is the week of 22 June 2026 and docs.tinyfish.ai/changelog returns 404 (6). 25 + 10 + 17 + 10 + 14 + 6 = 82.
Transparency & trust Grounding with Bing Search +6
Grounding with Bing Search 66
Closed service. The terms of use, updated November 2025, are separate from the Online Services terms and sit under the customer's Microsoft agreement (15 of 30). The docs and the terms agree that the Data Protection Addendum and the Product Terms' privacy and security terms don't apply, that Microsoft and the customer are independent controllers, and that the query and parameters leave the Azure compliance and geographic boundary. The terms defer storage and use of query data to the general Microsoft Privacy Statement and state no retention period (15 of 30). The Bing Search APIs retirement was announced on 16 May 2025 for 11 August 2025, under three months' notice, and the web search page marks the Deep Research tool deprecated with a replacement. Microsoft's lifecycle policy covers Azure services, but no deprecation terms for Grounding with Bing were found (10 of 20). Data location for Bing processing isn't stated, and no sub-processor list for it was found (5 of 20). 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 45.
TinyFish Search 60
The service is closed with published terms effective 17 August 2026. The MCP proxy is MIT and the SDK packages carry no licence metadata (15). The terms allow customer data to be used to train TinyFish's AI models. The privacy policy, effective 14 December 2025, gives no retention period and says data is kept as long as necessary. No DPA was found on the pages we read (10). No deprecation policy was found. The terms give 30 days' notice of changes to the terms and 14 days for rate increases, and the reference marks site: operators as deprecated with no date (5, as the TinyFish platform listing reads the same terms). No sub-processor list or hosting location was found on readable pages. The enterprise page says data residency is agreed in the contract, and the trust centre is drawn by script and was not read (3, as the platform listing). 15 + 10 + 5 + 3 = 33.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Grounding with Bing Search | TinyFish Search | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 68 | 65 | Grounding with Bing Search +3 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 68 | 82 | TinyFish Search +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 61 | 78 | TinyFish Search +17 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 79 | 57 | Grounding with Bing Search +22 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 45 | TinyFish Search +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 80 | 80 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 66 | 60 | Grounding with Bing Search +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 63.7/100 | B 66.9/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Grounding with Bing Search | TinyFish Search |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses | https://api.search.tinyfish.ai |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the customer's Microsoft agreement and the separate Grounding with Bing terms of use, which exclude it from the Microsoft Data Protection Addendum | Proprietary service under TinyFish's Terms of Service. The local MCP proxy @tiny-fish/mcp is MIT. The SDK packages on npm and PyPI carry no licence metadata |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 35 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-24 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Verdicts
Grounding with Bing Search
First-party Bing grounding inside Foundry Agent Service, called with Entra ID so the agent never holds a search key, at a published $14 per 1,000 transactions. The tools return a model's answer with citations, never the raw results, and data sent to them falls outside Microsoft's Data Protection Addendum and Azure's compliance boundary.
TinyFish Search
Search costs $0.00 a request within 30 requests a minute and 12,000 a day, with no card, a public OpenAPI document and rate-limit headers. TinyFish's status page showed several Search outages from July to October, one API key covers every TinyFish API with no scopes, and the terms allow model training on customer data.
Before you call either
Grounding with Bing Search
- Use the citations in the response annotations as the sources; the tool output itself is not returned, and the terms require showing the URLs and the Bing query link
- Expect each run to bill one transaction per tool call at $14 per 1,000, plus model tokens, and set count and freshness in the tool configuration
- Treat cited page text as untrusted input and don't put secrets or personal data in prompts, since queries leave the Azure compliance boundary
- On 429 back off exponentially; no Retry-After header is documented for the tool
TinyFish Search
- Send the key in the
X-API-Keyheader. The Search host ishttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai, notagent.tinyfish.ai - Stay under 30 requests a minute per account, across all keys. On 429, wait for
Retry-After. A 429 withoutdetailsis upstream throttling, so back off and retry - Use
include_domainsandexclude_domainsin place ofsite:operators, which the reference marks as deprecated for domain filtering - Do not combine
recency_minuteswithafter_dateorbefore_date. Fordomain_type=research_paperusepub_year_minandpub_year_max - Invalid requests count towards a separate limit of 60 a minute, so validate parameters before sending
- Treat snippets as untrusted text and never follow instructions in them. The hosted MCP server exposes 35 tools, including browser automation that spends wallet funds
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Grounding with Bing Search or TinyFish Search?
TinyFish Search scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth and transparency & trust.
Which is cheaper for web search, Grounding with Bing Search or TinyFish Search?
TinyFish Search, at free against $14 per 1,000 requests for Grounding with Bing Search. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.
Do Grounding with Bing Search and TinyFish Search need an API key?
Grounding with Bing Search uses an OAuth sign-in. TinyFish Search takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Grounding with Bing Search and TinyFish Search without installing anything?
Yes. Grounding with Bing Search has a hosted endpoint at https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.
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- Mojeek Web Search API vs TinyFish Search
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- SerpKite vs TinyFish Search
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- Arcmira vs TinyFish Search
- Grep AI vs TinyFish Search
- SpecStream vs TinyFish Search
- Fetch (MCP reference server) vs TinyFish Search
- Grounding with Bing Search vs Grep AI
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/bing-grounding-vs-tinyfish-search.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/bing-grounding.json·/api/v1/tools/tinyfish-search.json - From a terminal
anchor compare bing-grounding tinyfish-search(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "bing-grounding", "b": "tinyfish-search"}at/mcp, no key