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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Brave Search API + MCP vs TinyFish Search

Brave Search API + MCP scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests.

Brave Search API + MCPBrave · HTTP API B68/100#215 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

Brave Search API + MCP B

Good for Agents that want an independent, non-Google index at a flat price, or that want page text in one call through LLM Context.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 55 against 50
  • Payments & pricing, 70 against 45
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 78
  • Transparency & trust, 81 against 52

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history

TinyFish Search B

Good 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 72
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 72

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No public status page was found on the site or in the docs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBrave Search API + MCPTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%205550Brave Search API + MCP +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27282TinyFish Search +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.27278TinyFish Search +6
Security & auth14%17.55858even
Payments & pricing10%12.57045Brave Search API + MCP +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88778Brave Search API + MCP +9
Transparency & trust7%8.88152Brave Search API + MCP +29
Negative events≤1500
Total68 · B63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactBrave Search API + MCPTinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBraveTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/searchhttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for web search$5 per 1,000 requestsfree
x402payer tooling onlyno
LicenceMITProprietary 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 exposed828
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-serverai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-09-172026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-09-012026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-252025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Brave Search API + MCP

x402 proxy sells web, LLM Context, news, video, image and local search at $0.005 a call, and a failed search isn't charged. The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history.

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 on every response. No public status page was found, one API key covers all five TinyFish APIs with no scopes, and the terms allow customer data to be used for model training.

Before you call either

Brave Search API + MCP

  1. Call /res/v1/llm/context when you need page text rather than links. It saves a separate fetch
  2. Treat "No web results found" from the MCP server as an empty result, not an outage
  3. On 429, wait for X-RateLimit-Reset seconds. There's no Retry-After header
  4. Skip brave_summarizer. The Summarizer is deprecated and the x402 proxy doesn't sell it
  5. Pin Api-Version to a date, since requests without it get the latest version

TinyFish Search

  1. Send the key in the X-API-Key header. The Search host is https://api.search.tinyfish.ai, not agent.tinyfish.ai
  2. Stay under 30 requests a minute per key. On 429, wait for Retry-After. A 429 without details is upstream throttling, so back off and retry
  3. Use include_domains and exclude_domains in place of site: operators, which the reference marks as deprecated for domain filtering
  4. Do not combine recency_minutes with after_date or before_date. For domain_type=research_paper use pub_year_min and pub_year_max
  5. Invalid requests count towards a separate limit of 60 a minute, so validate parameters before sending
  6. Treat snippets as untrusted text. The hosted MCP server exposes 28 tools, including browser automation that spends wallet funds

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Brave Search API + MCP or TinyFish Search?

Brave Search API + MCP scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics.

Which is cheaper for web search, Brave Search API + MCP or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search, at free against $5 per 1,000 requests for Brave Search API + MCP. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do Brave Search API + MCP and TinyFish Search need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Brave Search API + MCP and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. Brave Search API + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Are Brave Search API + MCP and TinyFish Search open source?

Brave Search API + MCP is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish Search.

Other comparisons with Brave Search API + MCP or TinyFish Search

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