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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

Browserless vs TinyFish

Browserless scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish's 67.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish leads on payments & pricing. Both do browser automation.

Browserlessbrowserless.io, Inc. · HTTP API BB70.4/100#148 of 841 TinyFishTiny Fish, Inc. · HTTP API B67.7/100#227 of 841

Which one, for what

Browserless BB

Good for Agents that need a real browser in the cloud with stealth, proxies and CAPTCHA solving, and teams that want the option of running the same server themselves.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 82 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

REST and WebSocket routes take the API token as ?token= in the URL, which the docs give as the standard method

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

  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 40

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 runBrowserlessTinyFishEdge
Reliability16%208260Browserless +22
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28985Browserless +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.27879TinyFish +1
Security & auth14%17.55357TinyFish +4
Payments & pricing10%12.54055TinyFish +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88280Browserless +2
Transparency & trust7%8.86259Browserless +3
Negative events≤1500
Total70.4 · BB67.7 · B

Facts side by side

FactBrowserlessTinyFish
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
Vendorbrowserless.io, Inc.Tiny Fish, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://production-sfo.browserless.iohttps://agent.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceSSPL 1.0 or a commercial licence for the core server and the MCP server. The BAP TypeScript SDK is MIT. BrowserQL, stealth and other cloud additions are proprietaryProprietary 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 exposed14none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-10-052026-10-07
Terms last updatedno date given2026-08-17
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity14k stars, 3.5k npm/wk5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk

Verdicts

Browserless

An OpenAPI document, llms.txt and a 14-tool MCP server with annotations on every tool make the service easy for an agent to read, and the free plan needs no card. The API token travels in the URL query string by default, cloud tokens carry no scopes, and no machine payment route exists.

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

Browserless

  1. Send the token as Authorization: Bearer to the MCP server. On REST and WebSocket routes it goes in ?token=, so keep those URLs out of logs
  2. Close sessions as soon as the work is done. Browser time bills one unit per 30 seconds, rounded up, idle or not
  3. For multi-step work with browserless_agent, set keepSessionAlive: true on the first call and pass the returned sessionId after that. Sessions are one-shot by default since server 1.33.0
  4. On 429, back off and retry. It means the plan's concurrency limit or queue is full, usually from sessions left open
  5. Match the path to the protocol. Use /chromium for CDP clients and /chromium/playwright only for playwright.connect()

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, Browserless or TinyFish?

Browserless scores 70.4 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish's 67.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish leads on payments & pricing.

Do Browserless and TinyFish need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Browserless and TinyFish without installing anything?

Yes. Browserless has a hosted endpoint at https://production-sfo.browserless.io and TinyFish at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Browserless or TinyFish

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