# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-tinyfish
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-tinyfish.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-vs-tinyfish.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browserless-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

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.

- Browserless: grade BB, 70.4/100, rank #148 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browserless.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/browserless.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

### 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

| Category | Weight | Browserless | TinyFish | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 82 | 60 | Browserless +22 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 85 | Browserless +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 79 | TinyFish +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 53 | 57 | TinyFish +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 55 | TinyFish +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 80 | Browserless +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 59 | Browserless +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **70.4 · BB** | **67.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Browserless | TinyFish |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | browserless.io, Inc. | Tiny Fish, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production-sfo.browserless.io` | `https://agent.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | SSPL 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 proprietary | 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 | 14 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 14k stars, 3.5k npm/wk | 5.7k 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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Browserless or TinyFish

- [agent-browser vs Browserless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-browserless.md)
- [agent-browser vs TinyFish](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-browser-vs-tinyfish.md)
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