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Head to head · Fetching pages · October 2026 research run

Fetch (MCP reference server) vs TinyFish Search

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Fetch (MCP reference server)'s 57.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Fetch (MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do fetching pages.

Fetch (MCP reference server)MCP project (reference servers) · MCP server C57.5/100#546 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

Fetch (MCP reference server) C

Good for Reading a known URL as Markdown in a local or sandboxed agent, at no cost.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 52

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

Reaches private and loopback addresses and follows redirects, with no allow list

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 70
  • Security & auth, 58 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 42

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • 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 runFetch (MCP reference server)TinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%205350Fetch (MCP reference server) +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27082TinyFish Search +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.27878even
Security & auth14%17.53058TinyFish Search +28
Payments & pricing10%12.56045Fetch (MCP reference server) +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84278TinyFish Search +36
Transparency & trust7%8.87352Fetch (MCP reference server) +21
Negative events≤1500
Total57.5 · C63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactFetch (MCP reference server)TinyFish Search
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorMCP project (reference servers)TinyFish
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsstdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMIT and Apache-2.0Proprietary 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 exposed128
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-08-182026-09-29
Terms last updated2021-09-082026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2023-03-152025-12-14
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
Popularity90k stars, 118k PyPI/wk9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Fetch (MCP reference server)

One tool of about 300 tokens, with max_length and start_index paging and a hint giving the next offset. Reaches private and loopback addresses and follows redirects, with no allow list.

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

Fetch (MCP reference server)

  1. Fetch with the 5,000-character default and continue from the start_index the truncation note gives
  2. Expect empty bodies from JavaScript-rendered sites and switch to a browser tool
  3. Treat a robots.txt refusal as final for autonomous calls and tell the user
  4. Use raw: true only for non-HTML content. It skips the Markdown conversion and returns the page as served

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, Fetch (MCP reference server) or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Fetch (MCP reference server)'s 57.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Fetch (MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

Do Fetch (MCP reference server) and TinyFish Search need an API key?

Fetch (MCP reference server) needs no key. TinyFish Search takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Fetch (MCP reference server) and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Fetch (MCP reference server) runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. TinyFish Search has a hosted endpoint at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Are Fetch (MCP reference server) and TinyFish Search open source?

Fetch (MCP reference server) is open source (MIT and Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish Search.

Other comparisons with Fetch (MCP reference server) or TinyFish Search

Disclosure

MCP started at Anthropic, which makes the Claude models our research agents and review panel run on (Anthropic donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, in December 2025), and this server is graded by the same checklist as every other listing.

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