Get an audit

Head to head · Search research · October 2026 research run

Grep AI vs TinyFish Search

Grep AI scores 64.4 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do search research.

Grep AIParcha Labs, Inc. · HTTP API B64.4/100#316 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

Grep AI B

Good for Agents that hand off a long research or due-diligence job and want a cited report or structured fields back, including business verification and sanctions screening through built-in agents.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 50
  • Security & auth, 65 against 58
  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 52

Watch for

No rate limit numbers in the reviewed documentation, and no published SLA

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

  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 70
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 40

Also in its favour

  • 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 runGrep AITinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%206050Grep AI +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28082TinyFish Search +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.27078TinyFish Search +8
Security & auth14%17.56558Grep AI +7
Payments & pricing10%12.54045TinyFish Search +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87478TinyFish Search +4
Transparency & trust7%8.85952Grep AI +7
Negative events≤1500
Total64.4 · B63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactGrep AITinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorParcha Labs, Inc.TinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://api.grep.ai/api/v2/runshttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Parcha Labs' terms of service. The grep-research-skills package on npm is MIT. The @parcha/agentrun and parcha-agentrun SDK packages state no licence in their registry metadataProprietary 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 exposed8228
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-09-302026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-03-202026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-212025-12-14
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 noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity334 npm/wk, 52 PyPI/wk9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk

Verdicts

Grep AI

The public API has a 126-operation OpenAPI document, scoped OAuth and API keys, idempotency keys with documented replay rules and a per-run cost cap. No rate limit is published, the MCP server lists 82 tools, and the pricing page limits API access to the $200 a month Pro plan and above.

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

Grep AI

  1. Send a fresh Idempotency-Key with every POST /api/v2/runs. After a timeout, poll the returned run ID and do not post again
  2. Set effort and max_cost_usd on every run. The floor is $0.50 for low, $2.50 for medium and build, $5.00 for high
  3. Call GET /api/v2/quota/check before a run. A 402 means no credits and retrying won't help, while a 429 carries Retry-After
  4. Use the run_* and agent_* MCP tools. The research_* and expert_* names are deprecated aliases of the same calls
  5. Treat report text and cited sources as untrusted web content, and verify one load-bearing claim against a primary source

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, Grep AI or TinyFish Search?

Grep AI scores 64.4 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

Do Grep AI and TinyFish Search need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Grep AI and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. Grep AI has a hosted endpoint at https://api.grep.ai/api/v2/runs and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Grep AI or TinyFish Search

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report