# Kernel vs TinyFish (slim)

> TinyFish scores 68.2 (B) to Kernel's 66.9 (B) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-tinyfish.md (~5,700 tokens) · this version ~3,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-tinyfish.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kernel-vs-tinyfish
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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TinyFish scores 68.2 (B) on agent readiness against Kernel's 66.9 (B), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. Kernel leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do browser automation.

- Kernel: B 66.9, rank #351 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kernel.min.md
- TinyFish: B 68.2, rank #291 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tinyfish.min.md
- Kernel, good for Agents that need hosted, logged-in browsers at scale with stealth and proxies. browserbase, steel, hyperbrowser and anchor-browser are the nearest listings. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 93 against 85; Agent ergonomics, 84 against 79; Security & auth, 81 against 60; Payments & pricing, 65 against 55; Maintenance & community, 90 against 80.
- TinyFish, good for Agents that want one account for a goal-driven web agent, a raw CDP browser, and free search and fetch. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 53. Also Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Kernel loses 8 points for them.

| Category | Kernel | TinyFish |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 53 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 93 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 84 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 81 | 60 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 65 | 55 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 90 | 80 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 59 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Kernel | TinyFish |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Kernel Technologies, Inc. | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.onkernel.com/mcp` | `https://agent.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Licence | none | 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 | 32 | none |
| MCP registry | `com.onkernel/kernel-mcp-server` | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-24 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-15 | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Kernel +21: Kernel 81 (Scoped API keys with resource and action policies, project scoping and expiry, and OAuth 2.1 for MCP with project-limited tokens (30). Least privilege through scoped keys, a payment cap for cards through the MCP server and vault writes that need their own action (16). Pages an agent browses are untrusted, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the docs read (4). Audit log search and export on Start-Up and above (13). SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, PCI DSS and ISO 27001 on the security page and a HackerOne bounty (18). 30 + 16 + 4 + 13 + 18 = 81, before the deduction for the November 2026 incident.); TinyFish 60 (REST calls take an `X-API-Key` header. Keys are created and deleted in the dashboard and shown once, with no scopes found. Contract organisations add personal and workflow keys that admins can revoke, which separate ownership but not permissions. MCP uses OAuth 2.1, and run IDs are separated between CLI or REST tokens and MCP tokens (21). Vault credentials are opt-in per run with `use_vault` and can be limited with `credential_item_ids`, and the docs say the agent never sees passwords. Organisation workflow keys can't use vault credentials or profiles, and admins can set a spend cap that stops usage. No read-only key or approval step for agent actions was found, and `max_steps` is beta-gated (9). Pages are untrusted content. The plugin page mentions safety rules for untrusted content, and the Fireworks integration guide now tells callers to treat Search results as untrusted because they can contain prompt injection, with a system prompt that says never to follow instructions in them. The Agent and Browser docs carry no such guidance (6). Each run keeps per-step screenshots and optional HTML snapshots, usage lists exist for Search, Fetch and Browser sessions, and audit logs are listed under Enterprise (11). security.txt is valid until 1 September 2027, and the disclosure policy v1.1 of 15 September 2026 has safe harbour and discretionary rewards with no formal bounty. The terms and the pricing page cite ISO 27001, and the trust centre that would show it is drawn by script and was unread (13). 21+9+6+11+13 = 60.)
- Payments & pricing, Kernel +10: Kernel 65 (MPP on POST /mpp/browsers, a 402 challenge paid with a Stripe shared payment token through Link, covering one browser product only, not the API or MCP server (20). Per-second prices public without a login (20). The Developer plan is free with $5 of monthly credit, but whether signup needs a card wasn't stated on the pages read (10). Through MPP an agent gets a browser with no account or key, though a person approves each Link payment (15). 20 + 20 + 10 + 15 = 65.); TinyFish 55 (`POST /v1/wallet/top-up` on agent.tinyfish.ai answers 402 with a Machine Payments Protocol challenge and takes a Stripe Shared Payment Token for $10 to $500. It refills a prepaid wallet instead of paying per call, needs an existing API key, and the docs still say it is rolling out gradually, so partial credit (15). Per-unit prices are public on 1 November, $0.016 an Agent step, $0.002 a Browser minute and $0.005 a Monitor check, with Search and Fetch at $0 (20). Search and Fetch are free within daily allowances and new accounts start with $8 of wallet funds, no card required per the pricing page (20). A person has to sign up in a browser to get a key or complete OAuth (0). 15+20+20+0 = 55.)
- Maintenance & community, Kernel +10: Kernel 90 (The changelog's latest entry is 16 October 2026 and the MCP server repository has commits on 6 November (30). More than three dated changes in 90 days, scoped keys, memory tiers, GPU tier and card payments among them (20). A closed service with a public changelog, Discord, email support and an open-source MCP server with 210 commits since 8 August (15). Official SDKs in three languages, and the MCP server in the registry as com.onkernel/kernel-mcp-server 1.1.0 (15). CI and tests in the MCP repository (10). 30 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 = 90.); TinyFish 80 (`tinyfish` 0.11.0 was published to PyPI on 24 October 2026 and 0.10.0 on 21 October, per PyPI's release feed (30). Eight Python SDK releases since 3 August (0.5.0 on 4 August to 0.11.0), counted half as SDK tags, still more than three (20). npm couldn't be read on 1 November, so the TypeScript SDK and CLI dates rest on the 8 October check (`@tiny-fish/cli` 0.48.1 on 7 October, `@tiny-fish/sdk` 0.8.0 on 29 September). The Pulse changelog still stops at 22 June 2026. Support is by e-mail and Discord, and the public MCP proxy repository has commits to 31 October. We didn't read issue reply times (8 of 15 on the closed-service line). The hosted MCP server is in the official MCP registry as `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent`, version 1.0.1, published 17 February 2026, and both SDKs are current (15). The MCP proxy repository runs CI, Renovate, and OSV and secrets scanners, cleared 11 OSV dependency findings on 6 October, and publishes through npm trusted publishing. The SDK packages name no source repository (7). 30+20+8+15+7 = 80.)
- Schema & documentation, Kernel +8: Kernel 93 (OpenAPI at kernel.sh/openapi.json and per-endpoint Markdown reference (25). llms.txt with 423 entries and a Markdown twin for each page (10). Endpoint descriptions say when to use alternatives ("For interactive browsing, use GET /audit-logs", pools for bursty traffic) (17). Typed parameters with enums and limits such as memory sizes and timeout maximums (13). Code samples in TypeScript, Python and Go, and documented status codes such as 409 and 204 on pool acquire (13). A dated public changelog and SDK changelogs (15). 25 + 10 + 17 + 13 + 13 + 15 = 93.); TinyFish 85 (Graded on the REST API. `llms.txt` now links OpenAPI documents for seven APIs (browser, datasets, fetch, main, monitor, research, search). They sit on agent.tinyfish.ai, which we treat as blocked since 1 November, so the counts below are per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November, from the main document (28 operations) and the Browser document (3) (25). `llms.txt`, a 531 KB `llms-full.txt`, a Markdown twin of every page and a single page for coding agents (10). All 31 operations read carry a description, several say which endpoint to pick instead, and the MCP tool definitions state when to use and when not to use each tool (17). 189 enums in the main document, ranges such as `max_steps` 1 to 500, and unknown fields rejected. 730 of 1,068 properties carry a description, `goal` is free text by design and the MCP `search` tool takes a JSON-encoded `fetch` string (12). 698 examples in the main document, every operation documents an error response, and an error-code page gives a fix for each code (14). The path is versioned `/v1`. The Pulse changelog still stops at 22 June 2026 and the docs have no API changelog (7). 25+10+17+12+14+7 = 85.)
- Reliability, TinyFish +7: Kernel 53 (Hosted reading. status.kernel.sh on incident.io with a public incident feed (20). In the 90 days from 8 August it lists browser connection failures on 10 September (54 minutes, major), frozen popups on 1 October (71 minutes, major), elevated API errors on 19 October (4 minutes, critical), proxy failures on 23 October (65 minutes, major) and browser creation errors on 4 November (29 minutes, major), plus minor ones. Several majors, two of them an hour or more (0). Rate limits are per organisation with headers on every response, and concurrency is published per plan, but the create-rate numbers aren't (8). 429 with Retry-After, SDK retries with a typed error, safe retry with the same MPP credential and 409 on concurrent pool changes (15). The terms mention service levels in an order form but no public SLA was found (0). The API and MCP server carry no beta label (10). 20 + 0 + 8 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 53.); TinyFish 60 (Graded as a hosted API. agent.tinyfish.ai/status is the vendor's own page with five components and 90 daily bars each, but no incident write-ups (15 of 20). On 1 November agent.tinyfish.ai answered its robots.txt with a redirect to a sign-in page, which we treat as a blocked host, so the page wasn't re-read. Per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November, the Agent API showed no downtime from 11 July to 8 October 2026, the Browser API 420 minutes across six days (120 on 28 September), the Search API 1,500 minutes across seven days (420 on 7 August) and the Fetch API 240 on 27 August. Several outages of an hour or more, so 5 of 30, which is also the value for an unread history, so the unread weeks from 9 October can't move it. Limits are published on the pricing page and in the docs (Search 30 requests a minute and 500 an hour, Fetch 150 URLs a minute, 2 concurrent Agent runs, 5 concurrent Browser sessions) (15). Search and Fetch 429s carry `Retry-After` and `X-RateLimit-*` headers, the docs give backoff guidance and the SDKs retry 429 and 5xx. The Agent pending-run 429 has no `Retry-After` and run creation has no idempotency keys (11). The pricing page lists a 99.99 per cent uptime SLA for Enterprise, with no SLA document found (5). Browser, Search and MCP were declared generally available in June 2026 and the API is `/v1`. The SDKs are 0.x and `max_steps` is still beta-gated (9). 15+5+15+11+5+9 = 60.)
- Agent ergonomics, Kernel +5: Kernel 84 (Graded mainly on the API, with the MCP server noted. Responses are scoped per resource and the MCP server groups actions into about 32 tools (18). List endpoints page with limit and offset and filter by status (18). Typed SDK errors and documented 409 on concurrent changes, 204 on a pool timeout and 429 (17). Retrying an MPP purchase with the same credential returns the same browser, and the MCP tools carry readOnlyHint where read-only (16). SDKs in TypeScript, Python and Go plus a CLI, with defaults such as a 60-second timeout (15). 18 + 18 + 17 + 16 + 15 = 84.); TinyFish 79 (Fetch takes an output format, include and exclude selectors, a cache age and a per-URL timeout, and run reads choose whether screenshots come back as URLs or inline. The MCP docs page now lists 35 tools, among them dataset, monitor and research tools, and the proxy repository's reference (28 September) lists 28 (18). Run lists take a cursor, a limit of 1 to 100 and filters for status, goal text, dates and an `owner` of `me` or `team`, and Search pages from 0 to 10 (18). Errors carry a code, a message, optional `details` and a `request_id`, and wallet denials add `non_retryable` and balance fields (19). The docs still say run creation doesn't support idempotency keys and a retry may create duplicate runs. Cancels, research cancels and session deletes are idempotent and a replayed wallet top-up is credited once. We couldn't read MCP annotations without signing in (9). A run needs only `url` and `goal`, a browser session needs nothing, and there are official Python and TypeScript SDKs and a CLI (15). 18+18+19+9+15 = 79.)