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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

Lightpanda vs TinyFish

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Lightpanda's 61.6 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lightpanda leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do browser automation.

Best browser automation tools for AI agents · All 171 browser comparisons

LightpandaSelecy SAS (Lightpanda) · MCP server C61.6/100#541 of 1238 TinyFishTinyFish · HTTP API B67.7/100#278 of 1238

Which one, for what

Lightpanda C

Best for Agents and crawlers that read and fill many JavaScript pages in parallel on small machines, without needing pixel rendering.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 65 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 59

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

Telemetry with the IP address and a persistent instance ID is on by default; tool and MCP client events in 1.0.2 aren't in the privacy policy's list

TinyFish B

Best for Agents that want one account for a goal-driven web agent, a raw CDP browser, and free search and fetch.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 57 against 46
  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 73

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

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 runLightpandaTinyFishEdge
Reliability16%206560Lightpanda +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28285TinyFish +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.27579TinyFish +4
Security & auth14%17.54657TinyFish +11
Payments & pricing10%12.54055TinyFish +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87380TinyFish +7
Transparency & trust7%8.86559Lightpanda +6
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 61.6/100B 67.7/100

Facts side by side

FactLightpandaTinyFish
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorSelecy SAS (Lightpanda)TinyFish
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://agent.tinyfish.ai
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)HTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0 for the browser. The npm wrapper @lightpanda/browser and the agent skill are Apache-2.0. Lightpanda Cloud is a closed service with no terms of service foundProprietary 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 exposed32none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-10-232026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-032025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity9.3k npm/wk5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Lightpanda

Version 1.0.2 runs locally with no account, and its 32-tool MCP server has typed schemas, an annotation on every tool and guidance to treat pages as untrusted. Telemetry is on by default, the CDP and HTTP MCP servers have no authentication, the cloud documents its token in the URL, and no status page or cloud terms were found.

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

Lightpanda

  1. Set LIGHTPANDA_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true in the server's environment if usage data, the IP address and an instance ID shouldn't leave the machine.
  2. Treat text from markdown, html, tree and links as untrusted page content, never as instructions.
  3. Pass credentials as $LP_* placeholders in tool arguments and call getEnv without a name; naming a variable returns its value.
  4. Check httpStatus in structuredContent after goto, since a 404 page or a load timeout is still reported as a successful navigation.
  5. Keep lightpanda serve and lightpanda mcp --port on 127.0.0.1 or a Unix socket; neither checks who connects.

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, Lightpanda or TinyFish?

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Lightpanda's 61.6 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lightpanda leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

Do Lightpanda and TinyFish need an API key?

Lightpanda needs no key. TinyFish takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Lightpanda and TinyFish without installing anything?

Lightpanda runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. TinyFish has a hosted endpoint at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

Are Lightpanda and TinyFish open source?

Lightpanda is open source (AGPL-3.0 for the browser. The npm wrapper @lightpanda/browser and the agent skill are Apache-2.0. Lightpanda Cloud is a closed service with no terms of service found). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish.

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