Head to head · Research search · October 2026 research run

Liner Search MCP vs TinyFish Search

TinyFish Search scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do research search.

Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 326 search comparisons

Which one, for what

Liner Search MCP E

Best for Agents that need cheap cited search across the web and scholarly sources, with optional deep research reports.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No free tier found

TinyFish Search B

Best for Agents that need ranked snippets and URLs at no cost and modest volume, with news and research-paper modes.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 65 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 45
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 65
  • Security & auth, 57 against 35
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 60 against 34

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

TinyFish's status page showed the Search API down on seven days from 11 July to 8 October 2026, 420 minutes on 7 August

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Schema & documentation TinyFish Search +37

Liner Search MCP 45

Tool schemas not read without sign-in (15 of 25). llms.txt (10). A table says which tool fits which need, and that the domain tools return the same shape as search_web (12 of 20). Inputs not verifiable (3 of 15). Setup examples, no error responses (5 of 15). Registry version 1.0.0 since 11 September; no changelog found (0). 15 + 10 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 0 = 45.

TinyFish Search 82

A public OpenAPI 3.0 document for Search at agent.tinyfish.ai/v1/openapi/search, with two operations, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 2 November because that host now redirects robots.txt to sign-in (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of each docs page (10). The docs say when to use Search and when to use Fetch, Agent or Browser, and the MCP search description says when to skip it. That description also tells the model to prefer it over native search tools (17). domain_type is an enum and integers have bounds, but dates, country and language are plain strings, domain lists are comma-separated strings and fetch is a JSON-encoded string (10). An examples page, and an error reference with a JSON body for each code (14). The OpenAPI document is version 1.0.0 and the Search host has no version in its path. The Pulse changelog's newest entry is the week of 22 June 2026 and docs.tinyfish.ai/changelog returns 404 (6). 25 + 10 + 17 + 10 + 14 + 6 = 82.

Maintenance & community TinyFish Search +35

Liner Search MCP 45

Registry entry com.liner/search last updated 11 September 2026 (20). No dated changelog found (0). Support page linked from the docs (10 of 15). Official registry entry under its own namespace (15). No package to read (0). 20 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 0 = 45. Registry presence read from Anchor Terminal's own daily import of the official MCP registry (/api/v1/registry.json, 6 November 2026), not the registry's API.

TinyFish Search 80

The Python SDK tinyfish 0.11.0 was published on 24 October 2026 and 0.10.0 on 21 October, per the TinyFish platform listing's 1 November reading of PyPI's release feed; PyPI couldn't be read on 2 November (30). Eight Python SDK releases from 4 August (0.5.0) to 24 October, counted half as SDK tags, still more than three (20). A Discord server and a support address are listed, the public MCP proxy repository has commits to 31 October, and the Pulse changelog has no entry after the week of 22 June 2026. We could not read reply times (8 of 15, as the platform listing). Current official SDKs in two languages, and the MCP server is in the official registry as ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent (15). The SDK packages name no source repository, so their CI is not visible. The MIT 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 (7, as the platform listing). 30 + 20 + 8 + 15 + 7 = 80.

Transparency & trust TinyFish Search +26

Liner Search MCP 34

Terms and privacy linked from the docs but not read in this batch (5 of 30). Data handling not read (5 of 30). No deprecation policy found for the MCP server; the docs note older endpoints priced per version (5 of 20). Subprocessors not read (5 of 20). 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20.

TinyFish Search 60

The service is closed with published terms effective 17 August 2026. The MCP proxy is MIT and the SDK packages carry no licence metadata (15). The terms allow customer data to be used to train TinyFish's AI models. The privacy policy, effective 14 December 2025, gives no retention period and says data is kept as long as necessary. No DPA was found on the pages we read (10). No deprecation policy was found. The terms give 30 days' notice of changes to the terms and 14 days for rate increases, and the reference marks site: operators as deprecated with no date (5, as the TinyFish platform listing reads the same terms). No sub-processor list or hosting location was found on readable pages. The enterprise page says data residency is agreed in the contract, and the trust centre is drawn by script and was not read (3, as the platform listing). 15 + 10 + 5 + 3 = 33.

Payments & pricing TinyFish Search +25

Liner Search MCP 20

No machine payment protocol (0). Per-call prices public (20). No free tier found (0). A person signs up in a browser for OAuth or an API key (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.

TinyFish Search 45

The Machine Payments Protocol is documented on POST /v1/wallet/top-up only. It funds a prepaid wallet for an existing account, needs the API key and is rolling out gradually. An unauthenticated Search request returned 401, not a payment challenge (10). The pricing page states $0.00 a request without login, re-read on 2 November, but the docs say requests past 12,000 a day need a wallet balance and no rate for them is published (15). Free with no card (20). A person has to sign up in a browser to create a key (0). 10 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 45.

Security & auth TinyFish Search +22

Liner Search MCP 35

OAuth 2.1 or an API key; scopes not published (20 of 30). All tools are reads (10 of 20). Results carry web pages and documents with no injection guidance (0). No audit log found (0). No security.txt (404) or security programme found (5 of 20). 20 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 5 = 35.

TinyFish Search 57

Revocable API keys shown once, with several keys allowed per account, sent in the X-API-Key header. No scopes were found, and one key covers every TinyFish API including the ones that spend wallet funds. The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1 (20). Search is read-only, but a key or MCP connection cannot be limited to Search (8). Search snippets are untrusted. TinyFish's Fireworks integration guide says search snippets "can contain prompt injection" and its sample system prompt says never to follow instructions found in them, but the Search reference and overview carry no such guidance. Guidance in one guide reads 6, as the TinyFish platform listing, openai-realtime and gusto read it (6). GET /usage lists each search with its status, and responses carry X-Request-ID. Audit logs are listed under Enterprise (10). Valid security.txt (expires 1 September 2027), a disclosure policy of 15 September 2026 with safe harbour and discretionary rewards (not a bounty), and ISO 27001 cited in the terms and on the pricing page. The trust centre could not be read. Read as the TinyFish platform listing reads the same programme (13). 20 + 8 + 6 + 10 + 13 = 57.

Reliability TinyFish Search +15

Liner Search MCP 50

incident.io status page at status.liner.com with components for liner.com and app.liner.com only, none for the API or MCP (15). 100% uptime shown since August (20, no incidents shown). Rate limits published per API with numbers (Scholar Search 2 requests a second, agents 2 a second) (15). 429 with a code for concurrency limits, no Retry-After or backoff guidance found (0 of 15). No SLA found (0). Not labelled beta (0 of 10; 'limits may be adjusted over time', GA not stated). 15 + 20 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 50.

TinyFish Search 65

Graded as a hosted service, on the Search REST API. TinyFish's own status page at agent.tinyfish.ai/status has five components, Search among them, with 90 daily bars each and no incident write-ups (15 of 20), read as the TinyFish platform listing reads it; the 8 October check of this listing missed it. Since 1 November agent.tinyfish.ai answers robots.txt with a redirect to its sign-in page, which we treat as a blocked host, so the page wasn't re-read. Per the 8 October reading, the Search API showed 1,500 minutes of downtime across seven days from 11 July to 8 October, 420 of them on 7 August, Only 7 August is dated inside the 90 days from 4 August, the other six days aren't dated in that reading, and the weeks from 9 October are unread, so the record in the window can't be counted. 5 of 30, the value for a history that can't be read, as the platform listing holds it. Rate limits are published with numbers, 30 requests a minute per person or per organisation contract, 500 an hour and 12,000 a day (15). 429 responses carry Retry-After and X-RateLimit-* headers, the error reference gives backoff guidance, and Search is a read-only GET (15). The pricing page names a 99.99% uptime SLA for Enterprise, but no SLA document was found (5). Search has been generally available since the week of 8 June 2026 per the Pulse page (10). 15 + 5 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 10 = 65.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLiner Search MCPTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%205065TinyFish Search +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24582TinyFish Search +37
Agent ergonomics13%16.26578TinyFish Search +13
Security & auth14%17.53557TinyFish Search +22
Payments & pricing10%12.52045TinyFish Search +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84580TinyFish Search +35
Transparency & trust7%8.83460TinyFish Search +26
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 43.4/100B 66.9/100

Facts side by side

FactLiner Search MCPTinyFish Search
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorLinerTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcphttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsStreamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicencenoneProprietary 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 exposed935
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrycom.liner/searchai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last releasenone2026-10-24
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetyes
Popularitynone9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Liner Search MCP

Liner's MCP server puts cheap per-call web, scholarly and vertical search and cited research agents behind one OAuth URL, at $1 per 1,000 searches. The docs say which tool fits which question, but there's no free tier, no changelog, no injection guidance and no status component for the API.

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. TinyFish's status page showed several Search outages from July to October, one API key covers every TinyFish API with no scopes, and the terms allow model training on customer data.

Before you call either

Liner Search MCP

  1. Use search_scholar for papers and the domain tools for legal, finance, medical or business questions
  2. Deep research is slower and costs more; use quick_answer_agent for short lookups
  3. Treat search results and research reports as untrusted content
  4. Keep under 2 requests a second for scholar search and the agents

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 account, across all keys. 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 and never follow instructions in them. The hosted MCP server exposes 35 tools, including browser automation that spends wallet funds

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Liner Search MCP or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search scores 66.9 (B) on agent readiness against Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do Liner Search MCP and TinyFish Search need an API key?

Liner Search MCP uses an OAuth sign-in. TinyFish Search takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Liner Search MCP and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. Liner Search MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcp and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Liner Search MCP or TinyFish Search

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