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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Linkup vs TinyFish Search

Linkup scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests. Linkup accepts x402. TinyFish Search doesn't.

LinkupLinkup · HTTP API B68.9/100#190 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

Linkup B

Good for Agents that want a cited answer or schema-shaped output from one search call at a fixed price, and for European buyers who want a French vendor with zero retention on request.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 82
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 45
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 78
  • Transparency & trust, 61 against 52

Also in its favour

  • An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

429 covers both exhausted credit and rate limiting, with no Retry-After

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

  • Security & auth, 58 against 32

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests
  • 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 runLinkupTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%207050Linkup +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28882Linkup +6
Agent ergonomics13%16.27678TinyFish Search +2
Security & auth14%17.53258TinyFish Search +26
Payments & pricing10%12.58045Linkup +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88378Linkup +5
Transparency & trust7%8.86152Linkup +9
Negative events≤1500
Total68.9 · B63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactLinkupTinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorLinkupTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://api.linkup.so/v1/searchhttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web search$5 per 1,000 requestsfree
x402yes, from $0.01/callno
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 exposed428
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryso.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-serverai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-09-302026-09-29
Terms last updated2025-08-012026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2025-04-012025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsyesyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity29 stars, 54k npm/wk, 84k PyPI/wk9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Linkup

Per-call prices from $0.005, and no credit taken for errors, missing parameters or empty results. 429 covers both exhausted credit and rate limiting, with no Retry-After.

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

Linkup

  1. On 429, check the credit balance before backing off. The same code means out of credit
  2. Pass reasoningDepth: "S" to research unless you need more. The MCP default is L at $1.50
  3. Start with depth=fast and outputType=searchResults. Deep costs $0.05, ten times as much
  4. Send the key as an Authorization: Bearer header, not ?apiKey= or a command-line argument
  5. Poll linkup-get-research with the task id. Research runs take minutes

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, Linkup or TinyFish Search?

Linkup scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth.

Which is cheaper for web search, Linkup or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search, at free against $5 per 1,000 requests for Linkup. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do Linkup and TinyFish Search need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in. An agent can also pay Linkup per call over x402, with no account.

Can an agent call Linkup and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. Linkup has a hosted endpoint at https://api.linkup.so/v1/search and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Linkup or TinyFish Search

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