# Perplexity Search API vs TinyFish Search (slim)

> Perplexity Search scores 70.2 (BB) to TinyFish Search's 66.9 (B) for web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $1 per 1,000 requests. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-tinyfish-search.md (~6,200 tokens) · this version ~3,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-tinyfish-search.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-tinyfish-search
- 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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Perplexity Search API scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 66.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on payments & pricing. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $1 per 1,000 requests.

- Perplexity Search API: BB 70.2, rank #211 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/perplexity-search-api.min.md
- TinyFish Search: B 66.9, rank #347 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tinyfish-search.min.md
- Perplexity Search API, good for Agents on any model that need raw ranked sources with extracted text at a low per-request price, and teams that want cited answers from the same key through the Agent API. Ahead on Reliability, 80 against 65; Schema & documentation, 89 against 82; Agent ergonomics, 85 against 78; Transparency & trust, 66 against 60. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine.
- TinyFish Search, good for Agents that need ranked snippets and URLs at no cost and modest volume, with news and research-paper modes. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 45 against 25. Also Cheaper for web search, $0 against $1 per 1,000 requests; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Perplexity Search API | TinyFish Search |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 65 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 82 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 85 | 78 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 56 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 45 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 80 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 66 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Perplexity Search API | TinyFish Search |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Perplexity | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.perplexity.ai/mcp` | `https://api.search.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $1 per 1,000 requests | free |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Perplexity API Terms of Service. The MCP server is MIT and the official SDKs Apache-2.0 | Proprietary 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 exposed | 4 | 35 |
| MCP registry | `ai.perplexity/mcp-server` | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-24 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | none | 9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, TinyFish Search +20: Perplexity Search API 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, pricing page, OpenAPI or llms.txt (0). $5 per 1,000 successful requests, $1 with Fast Search, published without a login, with failed and rate-limited requests not billed (20). Usage is prepaid with a card on the billing page, and no free allowance was found. The console playground needs no key but is a page for a person, not an API allowance (0). A person signs up in the console. The Stripe Projects route provisions a project, key and credits from a terminal, but needs a person's Stripe account with a payment method and a $10 minimum purchase (5 of 20, as on the Decisions API listing). 0 + 20 + 0 + 5 = 25.); 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.)
- Reliability, Perplexity Search API +15: Perplexity Search API 80 (Graded on the hosted lines, for `POST /search` and the hosted MCP server. status.perplexity.com, on incident.io since 10 September 2026, has an API component with an RSS feed and a JSON summary. There is no separate Search component (20). In the 90 days from 8 August the feed lists 'Investigating API issue' on 13 August, resolved with no detail, a usage-based billing issue on 3 September, and on 9 October elevated errors on the website, app and Computer, where the API 'remained operational throughout'. Minor only, with the caveat that history before the migration may be incomplete (20). The Search API is limited to 50 query units a second with a burst of 50 on every tier, and the other APIs publish QPS and token limits per tier (15). 429 carries Retry-After and an `error.type`, the SDKs retry 429 and 5xx twice honouring Retry-After, the Search best-practices page shows backoff, and failed or rate-limited searches are not billed. Searches have no side effects (15). The FAQ says Perplexity does not guarantee uptime, failure frequency or recovery time, and the terms carry no SLA (0). No beta label on the Search API, launched on 25 September 2025 (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 80.); 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.)
- Schema & documentation, Perplexity Search API +7: Perplexity Search API 89 (OpenAPI 3.1.0 at docs.perplexity.ai/openapi.json describes `POST /search` with typed request and response schemas, listed in llms.txt (25). llms.txt indexes every page, each with a Markdown twin (10). The overview says what a result holds, that snippets can be empty, when to use the Search API instead of the Agent API, and that it takes queries not URLs and does not re-fetch pages (19 of 20). `search_type` is an enum, `max_results`, `max_tokens` and `max_tokens_per_page` carry minimum and maximum, country and language codes carry lengths, and `query` is a string or an array. The recency filter is an enum in the docs, and date filters are `MM/DD/YYYY` strings (14 of 15). Python, TypeScript and cURL examples with a recorded response. The spec documents only 200 and 422 for `/search`, and status codes are listed on the SDK error-handling page and the rate-limit page rather than for Search (11 of 15). A public changelog with several entries a month, dated by month only, and an unversioned `/search` path (10 of 15). 25 + 10 + 19 + 14 + 11 + 10 = 89.); 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.)
- Agent ergonomics, Perplexity Search API +7: Perplexity Search API 85 (`max_results` 1 to 20, `max_tokens` and `max_tokens_per_page` cap the extracted text, and results are title, url, snippet and two dates. The MCP server has four tools (23 of 25). Domain, language, recency, publication and update date filters and `country`, with up to five queries in one request. No pagination or offset (16 of 20). 429 bodies name the limit hit, the SDKs map status codes to typed errors, and 402 marks an empty balance. Search-specific error bodies beyond 422 validation are not documented (13 of 20). Searches only read, failed and rate-limited requests are not billed, and the MCP server sets readOnlyHint true, destructiveHint false and idempotentHint false on every tool (18 of 20). Only `query` is required. Official Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and a Python Search SDK (15). 23 + 16 + 13 + 18 + 15 = 85.); TinyFish Search 78 (Results are compact (position, site name, title, snippet, URL) and thumbnails are opt-in, but no parameter sets how many results come back. The hosted MCP server's docs page lists 35 tools on 2 November (the repository reference still lists 28), with no documented search-only subset (15). `page` from 0 to 10, domain include and exclude lists, date and recency windows, country, language and `domain_type`, with no result-count control (16). Stable error codes with messages, a `details` object on account rate limits and a `request_id` on every error (19). Search is a GET that is safe to repeat and the docs give retry guidance. No read-only annotations appear in the published MCP tool reference (13). Only `query` is required, and there are official Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). 15 + 16 + 19 + 13 + 15 = 78.)
- Transparency & trust, Perplexity Search API +6: Perplexity Search API 66 (Closed service under terms naming Perplexity AI, Inc. and California law. The MCP server is MIT and the SDKs Apache-2.0 (18 of 30). The terms and DPA say Customer Content and personal data don't train Perplexity's models, the DPA deletes personal data within 30 days of the service ending, and the Privacy and Security page says retention varies by API and zero data retention is not the default. The DPA also says Perplexity Search may follow different data terms, which weren't found, and no retention period for search queries is stated (15 of 30). Sonar Chat Completions support ended on 27 September 2026 with a migration guide and requests reformulated rather than refused, and sonar-reasoning was removed on 15 December 2025 with a named replacement. Notices are dated by month and there is no standing notice period beyond the terms' 30 days for termination (10 of 20). A sub-processor list on the trust centre, which is drawn by script and wasn't read, ten business days' notice of new non-model subprocessors, and SCCs for EU and UK transfers. No data location is stated (8 of 20). 18 + 15 + 10 + 8 = 51.); 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.)