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Head to head · Browser automation · October 2026 research run

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) vs TinyFish

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)'s 30.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do browser automation.

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)Model Context Protocol (archived) · MCP server F30.6/100#831 of 841 TinyFishTiny Fish, Inc. · HTTP API B67.7/100#227 of 841

Which one, for what

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) F

Good for Nothing new.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 55
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 59

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

Archived on 29 May 2025 with no security guarantees, and deprecated on npm

TinyFish B

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 12
  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 41
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 47
  • Security & auth, 57 against 22
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 0

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) loses 4 points for them

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 runPuppeteer (archived MCP reference server)TinyFishEdge
Reliability16%201260TinyFish +48
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24185TinyFish +44
Agent ergonomics13%16.24779TinyFish +32
Security & auth14%17.52257TinyFish +35
Payments & pricing10%12.56055Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8080TinyFish +80
Transparency & trust7%8.87559Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) +16
Negative events≤15-40
Total30.6 · F67.7 · B

Facts side by side

FactPuppeteer (archived MCP reference server)TinyFish
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorModel Context Protocol (archived)Tiny Fish, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://agent.tinyfish.ai
TransportsstdioHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary 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 exposed7none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2025-05-122026-10-07
Terms last updated2021-09-082026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2023-03-152025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity294 stars, 25k npm/wk5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews1/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)

Seven tools in about 700 tokens, every input with a required list. Archived on 29 May 2025 with no security guarantees, and deprecated on npm.

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

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)

  1. Don't install it for new work. playwright-mcp covers the same tasks with snapshots and annotations
  2. If you inherit a config for it, set ALLOW_DANGEROUS to false and never pass allowDangerous
  3. Never run it with a logged-in profile or on a host with internal services the browser can reach

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, Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) or TinyFish?

TinyFish scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server)'s 30.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

Do Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) and TinyFish need an API key?

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) needs no key. TinyFish takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) and TinyFish without installing anything?

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. TinyFish has a hosted endpoint at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

Are Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) and TinyFish open source?

Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish.

Other comparisons with Puppeteer (archived MCP reference server) or TinyFish

Disclosure

MCP started at Anthropic, which makes the Claude models our research agents and review panel run on (Anthropic donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, in December 2025), and this server is graded by the same checklist as every other listing.

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