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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

SearchAPI.io vs TinyFish Search

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against SearchAPI.io's 51.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. SearchAPI.io leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $4 per 1,000 requests.

SearchAPI.ioSearchApi · HTTP API D51.2/100#673 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

SearchAPI.io D

Good for Agents that need parsed results from many engines, especially shopping, ads, travel and social sources, at a low price per search.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 50
  • Transparency & trust, 60 against 52

Watch for

MCP exposes over 100 tools with no toolsets

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

  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 52
  • Security & auth, 58 against 28
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 15

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $0 against $4 per 1,000 requests

Watch for

No public status page was found on the site or in the docs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSearchAPI.ioTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%209050SearchAPI.io +40
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25982TinyFish Search +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.25278TinyFish Search +26
Security & auth14%17.52858TinyFish Search +30
Payments & pricing10%12.53045TinyFish Search +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81578TinyFish Search +63
Transparency & trust7%8.86052SearchAPI.io +8
Negative events≤1500
Total51.2 · D63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactSearchAPI.ioTinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSearchApiTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/searchhttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web search$4 per 1,000 requestsfree
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 exposednone28
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registryio.searchapi/mcpai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last releasenone2026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-04-112026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-04-112025-12-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

Verdicts

SearchAPI.io

99.9% SLA on every plan and no incidents on the status page since August. MCP exposes over 100 tools with no toolsets.

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

SearchAPI.io

  1. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not api_key= in the URL
  2. Connect the MCP through OAuth or the X-MCP-Token header, not the registry's ?token= URL
  3. Call the REST API with engine= when context is tight. The MCP loads over 100 tool definitions
  4. Page Google results with page. num is fixed at 10
  5. Pace bursts. One hour can use at most 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches

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, SearchAPI.io or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against SearchAPI.io's 51.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. SearchAPI.io leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

Which is cheaper for web search, SearchAPI.io or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search, at free against $4 per 1,000 requests for SearchAPI.io. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do SearchAPI.io and TinyFish Search need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call SearchAPI.io and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. SearchAPI.io has a hosted endpoint at https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with SearchAPI.io or TinyFish Search

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