# 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.…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.io: grade D, 51.2/100, rank #673 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/searchapi-io.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/searchapi-io.json
- TinyFish Search: grade B, 63.2/100, rank #366 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tinyfish-search.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tinyfish-search.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | SearchAPI.io | TinyFish Search | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 90 | 50 | SearchAPI.io +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 82 | TinyFish Search +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 78 | TinyFish Search +26 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 28 | 58 | TinyFish Search +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 45 | TinyFish Search +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 15 | 78 | TinyFish Search +63 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 52 | SearchAPI.io +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **51.2 · D** | **63.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | SearchAPI.io | TinyFish Search |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | SearchApi | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search` | `https://api.search.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $4 per 1,000 requests | free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | 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 | none | 28 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.searchapi/mcp` | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-11 | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-04-11 | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "searchapi-io", "b": "tinyfish-search"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare searchapi-io tinyfish-search`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/searchapi-io.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tinyfish-search.json

## Other comparisons with SearchAPI.io or TinyFish Search

- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Linkup vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Linkup vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Parallel Search and Task APIs vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/parallel-search-api-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Parallel Search and Task APIs vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/parallel-search-api-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serpapi.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serper.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serpkite.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-valyu.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [SerpApi vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Serper vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [SerpKite vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpkite-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Tavily API + MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tavily-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [TinyFish Search vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinyfish-search-vs-valyu.md)
- [TinyFish Search vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinyfish-search-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Fetch (MCP reference server) vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fetch-reference-server-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Grep AI vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grep-ai-vs-tinyfish-search.md)