# Selenium vs TinyFish

> Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) to TinyFish's 67.7 (B) for browser automation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-tinyfish
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-tinyfish.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-tinyfish.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/selenium-vs-tinyfish.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: 2026-10-14

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish's 67.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do browser automation.

- Selenium: grade BB, 73.6/100, rank #90 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/selenium.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/selenium.json
- TinyFish: grade B, 67.7/100, rank #258 of 1076. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tinyfish.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tinyfish.json
- Best browser automation tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/browser/index.md
- All 120 browser comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browser/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Selenium (BB)

Good for: Agents that write test or automation scripts in any of five languages, and teams with a Grid.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 90 against 60
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 55
- Maintenance & community, 94 against 80
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 59

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No MCP server from the project. The docs point to community servers and say they are third-party

### 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:
- Agent ergonomics, 79 against 70
- Security & auth, 57 against 43

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

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

| Category | Weight | Selenium | TinyFish | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 90 | 60 | Selenium +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 85 | Selenium +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 79 | TinyFish +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 43 | 57 | TinyFish +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 55 | Selenium +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 94 | 80 | Selenium +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 59 | Selenium +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **73.6 · BB** | **67.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Selenium | TinyFish |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Selenium project (Software Freedom Conservancy) | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://agent.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary 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 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 35k stars, 1.8M npm/wk, 6.9M PyPI/wk | 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Selenium.** Selenium is stable, Apache-2.0 software on 4.51.0 with bindings in five languages, CI passing on trunk, an llms.txt and an agent guide added in September 2026. It has no MCP server of its own, Selenium Manager sends usage statistics by default, and Grid accepts unauthenticated sessions unless a username and password are set.

**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

### Selenium

1. Install with `pip install selenium` (Python 3.10 or later) and let Selenium Manager fetch drivers. Do not set driver paths
2. Use `WebDriverWait` with expected conditions, never fixed sleeps, and do not mix implicit and explicit waits
3. Set `SE_AVOID_STATS=true` to stop Selenium Manager sending usage statistics
4. Point coding agents at https://www.selenium.dev/llms.txt. Most Selenium 2 and 3 era examples use removed APIs
5. Set `--username` and `--password` before exposing a Grid beyond localhost. Check `http://localhost:4444/status` before creating sessions

### 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, Selenium or TinyFish?

Selenium scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish's 67.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

### Can an agent call Selenium and TinyFish without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Selenium. TinyFish has a hosted endpoint at https://agent.tinyfish.ai.

### Are Selenium and TinyFish open source?

Selenium is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for TinyFish.


## For agents

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

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