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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

SerpApi vs TinyFish Search

TinyFish Search and SerpApi score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 63.2 (B) and 62.5 (B). SerpApi leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $25 per 1,000 requests.

SerpApiSerpApi · HTTP API B62.5/100#387 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

SerpApi B

Good for An agent that needs what a specific engine shows (Google verticals, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Scholar, YouTube, Amazon) parsed to JSON.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 50
  • Agent ergonomics, 88 against 78
  • Transparency & trust, 84 against 52

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

25 incidents on the status feed from July to 1 October 2026, including an outage across all APIs on 10 September

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 67
  • Security & auth, 58 against 40
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 30

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $0 against $25 per 1,000 requests
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSerpApiTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%206050SerpApi +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26782TinyFish Search +15
Agent ergonomics13%16.28878SerpApi +10
Security & auth14%17.54058TinyFish Search +18
Payments & pricing10%12.53045TinyFish Search +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88278SerpApi +4
Transparency & trust7%8.88452SerpApi +32
Negative events≤1500
Total62.5 · B63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactSerpApiTinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSerpApiTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://serpapi.com/searchhttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web search$25 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 exposed328
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.serpapi/serpapi-mcpai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last release2026-09-222026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-08-272026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-272025-12-14
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 noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity175 stars, 169k npm/wk, 104k PyPI/wk9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

SerpApi

Over 100 engines behind one GET URL, with json_restrictor field selection and output=md. 25 incidents on the status feed from July to 1 October 2026, including an outage across all APIs on 10 September.

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

SerpApi

  1. Use the MCP with Authorization: Bearer, not the key-in-path URL the README leads with
  2. Read serpapi://engines/<engine> before calling a new engine, since params isn't typed
  3. Add json_restrictor or output=md to cut tokens, and mode: compact on the MCP
  4. A 429 means either the hourly limit or an empty balance. Check the account before retrying
  5. Repeat a search within the hour and the cached copy is free. Set no_cache=true only when freshness matters

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, SerpApi or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search and SerpApi score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 63.2 (B) and 62.5 (B). SerpApi leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust.

Which is cheaper for web search, SerpApi or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search, at free against $25 per 1,000 requests for SerpApi. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do SerpApi and TinyFish Search need an API key?

SerpApi needs an API key. TinyFish Search takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call SerpApi and TinyFish Search without installing anything?

Yes. SerpApi has a hosted endpoint at https://serpapi.com/search and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with SerpApi or TinyFish Search

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