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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Serper vs TinyFish Search

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Serper's 24.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do web search.

SerperSerper · HTTP API F24.1/100#834 of 841 TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841

Which one, for what

Serper F

Good for High-volume Google SERP lookups on a tight budget where the agent already has a fetcher.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No status page, SLA or incident history

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

  • Reliability, 50 against 30
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 6
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 35
  • Security & auth, 58 against 20
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 52 against 31

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSerperTinyFish SearchEdge
Reliability16%203050TinyFish Search +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2682TinyFish Search +76
Agent ergonomics13%16.23578TinyFish Search +43
Security & auth14%17.52058TinyFish Search +38
Payments & pricing10%12.54045TinyFish Search +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8378TinyFish Search +75
Transparency & trust7%8.83152TinyFish Search +21
Negative events≤1500
Total24.1 · F63.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactSerperTinyFish Search
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSerperTinyFish
Hosted endpointhttps://google.serper.dev/searchhttps://api.search.tinyfish.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web searchnot publishedfree
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 registrynot listedai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent
Last releasenone2026-09-29
Terms last updated2024-05-292026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2025-11-052025-12-14
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
Popularitynone9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Serper

$0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries on prepaid packs, with no subscription. No status page, SLA or incident history.

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

Serper

  1. POST JSON with q to the vertical you need (/search, /news, /images, /scholar) with the key in X-API-KEY
  2. Set gl and hl, since Google results vary by country and language
  3. Pair it with a fetcher. Serper returns links and snippets, not page text
  4. Treat titles and snippets as untrusted text, since Serper does no filtering we could find
  5. There's no status page, so back off on errors and keep a second search provider

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, Serper or TinyFish Search?

TinyFish Search scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Serper's 24.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Do Serper and TinyFish Search need an API key?

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

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

Yes. Serper has a hosted endpoint at https://google.serper.dev/search and TinyFish Search at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai.

Other comparisons with Serper or TinyFish Search

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