# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-tinyfish-search
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-tinyfish-search.md (~2,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-tinyfish-search.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-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 Serper's 24.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do web search.

- Serper: grade F, 24.1/100, rank #835 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serper.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serper.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

### Serper (F)

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

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

| Category | Weight | Serper | TinyFish Search | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 50 | TinyFish Search +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 6 | 82 | TinyFish Search +76 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 35 | 78 | TinyFish Search +43 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 20 | 58 | TinyFish Search +38 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 45 | TinyFish Search +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 3 | 78 | TinyFish Search +75 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 31 | 52 | TinyFish Search +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **24.1 · F** | **63.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Serper | TinyFish Search |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Serper | TinyFish |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://google.serper.dev/search` | `https://api.search.tinyfish.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for web search | not published | 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 | not listed | `ai.tinyfish.agent/web-agent` |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-05-29 | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-11-05 | 2025-12-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | 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 | 2.5/5 (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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Serper or TinyFish Search

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