Get an audit

Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

TinyFish Search vs Valyu

Valyu scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search.

TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841 ValyuValyu · HTTP API B64.6/100#311 of 841

Which one, for what

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

  • Security & auth, 58 against 44

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

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

Valyu B

Good for Research agents that need SEC filings, papers, patents, clinical trials or market data alongside the web, with a per-query price cap.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 82
  • Transparency & trust, 78 against 52

Watch for

No published rate limits and no Retry-After or backoff guidance

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runTinyFish SearchValyuEdge
Reliability16%205053Valyu +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28287Valyu +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.27878even
Security & auth14%17.55844TinyFish Search +14
Payments & pricing10%12.54545even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87880Valyu +2
Transparency & trust7%8.85278Valyu +26
Negative events≤1500
Total63.2 · B64.6 · B

Facts side by side

FactTinyFish SearchValyu
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorTinyFishValyu
Hosted endpointhttps://api.search.tinyfish.aihttps://api.valyu.ai/v1/search
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web searchfree$1.50 per 1,000 pages
x402nono
LicenceProprietary 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 metadatanone
Tools exposed286
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryai.tinyfish.agent/web-agentnot listed
Last release2026-09-292026-09-12
Terms last updated2026-08-172025-10-20
Privacy policy last updated2025-12-142025-10-20
Customer content may train modelsyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone4.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Valyu

Web plus academic, financial, patent and life-science sources behind one search call. No published rate limits and no Retry-After or backoff guidance.

Before you call either

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

Valyu

  1. Set max_price and max_num_results on every search to bound cost
  2. Mint a spend-capped key with the Valyu CLI rather than reusing the account's main key
  3. Call valyu_search. The legacy per-vertical MCP tools stop working on 2026-12-01
  4. A 206 means some sources failed. Check which before treating results as complete
  5. DeepResearch is async. Poll valyu_deepresearch_status rather than waiting in one call

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, TinyFish Search or Valyu?

Valyu scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth.

Do TinyFish Search and Valyu need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

Yes. TinyFish Search has a hosted endpoint at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai and Valyu at https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search.

Other comparisons with TinyFish Search or Valyu

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report