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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

TinyFish Search vs You.com APIs

You.com APIs scores 76.5 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search. TinyFish Search is cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests.

TinyFish SearchTinyFish · HTTP API B63.2/100#366 of 841 You.com APIsYou.com · HTTP API BB76.5/100#30 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 53

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $0 against $5 per 1,000 requests

Watch for

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

You.com APIs BB

Good for An unattended agent that needs search, page text and cited answers and wants to pay per call without an account.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 50
  • Agent ergonomics, 84 against 78
  • Payments & pricing, 88 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 52

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

Two API hosts. Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runTinyFish SearchYou.com APIsEdge
Reliability16%205085You.com APIs +35
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28282even
Agent ergonomics13%16.27884You.com APIs +6
Security & auth14%17.55853TinyFish Search +5
Payments & pricing10%12.54588You.com APIs +43
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87882You.com APIs +4
Transparency & trust7%8.85258You.com APIs +6
Negative events≤1500
Total63.2 · B76.5 · BB

Facts side by side

FactTinyFish SearchYou.com APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorTinyFishYou.com
Hosted endpointhttps://api.search.tinyfish.aihttps://api.you.com/v1/search
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for web searchfree$5 per 1,000 requests
x402nopayer tooling only
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-agentio.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp
Last release2026-09-292026-09-22
Terms last updated2026-08-172024-08-27
Privacy policy last updated2025-12-142026-09-22
Customer content may train modelsyesyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity9 stars, 5.7k npm/wk, 6.5k PyPI/wk4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.8/5 (8)

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.

You.com APIs

x402 and MPP on Web Search and Finance Research, with no account needed. Two API hosts. Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io.

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

You.com APIs

  1. For unattended runs call GET https://api.you.com/v1/search, handle the 402 and pay with x402. It's half the MPP price for search
  2. Use https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free to try search with no key (100 queries a day)
  3. Send Answer, Research and Finance Research to api.you.com. On ydc-index.io they fail with 'Missing Authentication Token'
  4. Pass ?tools= with only the tools you need to keep the MCP tool list short
  5. On 429, wait for Retry-After and watch X-RateLimit-Remaining before the next burst

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, TinyFish Search or You.com APIs?

You.com APIs scores 76.5 (BB) on agent readiness against TinyFish Search's 63.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TinyFish Search leads on security & auth.

Which is cheaper for web search, TinyFish Search or You.com APIs?

TinyFish Search, at free against $5 per 1,000 requests for You.com APIs. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do TinyFish Search and You.com APIs need an API key?

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

Can an agent call TinyFish Search and You.com APIs without installing anything?

Yes. TinyFish Search has a hosted endpoint at https://api.search.tinyfish.ai and You.com APIs at https://api.you.com/v1/search.

Other comparisons with TinyFish Search or You.com APIs

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