Guides
Working code, honest guides
Every guide is written against the live API, code first, with the limitations stated before you find them. Prices are never restated in guides: they go stale there; the current numbers always live on /pricing.
start here
Set up your own 24/7 travel deal agent in 5 minutes
One connector URL, a Google sign-in, and one prompt that prices 30 destinations from your airport and reports only the fares that came in under Google’s own low end. Claude, Claude Code, Cursor and ChatGPT, with the free no-key server as the trial run.
flagship
Create your 24/7 AI travel agent
Connect live flight and hotel data to Claude or ChatGPT in about 15 minutes, then schedule a daily scan of your routes that only pings you when Google's own verdict says the fare is low. Real captured runs, honest cost math.
getting started
How to get a Google Flights API Key in 2026
Step-by-step guide to getting a Google Flights API key through RapidAPI. Since Google shut down QPX Express in 2018, this is the path to live flight data as JSON. Takes under 2 minutes, includes a free tier.
getting started
Booking.com API key: how to get access, and the alternative
How Booking.com's own API access works (Demand API for Managed Affiliate Partners, under contract), and live Booking.com rates on a RapidAPI key today, proxy_country included.
hotels
Booking.com API alternative: live rates without approval
The Demand API is for approved affiliate partners. Live Booking.com rates by hotel name or destination on a self-serve key, priced from a country you pick, three checks that tell a reliable rates API from a stale one, and the providers that fit better when you need more than Booking.com.
benchmark
Hotel rates API benchmark 2026: seven APIs, one hotel
The same Lisbon search and the same Rome hotel sent to seven hotel price APIs, three runs each: speed, rows, which number includes the tax, pricing from two countries, price per request, and where mine loses.
start here
How to get real-time Google Flights data
The full walkthrough: endpoints, paste-and-run code, the price-insight fields, paired round-trips, and scanning a whole month of dates in one parallel burst.
explainer
Google Flights API in 2026: what exists and what it costs
No, and there has not been one since QPX Express closed in April 2018. The three real options today: extraction APIs, GDS/booking APIs, and self-hosted scrapers, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
migration guide
Amadeus Self-Service alternatives you can get into
Both Amadeus Self-Service API hostnames have no DNS record, checked here on 2026-09-04. Every alternative a small team shortlists, with the access gate each one puts in front of you, quoted and dated, plus a real migration request and response.
engineering essay
Handling empty flight search results
Why 200 [] is the most dangerous response a search API can return, the failure taxonomy behind it, and a vendor-neutral checklist for evaluating any search API's empty-result semantics.
deep dive
Google Flights URL parameters: search URL format, tfs, dates
What is inside a Google Flights URL: the tfs= base64url protobuf, the q= natural-language form, curr=. How to decode tfs at the wire level, and why you should never encode it yourself.
hotels
Rate parity monitoring with a hotel price API
The proxy_country mechanism, a repeat-sampled run across markets, how to tell a real gap from ordinary movement, a scheduling pattern, and honest notes on how often nothing is drifting at all.
do it yourself
Google Flights scraper in Python: a working script (2026)
A working Playwright scraper: why requests returns nothing, why you never hand-encode tfs=, anchoring on ARIA roles, waiting on a result list that streams, and where it stops paying for itself.
do it yourself
How to scrape Google Flights with Puppeteer
The Node version: puppeteer vs puppeteer-core, headless modes, ARIA selectors, waitForFunction on a settled row count, and the browser-pool maths behind a 30 date scan.
do it yourself
How to scrape Booking.com prices with Python
Why requests plus BeautifulSoup returns a page with no prices, a working Playwright script, and the bug everyone hits: result ordering changes between identical runs, so row 1 is a different hotel each time.
start here
Is this flight price good? One API call answers it
Google’s price band and its low | typical | high verdict ride on every search, so you can judge a fare on the first call instead of polling a route for weeks. Three live captures, one per verdict, and the two request settings that silently remove the band.
do it yourself
Flight price tracker API: build a fare alert with a cron
Schema, dedupe keys, sampling and thresholds with hysteresis, plus idempotent delivery. Then the cold-start problem, how Google’s own price band removes it on the first run, and the cron line that runs it.
automation
Using a flight API in n8n
A four-node fare watch that fires when Google's verdict says "low", with the community node or a plain HTTP Request node, exact POST body included.
automation
Using a hotel API in n8n
A four-node rate monitor for Booking.com: schedule, search, filter by price threshold. Alert when rates drop, no scraping required.
automation
Using the Google Flights API in Make.com
A three-module scenario with the HTTP module: schedule, search, filter. Alert when the price is low, no price history to build.
automation
Using the Booking.com API in Make.com
A three-module scenario with the HTTP module: search hotels or check a specific property by name, no property IDs to maintain.
automation
Using Google Flights API in Zapier
Connect live Google Flights data to Zapier workflows with the HTTP Request action. Build price watches, price feeds, and automated alerts with a POST request.
automation
Using the Booking.com hotel API in Zapier
Connect live Booking.com hotel data to Zapier workflows with the HTTP Request action. Build rate watches, price feeds, and automated alerts.
AI agents
Using the Google Flights MCP in Cursor
Connect live flight and hotel data to Cursor with one block in .cursor/mcp.json. The agent can fetch real prices and test your travel features against live data.
AI agents
Using the Google Flights MCP in Claude
Connect live flight and hotel data to Claude Desktop and Claude Code with one block in your MCP config. Real-time pricing from Google Flights and Booking.com mid-conversation.
AI agents
Using the Google Flights MCP in ChatGPT
Connect live flight and hotel data to ChatGPT through developer-mode connectors. Real-time pricing from Google Flights and Booking.com in your conversations.
AI agents
Using the Google Flights MCP in Cline
Connect live flight and hotel data to Cline with one block in cline_mcp_settings.json. Real-time flight & hotel prices from Google Flights & Booking.com while the agent codes.
start here
How to get Google Flights prices with Python
Twelve lines of requests, a real captured response, and the three price-insight fields that arrive with every fare. No browser pool, no tfs= encoding, and the limits stated up front.
do it yourself
How to get round-trip flight prices in one request
Two one-way searches do not add up to a round-trip fare. A real BER to CDG run where the round trip cost $130 and the same two flights as one-ways $169, the field names that differ, and how to read an empty response.
do it yourself
How to check if your company is overpaying for flights
Your finance export says what a trip cost, not what it should have cost. One request per leg returns Google's usual price band for that route and date, so the forward book can be graded against the market. The script, a captured run, the cabin trap, and the trips this cannot judge.
do it yourself
Cheapest destinations from one airport this month
One call takes a list of destination airports and a departure date range and expands both server side. A captured 15-combination Berlin run, the limit setting that silently drops a whole destination from the response, the REST fan-out that does the same job, and how it differs from SerpApi's deals engine.
hotels
Hotel rates API: every room price for one hotel by name
No property ID and no catalogue sync. The headline rate in one call with matched_name to check the match, then every room and rate plan in two, from real responses: eight rooms, €497 to €1,055.
hotels
Do hotel prices change by country?
Sometimes, and it depends on the hotel, the room and the day. Two repeat-sampled runs five weeks apart, a room-by-room comparison, and why one call per country is not a measurement.
comparison
A SerpApi google_flights alternative
What actually changes if you move a flight workload: the request shape, the paired round-trip, the price band. SerpApi plan figures quoted and dated, plus the cases where you should stay put.
comparison
Amadeus flight offers or live Google Flights fares?
Pick a source for a price tracker on two jobs: get the number a traveller would pay, and judge it. The observed state of Amadeus Self-Service, checked again on 2026-09-05.
comparison
Skyscanner API alternatives for indie developers
Their published refusal list names a 100K monthly active user minimum and a two-week review. What that rules out, and the alternatives with the access gate on each, quoted and dated.
benchmark
Flight API benchmark 2026: four Google Flights APIs tested
The same three searches on FlightPowers, SerpApi, SearchApi and HasData in the same hour: identical fares to the dollar, then the real differences in round-trip requests, response time, scans, free tiers and price per 1,000. Raw numbers dated, including where ours loses.
comparison
The best flight data APIs in 2026
The listicle, with disclosed bias: it starts with our own API and says so, quotes every competitor price with a retrieval date, and names the competitor that is cheaper per request than we are.
comparison
The best hotel data APIs in 2026
Twelve hotel data APIs with every competitor price quoted from their own live page and dated, including the four whose unit price beats ours.
comparison
Travel APIs for developers in 2026: flights, hotels, prices
“Travel data API” is four different products. A category map that sends you to the right shortlist before you call a vendor.
Prefer to click than to read?
The free tools run the same code
Each guide has a tool that does its job in the browser, on our key. Judge the data before writing a line.
Every guide ends the same way: run it
Live flight and hotel data with the context to judge it. Free tier on RapidAPI, no card to try.
Free tier: 10 requests/month. No card to try.
Docs: the Flights API and the MCP servers.