Recipe · Flights API
Fare-alert cron with Apify
The verdict field makes alerting trivial: poll on a schedule and fire only when price_range_in_relation_to_other_periods === "low". No home-grown price-history database needed, because Google’s band IS the history. Send the buy_link in the alert so the user can book from the notification.
Pay-per-event on your own Apify account. No monthly plan.
Step 1 · Connect
Run the actor
Pay-per-event through your own Apify account: no monthly plan, and an idle month costs nothing. The input field names and the endpoint values are the actors’ own published input schemas, read from api.apify.com on 2026-09-02. Nothing to subscribe to on RapidAPI for this path.
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/mtnrabi~google-flights-real-time-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"endpoint":"oneway","from_airport":"LHR","to_airport":"JFK","departure_date":"2026-10-13","currency":"usd"}'Billed per event on your own Apify account. No RapidAPI subscription needed for this path.
Step 2 · The job
The job
The job in plain words. In Apify you express it as the configuration below instead of a prompt.
“Every morning, check JFK→LHR fares for my December dates and alert me when Google’s verdict flips to low.”
Step 3 · Under the hood
The actor input
Paste this into the actor’s Input tab, or send it as the JSON body of a run. Field names come from the actor’s own published input schema.
// actor: mtnrabi~google-flights-real-time-api
{
"endpoint": "oneway",
"from_airport": "JFK",
"to_airport": "LHR",
"departure_date": "2026-12-10",
"currency": "usd",
"limit": 3
}Apify runs this on its own schedule. Pay-per-event means a daily run costs only the events it fires.
Step 4 · Read the response
Fields your logic reads
The response is flat JSON. These are the fields this recipe branches on, with what each one means.
pricestringThe fare as Google Flights displays it: “$56”. The numeric twin price_as_number rides alongside for sorting and arithmetic.
price_range_in_relation_to_other_periods"low" | "typical" | "high" | nullGoogle’s verdict on the current fare against that band, the single field alerting, ranking, and “book now” logic branch on.
buy_linkstring (URL)A Google Flights deep link that reopens this exact itinerary. Hand it to the user; it just works.
Questions, answered plainly
- Is my key billed to me?
- Not to RapidAPI. This path bills pay-per-event through your own Apify account, so an idle month costs nothing. The RapidAPI subscription and the Apify actor are two separate doors to the same data; you need one, not both.
- Does this need a server of mine?
- No. The actor runs on Apify’s infrastructure, and runs, retries and result storage live in your Apify console alongside your other actors.
- What does it cost?
- On this path, whatever the actor’s own event table charges for the events a run fires. There is no monthly plan and no minimum. The current rates are on the actor listing, which is the only place they are authoritative. If you would rather have a fixed monthly bill and synchronous HTTP, the RapidAPI plans are the other door: see /pricing.
Also works with
Fare-alert cron, elsewhere in your stack
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