Kayak API
KAYAK's flight, hotel, car, and travel-data APIs exist only inside its Affiliate Network. Access takes a business application, manual approval, and an assigned account manager; small developers are typically declined. There is no public documentation, spec, or sandbox.
Frequently asked questions
Kayak scores C on the API Report Card. KAYAK's flight, hotel, car, and travel-data APIs exist only inside its Affiliate Network. Access takes a business application, manual approval, and an assigned account manager; small developers are typically declined. There is no public documentation, spec, or sandbox.
Kayak has an official API, but teams routinely hit its limits: gated access, partial coverage, or paid tiers. Most end up supplementing it with exports or an unofficial API layer like Supergood.
KAYAK is a global travel metasearch engine that aggregates pricing and availability from hundreds of travel sites, airlines, OTAs (Booking, Expedia, Priceline, Agoda, Hotels.com, Orbitz), car-rental suppliers, and cruise providers, into a single comparison UI for flights, hotels, rental cars, vacation packages, and cruises.
Vertical: misc (the closest Supergood neighbor would be Travel & Expense, but KAYAK is a consumer-facing metasearch comparison engine, not a corporate-travel or expense system). Target market is two-sided. A leisure traveler opens kayak.com or the KAYAK app, types 'JFK to LIS, May 12-19, 2 adults,' filters by stops/airline/price/cabin, sees a comparison table of fares from Booking.com, Priceline, Expedia, the airline's own site, and a few smaller OTAs, picks the cheapest acceptable result, and clicks through, at which point KAYAK redirects to the underlying supplier (e.g., TAP Portugal's direct site or Booking.com's flights checkout) where the actual booking, payment, and confirmation happen.
High, KAYAK is one of the most recognized travel metasearch brands globally, particularly in North America and Western Europe.
No. KAYAK is not the system of record for any vendor's operations. For an airline, the system of record is the GDS/PSS (Sabre, Amadeus Altea, Navitaire, Travelport) and the airline's own e-commerce/checkout stack; KAYAK is a top-of-funnel demand channel.
Founded 2004 (22 years old as of 2026), IPO'd July 2012 on NASDAQ as KYAK, acquired by Priceline.com (now Booking Holdings) in May 2013 for ~$1.8B.
Partner-only access, no self-serve developer signup, no anonymous sandbox; partners must submit a business-application form, be approved, and be assigned an account manager before getting credentials. No public documentation, OpenAPI spec, or rate-limit SLA, partners discover capabilities and limits only after approval. Full sourced list under Sources below.
Common alternatives include Google Flights / Google Hotels / Google Travel, Skyscanner (Trip.com Group), momondo (Booking Holdings, sister brand), Trivago (Expedia-controlled), Hopper, TripAdvisor / TripAdvisor Flights. Graded alternatives appear under "More from the report card" below.
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.