Answers · Travel APIs · 8 questions
Updated 25 Oct 2026 · Reviewed by Mohammad Shakir, Co-founder & CEO
Google discontinued its public flights API years ago, yet "Google Flights API" stays one of the most searched phrases in travel data - because the need never went away. These answers cover what exists, what doesn't, and how teams get the data today.
No. Google discontinued its public flights API (QPX Express) in 2018, and Google Flights data today is available only through the Google Flights site itself. Teams that need the data programmatically use collected public page data or airline/GDS APIs for different slices of it.
Google does operate partner programs on the advertising side, but none of them is a general flight-prices API for developers.
No - there is no free official API, because there is no official API at all. Free tiers you find elsewhere are third-party services, each with its own coverage, freshness and limits.
Compare any free option on the dimensions that matter: route coverage, how fresh the fares are, and what happens at volume. Free usually ends where production begins.
Programmatically, through a provider that collects the public results pages and returns them as structured data - routes, fares, airlines, stops and times as JSON. Manually, the site itself remains the tool.
The collection is the hard part: results are rendered dynamically and protected, and fares change constantly. That is why most teams consume it as a managed API rather than building a scraper.
One-way and round-trip fares per route and date, airlines and flight numbers, departure and arrival times, stops and layovers, cabin class, and - for a chosen itinerary - Google's own price insights where shown.
The practical unit is a route-date query: everything above is returned for the itineraries Google shows for that search.
Google Flights reflects live fare availability at query time, so collected data is as fresh as the moment it was fetched. Fares reprice continuously, which makes the fetch timestamp part of the data.
For monitoring, that means scheduled collection per route - the right frequency depends on how fast your routes move and what decision the data feeds.
Airline and GDS APIs return bookable inventory from the distribution side; Google Flights shows the comparison view travellers actually see, across airlines. They answer different questions.
For pricing intelligence - what does the market show a traveller for this route - the guest-facing view is usually the one that matters.
Collecting publicly visible fare data is a widespread industry practice, but Google's terms of service restrict automated access, so the question deserves real legal review for your use case.
This is general information, not legal advice. Work with a provider that can explain its collection practices in writing.
Route and market coverage, fare freshness with timestamps, structured output with airlines and layovers included, success rates at your volume, and clear per-call pricing.
Run a trial on your actual routes before committing - demo routes always work.
ScrapeGuys builds and operates production scraping APIs that return clean, structured JSON - and takes custom targets live in 48-72 hours.