Flight Price Drop Monitor
Pricing
from $4.00 / 1,000 price change detecteds
Flight Price Drop Monitor
Watch flight routes and departure dates on a schedule and get a row only when a fare actually moves — old price, new price, how far it fell, and whether it is a new low. It keeps the price history for you, so you never build one.
Give it a list of routes and a departure window, run it on a schedule, and it returns only what changed: the old fare, the new fare, how far it moved, and whether it is the cheapest that route and date has ever been. It remembers every price it has seen for you, so you never have to build or maintain a price database of your own. No account and no login are needed — just run it.
Built for fare-alert apps, deal newsletters, affiliate travel sites and corporate travel teams who need a clean "this got cheaper" feed rather than a fresh dump of every fare on every date.
What you can do with it
- Power a fare-alert product. Run it twice a day over a watchlist and push every drop straight to your users, with the previous price, the new price and the percentage move already worked out.
- Catch new lows. Every row says whether the fare is the lowest ever recorded for that route and date, even when the move itself is small.
- Watch a corporate travel programme. Track the routes your company flies most and get told when a booked-window fare falls far enough to be worth rebooking.
- Fill a deals newsletter automatically. Set a threshold like "only drops of 20% or more" and the run produces a ready-made shortlist.
- Compare markets honestly. Fares genuinely differ by country of sale, so each market keeps its own history and prices are never converted between currencies.
- Track a low-cost carrier's own fares on the routes it flies, including the departure and arrival times behind each day's cheapest seat.
What you get
One row per watched route and departure date whose fare moved. A real record, abridged:
The flight behind the fare — airline, flight number and times — is filled in wherever the source you chose publishes it, and left empty rather than guessed where it does not. Sources that publish a day-level lowest price instead of a specific flight fill in priceRating and mark the row isEstimated.
Alongside the rows, every run writes a summary that keeps three things strictly apart: routes that were read, routes that were read and genuinely had no fare on sale, and routes that could not be checked at all.
Input reference
| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
routes | array of text | ["JFK-LHR"] | The routes to watch, written as from-to airport or city codes. Up to 25 in one run. {"origin":"JFK","destination":"LHR"} works too. |
fareSource | choice | kiwi | Whose published fares to watch: Kiwi.com, Skyscanner, Ryanair or Google Flights. |
market | choice | US | The country you are selling into. Fares and availability really do differ by market. |
currency | choice | USD | The currency you would like fares in. Every row is labelled with the currency actually returned. Ryanair files its fares in a fixed list — EUR, GBP, USD, PLN, CZK, SEK, DKK, NOK, HUF, CHF, MAD — and asking that source for any other is refused before the run starts. |
cabinClass | choice | economy | Which cabin to watch. Ryanair and Skyscanner publish economy day prices only. |
startDate | date | tomorrow | The earliest departure date you care about. |
windowDays | integer | 60 | How many days of departures to watch, counted from the first date. Maximum 330. |
maxDatesPerRoute | integer | 60 | An upper limit on watched departure dates per route. Maximum 360. |
watchlistName | text | default | Names the saved price history. Keep it the same between runs; separate names never mix. |
alertOn | choice | drop | Report price drops, price rises, or any move. |
minChangePct | integer | 5 | Moves smaller than this are counted but not reported. 0 reports every move. |
minChangeAbs | integer | 0 | An extra floor in the fare's own currency. A move must clear both this and the percentage. |
alertOnNewLow | boolean | true | Always report a fare that is the cheapest ever recorded, however small the move. |
emitNewDates | boolean | true | Report a starting price for a departure date the watchlist has not seen before. |
emitBaselineOnFirstRun | boolean | true | Report starting prices on the very first run for a watchlist. |
emitUnchanged | boolean | false | Also return dates whose fare did not move. Produces many more rows. |
emitDisappeared | boolean | false | Report watched dates whose fare is no longer published. |
resetHistory | boolean | false | Forget everything recorded for this watchlist and start again. |
Output fields
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
watchlist, source, market, currency, cabinClass | What was being watched, and how. |
route, origin, originName, destination, destinationName | The route, with readable airport or city names. |
departureDate, daysToDeparture | The departure date this fare is for, and how far away it is. |
changeType | changed, new, baseline, reappeared, unchanged or withdrawn. |
alertReason | Why the row is here: price-drop, price-rise, new-low, first-seen, fare-available-again, fare-withdrawn, baseline or no-change. |
newPrice, previousPrice | The fare now and the fare last time. null where there is nothing to compare. |
changeAbs, changePct, direction, isPriceDrop | The size and direction of the move. null rather than zero when a comparison is impossible. |
isNewLow, lowestSeen, highestSeen | Whether this is the cheapest recorded, and the range recorded so far. |
priceChangesRecorded, firstSeenAt, previouslySeenAt, daysSinceLastSeen | How long this date has been watched and when it was last seen. |
carrier, carrierName, flightNumber, departureTime, arrivalTime, stops | The flight behind the fare, where the source publishes it. |
priceRating | The source's own "cheap / typical / expensive" label for that day, where it gives one. |
isEstimated | true when the number is an indicative lowest price for the day rather than a quote for one specific flight. |
currencyKnown | false on the rare row where the source did not state a currency. The currency is then null rather than guessed. |
collectedAt | When this check happened. |
Pricing
You pay per event, so a quiet watchlist is cheap and a busy one pays for itself.
| Event | When you are charged | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Price change detected | For each row returned — a change, a new low, a first-seen price or, if you asked for them, unchanged and withdrawn fares. | $4.00 per 1,000 rows |
| Route checked | Once for every route the run checks, whether or not anything moved. | $0.015 each |
A route that turns out to be quiet is still real work, so it is charged. A route the source refuses to answer is not charged.
Worked example. A watchlist of 20 routes, 60 departure dates each, run once a day.
The first run costs much more than the rest, and it is the one to size your cost limit against. It has nothing to compare with, so by default it records a starting price for every watched date: 20 × 60 = 1,200 rows. That is 1,200 × $0.004 = $4.80, plus 20 × $0.015 = $0.30 — about $5.10 once. Set your maximum cost per run above that, or turn off Report starting prices on the very first run and pay only the $0.30 in route checks to establish the baseline silently.
Every run after that reports movement only. Each run checks 20 routes — 20 × $0.015 = $0.30. Say 45 fares moved enough to report: 45 × $0.004 = $0.18. That run costs about $0.48, so a daily fare-alert feed over 20 routes costs roughly $14 a month after the first day. The same is true whenever you add routes or widen the window: the newly watched dates each get one starting-price row.
Turning on unchanged rows would return about 1,200 rows every run instead of 45, so leave it off unless you want the full price table.
If a run hits your cost limit, it stops returning rows — and it does not record the changes it could not return. The saved history is left exactly as it was, so the next run finds those same changes again and returns them. You are told in the run summary how many were held back.
Limits & what this actor cannot do
- Fares are a snapshot at the moment of the check. Airline pricing changes continuously, and a fare seen now may be gone minutes later.
- It reports what the source publishes to the public. It cannot book, cannot hold a seat and cannot guarantee a fare is still available. Treat every row as a signal to go and look, not as a reservation.
- A check the source refuses to answer is reported as a failed check, never as "no fares found". Those routes keep the prices they already had and are listed separately in the run summary — so a bad day never looks like a wave of fares disappearing.
- Fares and availability differ by market and by currency, and are never converted. A price in one market is not comparable with a price in another, and if a source answers in a different currency than the one you asked for, the row is labelled with what came back and the move is reported as not comparable rather than as a drop.
- A fare is never invented. A date with no published fare is simply not tracked — never a zero, never yesterday's price carried forward, never a gap filled in.
- The first run for a watchlist is a starting point, not a change report. Movement is reported from the second run onwards.
- Fares do not move minute to minute. Once or twice a day is the honest cadence for this; running it every few minutes would return a flat line and still be charged for.
- Not every source publishes a price for every date. Some publish a price only for the days they have something to sell, and those gaps are left as gaps.
- Some sources give an indicative lowest price for a day rather than a quote for one specific flight. Those rows are marked
isEstimated, and the flight details are left empty rather than guessed. - Ryanair covers its own network only. A route it does not fly is reported as such, not as a route without fares. On that source, a month with nothing on sale and a route the airline does not fly look identical from the outside, and the run summary says so rather than pretending to know which it was.
- Ryanair prices in a fixed list of currencies — EUR, GBP, USD, PLN, CZK, SEK, DKK, NOK, HUF, CHF and MAD. Ask it for any other and it does not object: it either prices the month in euro while claiming the currency you asked for, or returns an empty month that is indistinguishable from a route with nothing on sale. So that combination is refused when the run starts, rather than turned into wrong or missing fares.
- If a run reaches your maximum cost before it has returned everything it found, the changes it could not return are not recorded as delivered. The saved history is left untouched and the next run reports them again, so an alert is never quietly lost to a cost cap.
- The Google Flights source is checked one departure date at a time, so each route is limited to 14 departure dates in a run. For a wide window, choose one of the sources that publishes a whole calendar at once.
- One cabin per run, and two of the four sources publish economy day prices only.
- Departure dates are published about a year ahead. A window that reaches past that is shortened, and you are told.
- The saved history keeps the most recent prices per watched date, not an unlimited archive. "Lowest ever recorded" means the lowest inside what is kept for that date.
- One watchlist name, one history. Change the routes, market or cabin and you are watching something new — reset the history so the comparison stays meaningful.
- Speed depends on how big the watchlist is and how quickly the source answers. No fixed run time is promised.
- The source's own terms govern automated use. You are responsible for using the data lawfully and in line with those terms.
FAQ
Do I need an account on the travel site? No. Nothing is signed in to and nothing is signed up for.
Does it need my login or password? No. There is nothing to connect and nothing to authorise.
Can I schedule it? Yes, and that is the point of it. Set it to run once or twice a day with the same watchlist name, and each run compares against the last one automatically.
Are these fares bookable? They are the fares the source was publishing at the moment of the check. Airline pricing moves constantly, so treat a row as a strong signal rather than a guarantee — this actor cannot book or hold anything.
Why did I get no rows at all? Either nothing moved by more than your threshold, or the routes you watch genuinely had no fares on the dates you chose. The run summary tells you which, and lists separately any route that could not be checked.
How do I get only the big drops?
Raise minChangePct, and add minChangeAbs if you also want a floor in money. Leave alertOnNewLow on if you still want to hear about a record-low fare even when the move itself is small.
Can I watch the same routes in several markets?
Yes — run it once per market with a different watchlistName for each. Each market keeps its own history, which is the only way a comparison stays meaningful.
What happens when a route cannot be checked? Nothing is recorded for it, its saved prices are left untouched, and it is listed in the run summary as a failed check. It is never reported as a route whose fares vanished.
