Google Flights Scraper — Airfare Prices & Price Tracking

A google flights scraper that returns airfare prices straight from Google Flights for the routes, dates and cabin you ask for. Every itinerary comes back as one row: price, airline, departure and arrival times, duration, stops, every layover and the CO2 estimate — a flight price scraper and flight price tracker in one, with no google flights api key, no login and no browser.

Use it to watch flight prices on your routes, build flight price history nobody else will give you, or pull airline ticket prices across a whole month to find the cheapest departure day.

Last verified working: 2026-08-29.

What does the Google Flights scraper do?

You give it routes and dates. It gives you every itinerary Google lists, as structured rows.

• flight rows — one per itinerary: price for all passengers, airline and airlines, stops, depart_time / arrive_time and the days they fall on, duration and duration_minutes, every layover (airport, city, minutes), overnight_layover, co2_kg, emissions_vs_typical, and google_url — the exact Google Flights link that reproduces the search.
• status rows — one per route and date: how many itineraries were delivered, the cheapest price found, and the reason if a search failed. Never charged.

Round trips are priced the way Google shows them: one row per itinerary, price is the total for both legs, and round_trip_total is true.

Flight price tracking with data you own

Google's own price tracking emails you when a fare moves. It picks the routes, keeps the history and gives you no export. Scheduling this flight price monitoring run gives you the same signal as data you control:

• Every row is timestamped with fetched_at, so a price series falls out of the dataset with no extra work.
• Relative dates ("30 days") mean a scheduled run never goes stale — it always looks the same distance ahead.
• Connect the run to n8n, Make or Zapier and raise a flight price alert on price below your threshold, or on a nonstop appearing under a number you would actually pay.

Cheapest day to fly, in one run

sweepDays prices the same trip departing on each of the next N days. One run answers "when should I fly" as data rather than a chart you have to squint at — the cheapest day to fly for a route, with the airline and duration attached to each day's best fare.

A seven-day sweep on one route is seven searches. A month is 30.

Google Flights API or scraper: how this compares

There is no public google flights api. Google retired the QPX Express API, and the alternatives split into two camps:

• Aggregator APIs (Amadeus, Duffel, Kiwi/Tequila) sell fares from their own inventory. Good for booking, but the numbers differ from what a shopper sees on Google, and most require a commercial agreement.
• SERP resellers (SerpApi, SearchApi, DataForSEO) resell a Google Flights endpoint per search. They work, and they charge per search whether or not it returned anything useful.

This actor reads Google Flights directly and bills per delivered itinerary row, so an empty route costs nothing. If you want a flight search api shape, run it through Apify's API and treat the dataset as the response — the "How to use it" section below has the exact calls.

Input

Field	What it does
routes	Routes as airport codes, one per line: LIS-LHR, JFK-LAX. Google's city codes work too — NYC-LON searches every New York and London airport. Written LIS-LHR, lis > lhr or JFK to LAX, all the same.
departDate	2026-10-05, or relative so schedules never go stale: 30 days, 6 weeks, tomorrow. Past dates are rejected rather than silently priced for another day.
returnDate	Empty for one-way. With a date, rows are round trips priced for both legs.
sweepDays	0 = just that date. N = also each of the next N departure days; a return date shifts with it, keeping the trip length.
seat	economy, premium_economy, business, first.
adults, children, infantsSeat, infantsLap	Up to 9 passengers per search. Prices are the total for everyone travelling.
maxStops	any, nonstop, one_or_fewer, two_or_fewer.
maxResultsPerSearch	0 = every itinerary Google lists (usually 10–35). N = the N top-ranked only — the cost cap.
currency	Any ISO code for every price, e.g. USD, EUR, GBP.
market	Two-letter country code for the Google market (gl). Fares and airlines differ by market.
sessions, perIp	Parallel proxy sessions and the pace of each. Leave alone unless a run is throttled.
proxyConfiguration	Apify Proxy. Required — Google blocks datacentre traffic that is not rotated.

Example: cheapest departure day across a week, two routes

{ "routes": ["LIS-LHR", "LIS-CDG"], "departDate": "30 days", "sweepDays": 6, "currency": "EUR", "market": "pt" }

Example: a daily nonstop business-class check on one route

{ "routes": ["JFK-LHR"], "departDate": "14 days", "returnDate": "21 days", "seat": "business", "maxStops": "nonstop" }

Example: a family of four, one way, cost-capped

{ "routes": ["LHR-JFK"], "departDate": "45 days", "adults": 2, "children": 2, "maxResultsPerSearch": 10 }

Output

One flight row per itinerary:

{
  "type": "flight", "route": "LIS-LHR", "depart_date": "2026-10-05", "return_date": null, "trip": "one_way",
  "seat": "economy", "adults": 1, "currency": "USD", "rank": 1,
  "price": 127, "price_display": "127 US dollars", "round_trip_total": false,
  "airline": "Tap Air Portugal", "airlines": ["Tap Air Portugal"], "stops": 0,
  "depart_time": "8:00 PM", "arrive_time": "10:55 PM", "depart_day": "Monday, October 5",
  "depart_airport": "Humberto Delgado Airport", "arrive_airport": "Heathrow Airport",
  "origin": "LIS", "destination": "LHR", "duration": "2 hr 55 min", "duration_minutes": 175,
  "layovers": null, "layover_airports": null, "overnight_layover": false,
  "co2_kg": 123, "emissions_vs_typical": -7, "max_stops": null, "page": 1,
  "google_url": "https://www.google.com/travel/flights?tfs=..."
}

A one-stop itinerary carries its connections:

{
  "stops": 1, "duration_minutes": 785,
  "layovers": [{ "index": 1, "of": 1, "minutes": 550, "airport": "Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle", "city": "Paris" }],
  "layover_airports": ["Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle"]
}

duration_minutes exists so you can sort and filter without parsing "13 hr 5 min", and rank preserves Google's own ordering — its top pick is 1. The status rows carry searches, flights, duplicates, cheapest and any error, plus origin_query, destination_query, trip and children / infants so a row always says who it was priced for.

How much does it cost?

Pay per event, one event per delivered itinerary row. Searches that return nothing, status rows and failed searches are free, and the same itinerary is billed once per run even when two overlapping searches return it — NYC-LON and JFK-LHR will not bill the same flight twice. maxResultsPerSearch caps rows when you only want the cheapest few.

A single route and date is typically 10–35 rows. A 7-day sweep on 3 routes is about 21 searches — a few hundred rows. Apify platform usage for a run that size is a fraction of a cent; the verified runs behind this listing cost $0.0002–$0.0026 each in compute. Exact per-row pricing is on this page's pricing tab.

How to use it from Python, JavaScript, curl, n8n, Make or an AI agent

Run it and read the dataset. In Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("kestrel/google-flights-prices").call(run_input={
    "routes": ["LIS-LHR"], "departDate": "30 days", "sweepDays": 6, "currency": "EUR",
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if row["type"] == "flight":
        print(row["depart_date"], row["price"], row["airline"], row["stops"])

In JavaScript (Node):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('kestrel/google-flights-prices').call({
    routes: ['JFK-LHR'], departDate: '14 days', seat: 'business', maxStops: 'nonstop',
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.filter((i) => i.type === 'flight').map((i) => [i.price, i.airline]));

With curl, synchronously, getting the dataset straight back:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/kestrel~google-flights-prices/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"routes":["LIS-LHR"],"departDate":"30 days","maxResultsPerSearch":10}'

For n8n, Make and Zapier, use Apify's integration: add the actor as a step, paste the same JSON as the input, and map price, airline and depart_date into your filter or alert. For AI agents, the actor is callable over Apify's MCP server, so an agent can ask for a route and dates and read the rows back without any glue code.

Is it legal to scrape Google Flights prices?

This reads the same publicly available result page a visitor sees, with no login and no account, and it collects no personal data — an itinerary is a price, an airline and two timestamps. In the EU and the US, scraping public pages that contain no personal data is broadly accepted, and hiQ v. LinkedIn is the usual reference point for public data specifically.

That is not the whole story, and you should know the rest: Google's Terms of Service discourage automated access, so this is a terms question rather than a criminal one, and the risk sits with the operator of the run. Facts such as prices are not copyrightable, but a database can attract sui generis protection in the EU, so do not redistribute the raw dataset as a product. If you are unsure how any of this applies to your use, ask a lawyer — this is not legal advice.

Limits and honest notes

• Google's list is what you get. This does not book, hold or price seats directly with airlines, and it does not see fares that only appear after login or in a corporate channel.
• Results are read in English. The parser reads Google's own English accessibility labels, which is why there is no language input. currency and market still control the fares themselves — those are the two that change prices.
• Prices include what Google shows. Taxes and carrier fees as Google presents them; baggage and seat fees are not in the number.
• Round-trip prices are the trip total, not per leg. round_trip_total marks them so you never mix the two.
• A currency swap fails the run rather than billing rows priced in something you did not ask for — some markets ignore curr.
• Google renders every itinerary twice on its own page. The run de-duplicates before billing, so you are never charged for its markup.

FAQ

Does it need a Google Flights API key or a Google account?

No. There is no public google flights api to hold a key for, and this uses none. No login, no cookies, no browser — it builds the same tfs query parameter Google puts in its own URLs and reads the page Google returns.

Can I get flight price history from Google Flights?

Not retroactively — Google does not publish history, and neither can this. What you can do is build it: schedule a run daily with a relative departDate, and every row lands timestamped. Two weeks of that is two weeks of flight price history for your routes that is yours to keep.

How do I find the cheapest day to fly?

Set sweepDays. {"departDate": "30 days", "sweepDays": 29} prices the same trip departing on each of the next 30 days; sort the flight rows by price and the answer is the top row. The status row for each date also carries cheapest, if you only want the daily minimum.

Can I set a flight price alert?

Yes, outside the actor. Schedule the run, connect it to n8n, Make or Zapier through Apify's integrations, and fire when price drops below your threshold. Because you keep every row, your alert can be smarter than Google's — "nonstop under $400 on any of these three routes", for example.

Does it support round trips and multi-city?

Round trips yes: set returnDate and every row prices both legs. Multi-city is not exposed as an input in this version — run each leg as its own one-way route if you need one.

Which cabins and passenger mixes work?

economy, premium_economy, business and first, and up to nine passengers across adults, children, infants in a seat and infants on a lap. Business and first return a genuinely different, smaller market — in testing JFK–LHR economy started at $282 and business at $1,469 on the same day.

Why do prices differ from what I see in my browser?

Three usual reasons: your market differs from your browser's country, your currency differs, or the fare simply moved — airline pricing changes through the day. Set market and currency explicitly and re-run to compare like for like; each row also carries the google_url that reproduces the exact search.

How many itineraries does one search return?

Usually 10–35 for a route and date, which is what Google itself lists. maxResultsPerSearch caps it lower when you only want the cheapest handful and want the run to cost less.

Can I use it as an airfare scraper for Skyscanner or Kayak specifically?

No — it reads Google Flights. That said, Google aggregates most of the same carriers and online travel agents those sites do, so for airfare price tracking the numbers are usually comparable, and you get them from one source with one schedule.

Is there a free tier?

Empty searches, failed searches and status rows are always free, so a run that finds nothing costs nothing beyond a fraction of a cent of platform compute. Paid rows start only when an itinerary is actually delivered. Apify's free plan includes monthly platform credit you can spend here.

Google Flights vs Skyscanner, Kayak and Momondo

People searching for a skyscanner scraper or a kayak scraper usually want the same thing: cheap flights on a route, as data. Those meta-search sites and Google Flights draw on largely the same carriers and online travel agents, so for tracking purposes the numbers move together.

Where they differ is access. Skyscanner's public data is behind an approval process, Kayak's affiliate feed is partner-only, and both are aggressive about automated traffic. Google Flights is the one surface that renders a complete, comparable result set to an ordinary request — which is why this is a google flights data source rather than a Skyscanner one.

If you need a flight data api shape rather than a dataset, call the actor through Apify's API synchronously (the curl example above) and treat the returned rows as your response body. You get a flight search api without operating a scraper yourself, and a flight scraper without api key in the sense that matters: there is no key to apply for, because there is no public Google Flights API to hold one for.

Round trip, nonstop and premium fares

• Round trip flight prices come back as one row per itinerary with the trip total in price and round_trip_total: true — set returnDate and every row prices both legs.
• Nonstop flight search is maxStops: "nonstop". This was verified live: JFK–LAX with the filter returned 31 itineraries, every one of them nonstop.
• Business class fares and first are a different, smaller market. Set seat and compare — do not assume a fixed multiple of economy.

Multi-city trips

There is no multi city flight scraper mode in this version. Google's own multi-city builder takes an arbitrary list of legs, and exposing that safely needs a different input shape than routes plus dates. Until it exists, run each leg as its own one-way route and join the rows on your side — the per-leg prices are the same ones Google would use to build the itinerary.

Is there a free Google Flights API?

No. People searching google flights api free are usually finding either the retired QPX Express service, an unofficial GitHub wrapper that breaks whenever Google changes its page, or a SERP reseller with a small free tier. This actor is the third option's shape without the per-search billing: you pay for delivered itinerary rows, and a route that returns nothing costs nothing.

Related scrapers

Flights are one side of a trip. These read the rest of it, and they share the same row shape, the same pay-per-delivered-row billing and the same scheduling story:

• Flight Price Tracker — only want the cheapest fare per day, cheap enough to run every morning? It runs the same engine and bills one row per route and departure day, with a maxPrice alert line that filters before billing.
• Google Hotels Prices Scraper — hotel prices and every booking site’s rate for a stay.
• Airbnb Scraper — Airbnb prices, availability calendars and occupancy.
• Airbnb Reviews Scraper — every guest review of an Airbnb listing, with translations.
• Agoda Reviews Scraper — Agoda hotel reviews with separate positives and negatives.

All of them bill per delivered row, never charge for rows a filter or a spending limit removed, and write an Apify dataset you can export to CSV, Excel or JSON.