Flight Finder - Google Flights and Flexible Dates

Find and compare Google Flights itineraries across departure airports, destinations and flexible travel dates. Rank complete one-way or round-trip options by cheapest quoted fare, fastest journey or best value. Prices are for your whole passenger group.

Quick start

1. Enter airport IATA codes, such as LHR and FCO.
2. Select your passenger group and one-way or round-trip travel.
3. Enter dates, or leave dates empty to try the rolling example: departure 30 days from today, returning seven nights later.
4. Set your maximum charge in Apify Run options. Allow $0.02 per planned route/date combination, plus platform usage.
5. Start the Actor. Open the Flight comparison table and read SUMMARY for coverage and limitations.

No API key, airline login or external Actor subscription is required. Collection runs inside Flight Finder with limited permissions.

Pricing

$0.02 per successful flight search, plus Apify platform usage. No subscription, startup event or per-itinerary fee.

One search means one origin/destination and one departure/return date combination, for the entire passenger group. A round trip is one search, not two. A search is charged only when collection and validation finish without errors and at least one itinerary matches your filters.

Example	Search fee
One route with fixed dates	$0.02
One route across 10 date pairs	$0.20
Three routes across 10 date pairs	$0.60
Partial, failed, empty or fully filtered search	$0 search fee

Platform usage can still apply to unsuccessful searches. The Actor checks that the run's maximum charge covers all planned search events before collection; insufficient budgets are rejected. Results are saved before charging. BILLING records eligible and charged searches. Search fees are independent of how many top-ranked rows you choose to export.

Example input

This example always uses future dates and performs one round-trip search:

{
  "origins": ["LHR"],
  "destinations": ["FCO"],
  "tripType": "round_trip",
  "minNights": 7,
  "adults": 1,
  "maxStops": 0,
  "ranking": "best_value",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "maxSearches": 1,
  "maxSourceChargeUsd": 0.1
}

For fixed dates, add departureDate and returnDate as YYYY-MM-DD and remove minNights. For flexible dates, use departureDate, departureDateEnd, minNights and maxNights instead of a fixed return date. For example, three departure dates and three stay lengths require nine searches and up to $0.18 in search fees.

The advanced maxSourceChargeUsd and sourceChargePerSearchUsd fields are inherited planning allowances. With the included collector they generate no extra source charge. They are not the Apify run maximum charge or a replacement for it. Default values allow ten searches; increase the total allowance when planning more.

Search controls

• Up to 10 origins and 10 destinations, using actual airport codes. City codes, nearby-airport expansion and worldwide destination discovery are not supported.
• Departure window up to 31 days; stays from 1 to 28 nights; travel within the next 365 days.
• Up to 30 route/date searches per run, 50 collected offers per search, and 100 ranked output itineraries.
• Adult, child, lap-infant and seated-infant counts, up to nine passengers total. Exact child ages are not supported.
• Economy, premium economy, business or first class; requested quote currency and market.
• Maximum stops, duration per direction and quoted group fare, checked again after collection.
• searchMode=complete rejects an oversized matrix. sample searches a deterministic spread and reports skipped combinations.

Ranking

cheapest sorts by quoted group fare. fastest sorts by total travel time, including connections but excluding the stay at the destination.

best_value uses this transparent preference score:

quotedFare + totalTravelHours * valuePerHour + totalStops * stopPenalty

The score uses the quote currency and is not an extra payable fee. Defaults are 15 currency units per travel hour and 30 per stop. Every retained itinerary also has cheapest, fastest and best-value ranks.

Output

The Dataset contains one row per retained itinerary. Export JSON for complete segments or use the CSV summary view for flat columns.

Fields	Meaning
origin, destination, departureDate, returnDate	Route and dates
quotedFare, currency, passengers	Quote for the whole requested party
legs, outboundFlightNumbers, returnFlightNumbers	Complete journey and segments, with UTC offsets
totalDurationMinutes, totalStops	Travel time and connections
cheapestRank, fastestRank, bestValueRank	Relative ranks across collected options
bookingUrl, bookingUrlType	Google Flights itinerary navigation, not a verified seller offer
priceComplete, baggageStatus, warnings	Unknown costs and restrictions
sourceRunId, sourceBuildId, timestamps	Run and build provenance

Key-value records:

• SUMMARY: search coverage, best offers, filters, errors, collection limits and billing summary.
• BILLING: eligible searches, confirmed event charges and any pending charge state.
• EXECUTION: prevents duplicate work or charges on restart. Start a new run instead of rebooting or resurrecting one.

Coverage and price limitations

This Actor ranks the options it collects; it does not guarantee the cheapest fare available anywhere. It uses public Google Flights results and expands up to five outbound choices and their return alternatives for each round-trip search. It does not cover every airline, date combination or fare family. Complete date coverage is not exhaustive itinerary coverage.

Fares can change. quotedFare is a search quote, not a guaranteed final checkout total. Group fares come from the source and are never calculated by multiplying a one-adult fare. Seller fees, baggage and payment charges may be missing. priceComplete and sellerCheckoutVerified remain false.

Verified baggage allowances are unavailable. Requesting bags with baggageMode=strict excludes unknown offers; show_unknown keeps them with warnings. Seller offers, baggage retrieval and final checkout verification are unsupported. Leave includeBookingDetails false.

Google Flights links are navigation links and may expire or show different availability, currency or market. No tickets are held, purchased or booked. Airport-changing connections are excluded; connection protection, minimum connection times, transit requirements, refunds and changes are not verified.

SUMMARY distinguishes complete, partial, no_matching_results, empty_unverified and failed searches. Unverified empty source responses are not proof that no flights exist. Partial runs preserve useful results and describe missing coverage.

Operation and support

The included collector runs in this Actor without a private child Actor, external scraper fee or personal account token. Paid runs use the included collector only; leave sourceActor at its default. Runtime is bounded by the search matrix, six page requests per search and the configured deadline.

The implementation is deployed through GitHub CI. Automated checks cover date planning, group fares, complete round trips, timezone handling, filters, rankings, cancellation and billing. Live smoke tests cover multiple routes, currencies and passenger mixes; they are not a guarantee of uninterrupted upstream availability.

Use the Issues tab with your run ID and expected behavior when reporting a problem. Do not include API tokens or passenger personal information.