Is Kayak or Shiji better?

Neither clearly leads. Kayak starts at Free and Shiji at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Kayak or Shiji?

Kayak has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Kayak and On request for Shiji.

Does Kayak or Shiji run on more platforms?

Kayak runs on iOS, Android, Web. Shiji runs on Web, iOS, Android.

Can I use Kayak for free?

Yes. Kayak has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Shiji starts at On request.

What is Kayak best used for?

Kayak is most often used for comparing flight prices across multiple airlines and booking sites before purchasing, setting a price alert to buy a flight or hotel once the price drops, searching flexible dates or nearby airports to find a cheaper fare, comparing car hire prices across rental companies for a trip. Of those, comparing flight prices across multiple airlines and booking sites before purchasing and setting a price alert to buy a flight or hotel once the price drops are not what Shiji is typically brought in for.

What can Kayak do that Shiji cannot?

Kayak covers Flight, hotel and car comparison, Price alerts, Price prediction, Flexible date search. Shiji covers Daylight PMS, Infrasys POS, Payments, Distribution.

Travel · head to head

Kayak vs Shiji

Kayak

Travel

Travel search app comparing flights, hotels and car hire across other booking sites, owned by Booking Holdings

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Shiji

Travel

Enterprise hospitality platform covering PMS, point of sale and payments, owned by a Chinese listed group

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Only Kayak has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
Each has a real cost: Kayak it is owned by Booking Holdings, the same parent as Booking.com and Priceline, so its comparison results are not fully independent of its own group's commercial interests.; Shiji chinese ownership and a Shenzhen listing raise data residency and supply chain questions that must be settled during procurement, and in United States government or defence-adjacent accounts they can end the evaluation outright.
They diverge on capability: Kayak covers Flight, hotel and car comparison, Shiji covers Daylight PMS.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Kayak and Shiji actually diverge.

Attributes where Kayak and Shiji differ
Attribute	Kayak	Shiji
Starting price	Free	On request
Pricing model	Free to users, revenue from referral commissions and advertising	quote
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	iOS, Android, Web	Web, iOS, Android

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Travel).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Kayak

Flight, hotel and car comparison
Price alerts
Price prediction
Flexible date search
Trip planning tools
Explore/anywhere search

Only in Shiji

Daylight PMS
Infrasys POS
Payments
Distribution
Guest engagement
Open API access
Regional data centres
Multi-language and multi-currency

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Kayak

Comparing flight prices across multiple airlines and booking sites before purchasingnot Shiji
Setting a price alert to buy a flight or hotel once the price dropsnot Shiji
Searching flexible dates or nearby airports to find a cheaper farenot Shiji
Comparing car hire prices across rental companies for a tripnot Shiji

Shiji

An international luxury group replacing Opera across dozens of properties without moving to a small cloud vendornot Kayak
A resort with a dozen restaurants and bars needing one point of sale across all outletsnot Kayak
An Asia Pacific group requiring native multi-currency, multi-language operation across marketsnot Kayak
A hotel company consolidating PMS, POS and payment onto a single vendor contractnot Kayak

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Kayak

It is owned by Booking Holdings, the same parent as Booking.com and Priceline, so its comparison results are not fully independent of its own group's commercial interests.
Some airlines opt out of listing on metasearch sites entirely, so Kayak's results are not a complete view of every available fare in the market.
Revenue comes from referral commissions, and prominence in results can be influenced by which suppliers pay Kayak more, not purely by lowest price.
The actual booking typically completes on a third party site, so problems with a booking, cancellation or refund are handled by that site's customer service, not Kayak's.
Displayed prices can change or fail to match by the time a user reaches the booking site, since Kayak is not always querying live inventory in real time for every listed fare.

Shiji

Chinese ownership and a Shenzhen listing raise data residency and supply chain questions that must be settled during procurement, and in United States government or defence-adjacent accounts they can end the evaluation outright.
Pricing is entirely quoted with no published figures at any product level, so comparing Shiji against Oracle or Mews on cost requires a full sales engagement.
The portfolio is partly assembled from acquisitions, and the degree of integration between products varies, so a group buying several Shiji modules should test the joins rather than assume them.
Implementation timelines at enterprise scale run to many months and require interface development that is charged on top of licence, which is a substantial hidden budget line.
It is not a realistic option below roughly the mid-scale group level; a single independent hotel will not get sensible pricing or attention.

Pricing, plan by plan

Kayak

Free

FreeFree
- Unlimited search and price alerts
- No subscription tier

Shiji

On request

Shiji Enterprise Platform$undefined/year
- Quoted per property and per portfolio
- PMS, POS and payments priced as separate lines
- Implementation and interface development charged separately

Which should you pick?

Choose Kayak if

You need flight, hotel and car comparison.
You want to start without paying.
You work on iOS, Android, Web.
You also want price alerts.

Kayak review

Choose Shiji if

You need daylight pms.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want infrasys pos.

Shiji review

Questions people ask

Is Kayak or Shiji better?: Neither clearly leads. Kayak starts at Free and Shiji at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Kayak or Shiji?: Kayak has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Kayak and On request for Shiji.
Does Kayak or Shiji run on more platforms?: Kayak runs on iOS, Android, Web. Shiji runs on Web, iOS, Android.
Can I use Kayak for free?: Yes. Kayak has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Shiji starts at On request.
What is Kayak best used for?: Kayak is most often used for comparing flight prices across multiple airlines and booking sites before purchasing, setting a price alert to buy a flight or hotel once the price drops, searching flexible dates or nearby airports to find a cheaper fare, comparing car hire prices across rental companies for a trip. Of those, comparing flight prices across multiple airlines and booking sites before purchasing and setting a price alert to buy a flight or hotel once the price drops are not what Shiji is typically brought in for.
What can Kayak do that Shiji cannot?: Kayak covers Flight, hotel and car comparison, Price alerts, Price prediction, Flexible date search. Shiji covers Daylight PMS, Infrasys POS, Payments, Distribution.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Kayak: Does Kayak charge a booking fee?

No, Kayak itself is free to use; it earns referral commissions from the airlines, hotels and sites it sends bookings to.

Shiji: What do you actually buy from Shiji?

Most commonly Daylight PMS, Infrasys point of sale, or both, plus payments. The group name covers a wider portfolio than any one hotel purchases.

Kayak: Do I book directly through Kayak?

Usually the booking completes on the airline, hotel or travel site's own platform after Kayak hands off the click, though some direct booking options exist for select content.

Shiji: Does Chinese ownership matter?

It can. For United States government-adjacent business and some corporate accounts it triggers data residency and supply chain review, so raise it at the start of procurement rather than at contract stage.

Kayak: Is Kayak owned by an airline or hotel chain?

No, it is owned by Booking Holdings, which also owns Booking.com, Priceline and Agoda.

Shiji: Is Shiji an alternative to Oracle Hospitality?

Yes, and that is largely its positioning at the enterprise end, particularly in international luxury groups where Infrasys already has deployment.

Shiji: Can a single hotel buy it?

In principle, but the commercial model, implementation cost and support structure assume a group, and small properties are better served elsewhere.

Kayak vs Shiji

Kayak

Shiji

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Kayak

Only in Shiji

What people use each for

Kayak

Shiji

Where each one falls short

Kayak

Shiji

Pricing, plan by plan

Kayak

Shiji

Which should you pick?

Choose Kayak if

Choose Shiji if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Kayak

More on Shiji

Keep looking

Other head to heads