Kayak

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

As of 1 September 2026, Kayak is free to use. A metasearch app that compares prices for flights, hotels and car hire across airlines, hotel chains and other booking sites, then hands off the actual booking to those third parties. Softwr lists it under Travel. Kayak is made by Kayak Software Corporation (Booking Holdings), available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Kayak

Overview

What Kayak does

Kayak searches across airlines, hotel chains, online travel agencies and car rental companies to show comparative pricing, with price prediction and price alert tools, and features such as flexible date search. In most cases the actual purchase happens on the airline, hotel or OTA's own site or app after Kayak hands off the click, though it has added limited direct booking for some flight and hotel content. Kayak is owned by Booking Holdings, the same parent company as Booking.com, Priceline and Agoda, and Kayak's revenue comes primarily from referral fees paid by the airlines, hotels and travel sites it sends bookings to, plus display advertising. This matters because Kayak's comparison is not necessarily neutral across every possible option in the market; commercial relationships with the sites it depends on for revenue can influence prominence, and results do not include every possible supplier, particularly some airlines that opt out of listing in metasearch entirely. Buyers are travellers comparing prices before booking rather than the final purchaser, since the booking itself completes elsewhere in most cases. The trade-off is a genuinely useful price comparison layer that saves checking multiple sites individually, against the fact that it is not an exhaustive or fully neutral view of every fare and rate that exists.

What people use it 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

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Kayak

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Kayakvs
Hopper
Hopper: If you want AI-driven price prediction and a Price Freeze feature instead of pure comparison search
Kayakvs
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor: If you want traveller reviews alongside price comparison

Pricing

What Kayak costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Unlimited search and price alerts
No subscription tier

Capabilities

Features

Flight, hotel and car comparison
Aggregated price search across airlines, hotel sites and rental car companies
Price alerts
Notifications when tracked flight or hotel prices change
Price prediction
Guidance on whether a flight price is likely to rise or fall before booking
Flexible date search
Explore a range of dates or nearby airports for cheaper fares
Trip planning tools
Itinerary tracking and a trip guide feature
Explore/anywhere search
Search by budget and dates without a fixed destination

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

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.

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.

Is Kayak owned by an airline or hotel chain?

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

Keep looking

Where to go from Kayak

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Kayak, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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