We are extremely excited to announce our partnership with Skyscanner. For the first time ever, developers will be able to access and implement Skyscanner’s Flight Search directly into their applications through a public API, exclusively listed on Rakuten RapidAPI.
Skyscanner Travel APIs directly connect you to all the data you need to build an innovative website or app. Your customers will be able to take advantage of the best deals on flights, hotels or car hire from wherever they are in the world – either as three independent travel solutions or integrated together.
As a leader in the travel space, our partnership with Skyscanner is especially strategic for us at Rakuten RapidAPI.
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What Data is Available With the Skyscanner Flight Search API?
Over the past 16 years, the Skyscanner team has been building and developing one of the best all-in-one travel apps in the world. Their platform aggregates travel information from across the internet and puts it into one place for users to consume and plug into their products.
Skyscanner offers an unprecedented dataset via their Developer API, and we can’t wait to see what our community builds on top of it. All of Skyscanner’s amazing flight data API will now be available to developers directly on the Rakuten RapidAPI platform via a single click.
The main function of the Skyscanner API is searching for flights. This can be done in two ways: cached search and live search.
Cached search is much simpler to use, and is free. It searches through the existing data on the Skyscanner platform, giving you a good estimate of available routes (using the Browse Routes endpoint) and flight prices (using the Browse Quotes endpoint).
Live search is a little more complex and is priced at around $0.02 / query, but it lets you perform a real-time query of all the different airlines and booking agents to get real booking options. To use that, you’ll need to create a search session with the details of the flight you’re searching. The search results will load in the background, and you can poll them.
In both approaches, you can query flights between any two locations in the world at any dates. The information returned by the API will include flight dates, carriers, and prices.
How to Use the Skyscanner Flight Search API
Step 0: Setup a Rakuten RapidAPI Account
To connect to the Skyscanner Flight Search API, you will first need to set up an account on Rakuten RapidAPI. Simply head over to the Rakuten RapidAPI login page to sign up for an account.
Step 1: Subscribe to a Pricing Tier
Once you’ve logged in to your account, go to the Skyscanner Flight Search API listing and select the pricing plan.
How much does Skyscanner API Cost?
You can learn more about pricing, payments, and extra API calls on Rakuten RapidAPI’s pricing documentation page.
Step 2: Make an API Request
As soon as you subscribe to a pricing plan, you will instantly be able to make requests to the API. A great way to test out the functionality of an API is to use the Rakuten RapidAPI website to make a test API call from within the browser.
To do this, navigate to the Skyscanner Flight Search functions page, select the endpoint you want to call, and click the “Test Function” button.
Once you’ve made a test API call, you are ready to add the API to your project. Every API on Rakuten RapidAPI has a code snippet provided to help get you started. Just copy code snippet directly into your program and select the Unirest Library for the programming language your application is using. Unirest is a set of lightweight HTTP libraries available in multiple languages, which makes connecting to the Skyscanner API a breeze.
Prepare for takeoff…
We cannot wait to see our community begin using the Skyscanner API and all of the amazing functionality it has to offer. Please leave comments, questions and any ideas you have on how you might use the Skyscanner Flight Search API in the comments down below — we’d love your feedback!
How do I get a Skyscanner API Key?
You don’t need one as long as you follow the steps above. As long as you have a Rakuten RapidAPI account & connect to the Skyscanner API, you’re good to go!
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