Apify Flight Price API

Flight Price API: Current Airfares by Route

Collect current airfares as structured data. One call takes a route and date and returns fare rows with price, airlines, stops, and duration, plus route-level price insights. Compare fares across dates or airports, export a dataset, or poll a route on a schedule.

When to use this skill

• The user wants a "flight price API" or airfare data by API.
• They want to compare fares across dates, airports, or airlines for a trip or an analysis.
• They want a flight price dataset for a report or app, exported as JSON or CSV.
• They want to watch a route's fares over time (bounded scheduled polls).

Not for: fare forecasts or "will prices drop" predictions (the Actor reports current levels, not the future), consumer price alerts (Google and the OTAs own that), live flight status, or booking tickets.

What you get (one dataset item per page, fares nested in all_flights)

Each dataset item is one page of results holding an all_flights array (about 30 fares per page). Per flight: price, currency, route, airlines, departure_airport, departure_time, arrival_airport, arrival_time, stops, stops_label, duration_minutes, travel_class, flight_numbers, carbon_emissions_g. Route-level context on the same item: price_insights with lowest_price, price_level (low, typical, high), typical_price_range, and a recent price_history series when Google shows one.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/Google-Flights-Data-Scraper-Flight-and-Price-Search?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Actor ID: johnvc/Google-Flights-Data-Scraper-Flight-and-Price-Search
• Pricing: a small per-run setup fee plus a per-page fee (see references/gotchas.md).

Run it with the Apify CLI

Price check for one route and date:

apify actors call "johnvc/Google-Flights-Data-Scraper-Flight-and-Price-Search" -i '{"departure_id":"ORD","arrival_id":"MIA","outbound_date":"2026-09-05","max_pages":1}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-flight-price-api \
  2>/dev/null

Nonstop fares under a cap, in euros for the German market:

apify actors call "johnvc/Google-Flights-Data-Scraper-Flight-and-Price-Search" -i '{"departure_id":"FRA","arrival_id":"BCN","outbound_date":"2026-08-22","max_stops":0,"max_price":250,"currency":"EUR","gl":"de","hl":"de"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-flight-price-api \
  2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json, --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-flight-price-api, and 2>/dev/null.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/Google-Flights-Data-Scraper-Flight-and-Price-Search

Then ask, for example: "Check current fares from Chicago to Miami for the first week of September and tell me whether prices are low or high for the route." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Define the fare question. One route and date per call: departure_id, arrival_id, outbound_date (plus return_date for round-trip pricing). For a date comparison, loop the same route over several dates; for an airport comparison, use comma-separated codes.
2. Keep each call bounded. max_pages 1 covers the visible result set for most routes and keeps the per-call cost at a few cents.
3. Estimate cost per call and, for monitoring, per month; confirm with the user. See references/gotchas.md.
4. Run and read the dataset. Read the page item's all_flights array and sort by price; read price_insights.price_level and typical_price_range to say whether current fares are low, typical, or high for the route.
5. Deliver or persist. Hand back a table or CSV, or write rows to a store keyed by route plus date plus crawl time so repeated polls build a fare log over time.
6. For recurring monitoring, wrap the same input in an Apify Schedule (one schedule per route) rather than one giant multi-route run.

Inputs

• departure_id / arrival_id (IATA codes, comma-separated allowed) and outbound_date; return_date optional
• currency (default USD), gl and hl (market localization)
• max_price, max_stops, airlines, exclude_basic (fare filters)
• max_pages (default 1): the per-call cost bound

Cost

A one-page fare check costs a few cents (setup plus one page). A daily poll on one route is roughly a dollar a month; a 20-route daily board is roughly $20 a month, which crosses the confirm threshold. Live prices and math are in references/gotchas.md.

Honest limits

• Prices are current quotes at crawl time; they change constantly and are not guaranteed at booking.
• price_insights is present-tense context: price level, typical range, and sometimes a recent price_history series from Google. It is NOT a forecast; longer or custom fare logs come from your own repeated polls.
• Monitoring freshness equals your poll interval; this is a polled source, not a push alert feed.
• No reservations and no ticketing; booking happens on the airline or travel site.

Troubleshooting

• No price_insights on a route: Google does not show insights for every route and date; the fare rows still return.
• Fares jump between polls: normal airline repricing; log crawl time with every row.
• Wrong currency: set currency and gl together for the market you want.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related travel Actors

• Google Hotels Search Scraper: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-hotels-search-scraper?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Google Travel Explore API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-travel-explore-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Google Maps Directions API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-directions-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo