A free travel API is free to test or free to read data from, but almost never free to sell through. In 2026 the free options fall into three groups: open data APIs with request limits, affiliate APIs that pay you commission, and booking APIs with a free sandbox. Amadeus’s free Self-Service tier closed on 17 July 2026.

This guide is for developers, travel startups and agencies who want to build or test a travel product without paying first. It compares ten options side by side. Every fact about another company is that company’s own public claim, read on its own website on 1 October 2026 and linked in the sources at the end. The grouping into types is ours, the list is a selection rather than a census, and no option is ranked above another. Terms change, so check them again before you build on one. The Tripgic details come from our pricing page, contact page and API documentation.

The Three Kinds of “Free” in Travel APIs

Search for a free travel API and you get a mix of things that are not the same product. A flight-tracking feed, an affiliate programme and a booking sandbox are all called “free”, and they let you build very different things.

Type What is free What you can build What you cannot do
Booking API with a sandbox Testing, with fake or test bookings A full booking flow, before launch Sell to real customers without paying
Affiliate API API access, once you are approved Search, and sometimes booking, on supplier inventory Set your own price — you earn commission
Data API A small monthly or daily quota Status pages, trackers, school projects, prototypes Book anything, or often use it commercially

The right question is not “which API is free?” but “free for what?”. If you want to sell trips, you need a booking API, and you will pay when you go live. If you want to show information, a data API may be enough. If you have a large audience and no wish to handle bookings, an affiliate API pays you instead.

What Changed in 2026: Amadeus Self-Service Closed

For years, the default answer to “free travel API” was the Amadeus Self-Service portal. Developers could sign up on their own and start testing for free, and many tutorials, student projects and early startups were built on it.

That answer no longer works. The Amadeus for Developers site now states that the Self-Service portal “has been decommissioned on July 17th” and that the site “is for Amadeus Enterprise API Portal only”. Enterprise access is a different path. You request access to over 100 Enterprise APIs, test them in an Enterprise sandbox, and work with a travel consultant who helps you choose an offer.

That is a sales process, not a sign-up form. A developer who could once get a key in minutes now starts with a conversation. The old answer is slow to disappear: on 1 October 2026, Google’s own AI answer for “free travel api” still described Amadeus test environments with monthly free quotas.

If you had an app on Self-Service, read our Amadeus API shutdown migration guide and our list of Amadeus Self-Service alternatives.

Free Travel APIs Compared

Ten options, grouped by type. “What is free” is what you get without paying. “When you pay” is when money starts to move.

Provider Type What is free Limit or condition When you pay
Tripgic Booking API Sandbox credentials, after a short call Testing only; no commitment to start One-time activation when you go live, then per booking
Duffel Booking API Test mode with a test airline Not realistic schedules or prices Per order on live bookings
Hotelbeds Booking API (bedbank) API key on an evaluation plan Generic key without your own pricing rules After certification, on live bookings
Nuitée (liteAPI) Booking API (hotels) “Free forever to start” Production-like sandbox Not stated on its home page — ask
Amadeus Enterprise Booking API (GDS) Enterprise sandbox, after an access request Self-Service closed 17 July 2026 Agreed with Amadeus
Booking.com Demand API Affiliate API Access for approved partners Managed affiliate partners; joining is free You earn commission on qualified bookings
Skyscanner Travel API Affiliate API Access for approved partners Established businesses with a large audience You earn commission
Aviationstack Data API 100 requests a month Non-commercial use, no support Paid plans for more requests
Ticketmaster Discovery API Data API (events) 5,000 calls a day Event discovery only, no buying Commerce or Partner API for sales
OpenSky Network Data API (flight tracking) Live aircraft positions Non-profit research and education Written licence for any commercial use

Free Booking APIs: Test the Whole Flow Before You Pay

A booking API with a free sandbox is the closest thing to a free travel API for a business. You can build search, pricing, booking and cancellation end to end, show it to investors or your team, and only pay when real customers arrive.

Tripgic

Tripgic is a unified travel API: one integration for flights, hotels, cars, activities, tour packages, eSIM and more, with 73 endpoints across 8 product families. Flights cover 700+ airline and low-cost carrier connections, and hotels cover 2M+ properties from 50+ suppliers.

Sandbox credentials are issued instantly after a short kick-off call, with no commitment to start. The pricing page states it plainly: after a demo session with the integration team, “you receive sandbox credentials at no charge”, and you only pay the activation fee when you are ready to go live. Every plan includes sandbox access, API documentation and technical onboarding support.

Activation usually takes 3–5 business days. It is non-refundable once credentials and supplier connections are provisioned, which is exactly why Tripgic recommends validating your integration in the free sandbox first. The fee model, one-time activation and then a per-booking fee, is on the pricing page.

Duffel

Duffel’s test mode is a sandbox that, in its own words, lets you use the API “risk-free, with no danger of spending any money or booking flights you don’t want”. Searches return Duffel Airways, a test airline with the IATA code ZZ. Duffel notes that you “won’t see realistic flight schedules or prices”, but the test airline is more reliable than real airline sandboxes.

Its pricing page lists zero up-front costs. On live flights it charges $3.00 per order, 1% of total order value for managed content, $2.00 per paid ancillary and $0.005 per excess search. Stays work on a profit share.

Hotelbeds

Hotelbeds, a bedbank, offers a free API key on an evaluation plan. It is a generic key without your own pricing or commission rules, so it shows you the technical flow rather than your final margins. Its developer site lists 300,000 hotels, 23,000 experiences and 9,000+ transfer routes. To go live, you get your integration certified, with help from its API experts, then start taking real bookings.

Nuitée (liteAPI)

Nuitée’s hotel API, liteAPI, says it is “free forever to start” and offers a production-like sandbox over 3M+ properties. Its home page does not explain how it earns on live bookings, so ask before you build your margin model on it. For a wider look at hotel options, see our hotel API providers comparison.

Free Affiliate APIs: Booking.com and Skyscanner

An affiliate API is free in a different way. You do not pay for access; the supplier pays you when your audience books. The cost is control. The supplier owns the inventory, sets the price and often handles the booking.

Booking.com’s Demand API is for managed affiliate partners. It covers stays, car rentals, transfers and attractions, with flights listed as “coming soon”. Partners choose a level of integration: content only, search and redirect (the traveller starts on your site and books on Booking.com), or search and book, where the traveller books directly on your platform. It also offers post-booking management and reporting. Booking.com’s affiliate programme is free to join and pays a commission on qualified bookings.

Skyscanner’s Travel API covers flights, hotels and car hire. It is for established businesses with a large audience. You apply, Skyscanner reviews the application and replies within two weeks, and successful partners get a dedicated account manager. Partners earn commission when travellers find and book deals.

Both suit a content site, a media brand or an app with traffic. Neither suits a startup that wants to set its own prices, package products together, or keep the customer relationship. For that, you need a booking API.

Free Data APIs: Flight Status, Tracking and Events

Data APIs answer questions such as “where is this plane?” or “what is on in Lisbon this weekend?”. They do not sell anything. Their free plans are real, but small, and many limit how you may use the data.

Aviationstack offers a free plan with 100 requests a month, real-time flight data and full aviation data, but no historical flights. It is for non-commercial use and comes with no support.

Ticketmaster’s Discovery API is open to any developer with a registered key. The default quota is 5,000 calls a day at 5 requests a second. It searches events, attractions, venues and classifications. Buying tickets needs Ticketmaster’s separate Commerce or Partner API.

OpenSky Network provides live aircraft positions, called state vectors. Anonymous users see only the most recent positions at a 10-second resolution; registered users can go back one hour at a 5-second resolution. Its terms license the data “solely for the purpose of non-profit research and non-profit education”.

These are good for learning, research and prototypes. A hundred requests a month is about three a day, which is enough to test an idea and not enough to run a product. Our flight API guide compares booking, search and data APIs for flights side by side.

Can You Use a Free Travel API in a Commercial Product?

This is the question most tutorials skip, and it matters more than the request limit. A free plan that forbids commercial use means you build on it, launch, and then have to rebuild or start paying the day you earn your first dollar.

Provider Commercial use on the free option?
Tripgic No — the sandbox is for testing; live sales need activation
Duffel No — test mode is for testing; live mode needs a live access token
Hotelbeds No — the evaluation plan precedes certification and go-live
Booking.com / Skyscanner Yes, once approved as a partner — that is the point
Aviationstack No — the free plan says non-commercial use
Ticketmaster Discovery Event discovery, under its terms; no ticket sales through it
OpenSky Network No — a for-profit entity, or any live product, needs a written licence

OpenSky’s terms are the strictest in the list. Any operational use of its REST API “in any live product, service, or automated system” needs a written licence, “regardless of the entity’s non-profit status”. A non-profit that puts OpenSky data into a public app still needs permission.

What a Free Sandbox Will Not Show You

A sandbox proves that your code works. It does not prove that your business works. Five things only appear in production, and they decide whether a travel product makes money.

  • Real fares and availability. Test airlines and test hotels return made-up prices. Your margin model needs real ones.
  • Price changes between search and booking. In live travel, a fare can change or disappear between the search and the payment. Your flow must handle a re-price.
  • Supplier errors and timeouts. Real suppliers fail in ways a sandbox does not copy. Plan for retries and clear error messages.
  • Search volume rules. Many booking APIs set a look-to-book ratio — how many searches you may make for each booking. A sandbox rarely enforces it.
  • Certification. Several providers review your integration before you go live. Hotelbeds names this step outright.

So treat a sandbox as the first half of testing. The second half is a short, controlled live phase with real bookings at low volume. Our travel API integration timeline shows how long each phase usually takes.

How to Choose the Right Free Option

Start from what you want to build, not from the word “free”. The goal decides the type, and the type decides what free means.

Your goal The free option that fits What to expect next
Learn, or build a school or portfolio project A data API (Aviationstack, OpenSky, Ticketmaster Discovery) or a booking sandbox Stay within the free quota and the licence
Show travel deals on a site with traffic An affiliate API (Booking.com, Skyscanner) Apply, get approved, earn commission
Build an OTA or booking product and sell under your own brand A booking API sandbox (Tripgic, Duffel, Hotelbeds, liteAPI) Pay on live bookings, plus any activation
Replace an app built on Amadeus Self-Service A booking API with a sandbox, or Amadeus Enterprise A migration, not a key swap
Sell flights, hotels and extras together in one product A multi-product booking API One integration instead of several

For a startup, the deciding question is usually who owns the customer. With an affiliate API, the supplier does. With a booking API, you do, and that is worth paying for once you have customers. Our guide to the travel API for startups goes deeper on that choice.

How to Test a Travel API for Free in Five Steps

A good free test takes about a week and answers one question: will this API carry my product?

  1. Write down your top 20 searches. Use your real target routes, cities and dates, not the samples in the documentation.
  2. Get sandbox access from two or three providers. For Tripgic, book a short kick-off call and the sandbox credentials are issued right after it. Calls go to https://sandbox.api.tripgic.com/v1/ with apikey and secretecode headers.
  3. Build the full flow once. Search, price check, booking, cancellation and refund. Most problems hide after the search.
  4. Break it on purpose. Send bad dates, sold-out options and expired prices, and read the error messages you get back.
  5. Ask for the live terms in writing. Fees, search limits, certification steps and how long activation takes.

At the end, compare what you learned, not the marketing pages. The provider whose sandbox matched your real searches and whose live terms fit your volume is the one to activate.

When Free Stops: What Live Bookings Cost

Every booking API in this guide charges somewhere. The models differ, and the right one depends on your volume and average booking value.

Model How it works Example from this guide
Per order A fixed fee for each booking, plus extras Duffel: $3.00 per flight order, plus fees for managed content, paid ancillaries and excess searches
Activation, then per booking A one-time fee to go live, then a per-booking fee Tripgic — see pricing
Net rates The supplier sells at a wholesale price and you add your margin Hotelbeds and other bedbanks
Profit share The provider takes a share of what you earn Duffel Stays
Affiliate commission You pay nothing and earn a share of each booking Booking.com, Skyscanner

Work out what you keep per booking at the volume you expect in your first year, not at launch. A model that looks cheap at ten bookings a month can look very different at a thousand. Our travel API pricing models guide walks through the maths.

Final Thoughts

There is no completely free travel API for selling trips. There are free ways to learn, free ways to earn commission on someone else’s inventory, and free ways to test a booking API before you pay for it.

If you are building a travel product under your own brand, the useful kind of free is a sandbox you can push hard before you commit. Test two or three, with your own searches, and choose on what you find rather than on the price of the first step.

Get free Tripgic sandbox access →