Hotel API · REST + MCP · self-serve, no partner gating
One hotel API — and short-term rentals too.
Stop wiring up Amadeus, Hotelbeds, and a different gated portal per source. ScoutingAPI returns live hotel search, availability, and cross-OTA price in one schema — the very same one you use for Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Google Hotels.
100 credits free · no credit card · failed calls cost 0 credits
GET /v1/search
?location=Sibenik, HR
&checkIn=2026-07-13&checkOut=2026-07-20
&adults=2&children=2
&platforms=google{
"data": [
{
"id": "stays_google_ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4",
"platform": "google",
"platformListingId": "ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4",
"url": "https://www.google.com/travel/hotels/entity/ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4",
"name": "D-Resort Sibenik",
"propertyType": "hotel",
"location": { "lat": 43.719, "lng": 15.908, "city": "Sibenik",
"region": "Sibenik-Knin", "country": "HR" },
"starRating": 4, "guestRating": 4.6, "ratingScale": 5, "reviewCount": 1890,
"maxOccupancy": 4, "bedrooms": 1, "bathrooms": 1,
"amenities": ["pool", "wifi", "air_conditioning", "spa", "gym", "breakfast"],
"price": { "currency": "EUR", "nightlyPrice": 410, "totalPrice": 2870,
"nights": 7, "fees": { "cleaning": null, "service": 0, "taxes": 231 } }
}
],
"meta": {
"platforms": ["google"], "cached": false, "creditsCharged": 5, "currency": "EUR",
"platformResults": [{ "platform": "google", "status": "ok", "count": 1 }],
"pagination": { "cursor": null, "hasMore": false }
}
}Show, don’t sell
Real hotel data — in the same schema as every short-term rental.
This is an actual /v1/search response for a hotel. Toggle the platform and the fields don’t change — hotels and homes come back identical, so you write your search or pricing code once.
id + platformStable composite id and the source platform — identical keys for hotels and homes.
starRatingOfficial hotel star class (null for short-term rentals that have none).
guestRating + ratingScaleRating with its native scale (Google 5, Booking 10) so hotel and STR scores stay comparable.
amenities[]One canonical taxonomy — pool, spa, breakfast, wifi — across every source.
priceLive nightly + total with a fee breakdown (taxes, service) when you pass dates.
meta.creditsCharged5 credits per successful platform leg — and 0 on a failed or empty call.
The exact same object shape comes back for Booking.com, Vrbo, or Airbnb. Hotels carry a starRating and a guest rating on their native scale — Google returns 5, Booking & Expedia return 10 — so we always echo ratingScale and you never silently mis-compare a hotel against a short-term rental.
Self-serve access
Instant access. No partner application. No sales call.
Amadeus, Hotelbeds, Expedia Rapid, and the Booking.com Connectivity API are partner-gated — applications, contracts, and sales calls before your first request. ScoutingAPI is self-serve: sign up, get a key, make your first call in under five minutes.
100 free credits — no credit card
Enough to build and test against real hotel responses before you decide anything.
scout_test_ sandbox at zero cost
Deterministic fixtures wire up your integration before you ever spend a credit.
Predictable credits after that
Starter $19 · Pro $99 · Scale $499, or pay-as-you-go top-ups that never expire.
- 1Get your free key
- 2curl the /v1/search example
- 3Ship
The trust wedge
Reliability you can build a product on.
SERP scrapers and RapidAPI listings give you raw data and a shrug. We run a product — monitoring, multi-actor failover, retries, and caching behind one contract.
99.9% monthly uptime SLA
Committed on the ScoutingAPI response envelope and published on a public status page. Multi-source failover, retries, and caching sit behind one contract.
Failed calls cost 0 credits
Failed, empty, or blocked calls are never charged. If a hotel source is briefly unreachable you get a typed upstream_unavailable and we charge nothing — not the pay-per-attempt model of raw scrapers.
Honest scope, surfaced in meta
The SLA covers our envelope — accept, authenticate, meter, return a well-formed response. Upstream degradation is surfaced as meta.partial / upstream_unavailable with 0 credits. We don’t bill you for a source’s bad day.
Runnable in five minutes
curl it, import the SDK, or hand it to your agent.
Every sample is copy-paste runnable against your free key and generated from @scoutingapi/sdk, so it never drifts from the live API.
curl -s -G "https://api.scoutingapi.com/v1/search" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer scout_test_YOUR_KEY" \
--data-urlencode "location=Sibenik, HR" \
--data-urlencode "checkIn=2026-07-13" \
--data-urlencode "checkOut=2026-07-20" \
--data-urlencode "adults=2" \
--data-urlencode "children=2" \
--data-urlencode "platforms=google,booking" \
--data-urlencode "limit=20"
# Tip: your scout_test_ key returns deterministic fixtures at zero cost.The MCP tab adds ScoutingAPI’s native server (Streamable HTTP, OAuth 2.1 / PKCE) to Claude, Cursor, or n8n — then the agent calls search_properties({ location: "Sibenik, HR", platforms: ["google", "booking"] }) for hotels and short-term rentals alike.
The honest comparison
Hotel data: SERP scraper, gated official API, hotel-only API, or ScoutingAPI?
| Capability | ScoutingAPI | Google-Hotels SERP scraper (SerpApi / SearchApi) | Official hotel API (Amadeus / Hotelbeds / EPS Rapid) | Hotel-only API (LiteAPI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access | Self-serve, free key in minutes | Self-serve, but raw SERP output | Partner-gated — application, contract, sales call | Self-serve (hotels only) |
| Platform coverage | Hotels + Airbnb + Booking + Vrbo + Google (hotels and STR) | Google SERP listings only | Hotels (and flights) only | Hotels (and flights) only — no STR |
| Output schema | One unified schema, hotels and homes | Raw SERP JSON you normalize | Vendor-specific | Hotel-specific |
| Live availability & price | Yes — search, availability, price for real dates | SERP snapshot, you parse it | Yes (gated) | Yes |
| Cross-OTA price-compare | Yes — one property, every OTA, computed min / median | Raw price rows, no min / median | No | No |
| Reliability | 99.9% SLA, status page, failover | None (SERP availability, no SLA) | Platform-dependent | Vendor-dependent |
| Failed-call billing | Free — 0 credits | You pay per request | n/a | n/a |
| Agent-native (MCP) | First-class MCP + OAuth + Connectors | No | No | MCP-native (hotels only) |
| Pricing | Predictable credits + free tier | Per-request, SERP-priced | Contracts / revenue share | Per-call, hotels only |
The honest read: SERP scrapers hand you raw Google listings to normalize; official hotel APIs make you apply; hotel-only APIs cover half the map. ScoutingAPI delivers the answer — hotels and short-term rentals, in one schema, with cross-OTA min / median and an SLA.
Built for real work
What developers and agents build on the Hotel API.
Not “extract listings data” — the outcomes a specific reader recognizes, across hotels and short-term rentals in one feed.
Cross-OTA rate shopping & meta-search
Pull one hotel’s price across Google, Booking, and Expedia in a single call, with computed lowest and median — the engine behind a rate-shopping or meta-search app.
Hotelier competitive-rate monitoring
Track a property’s nightly rate against its real competitive set — including nearby short-term rentals — in one normalized feed instead of three integrations.
Travel-planning agents
Give your AI agent a dependable hotel tool: “4-star near Šibenik, July 13–20, 2 adults + 2 kids, pool and spa” → real, normalized results via the native MCP server.
Market-rate intelligence
Benchmark hotel and STR rates across a market and date range; feed dashboards and pricing models with live data, not last quarter’s analytics.
Corporate travel & TMC sourcing
Source compliant rates across sources for a trip request, and surface the cheapest bookable option — hotels and apartments together — to the traveler.
Price-drop monitoring & alerts
Poll a property and date range; fire a Slack, email, or Telegram alert when a rate drops below a threshold — shippable from /workflows in minutes.
Answers
Hotel API — frequently asked questions
The questions developers actually search — answered in full, with FAQ structured data for rich results.
Get your free hotel API key.
100 credits, no credit card. First successful call in under five minutes.
No credit card · failed calls cost 0 credits · native MCP included