Skyscanner vs Kayak: Which Is Better? [2024]

Skyscanner vs Kayak: While the internet is filled with several options and choices for travellers, recently people were more confused between Skyscanner and Kayak for many reasons.

Which among the two offers the best services? Which one is cheaper? If they are not the same, What is the difference between Kayak and Skyscanner? And many more questions might have invaded your mind too.

In that case, you are on the right page as the article mentioned below has all the answers to the above-mentioned questions and more details to help you know which is a better option for you between Skyscanner or Kayak.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: Overview 

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a popular meta search engine and a travel agency in the UK. The website is used by millions and millions of people each month. It can be operated through 30 globally famous languages.

Skyscanner seems confident in helping you find the most reliable deal and quality services for every category they serve. The list of main services offered by Skyscanner includes hotels, Flights and car hire.

Kayak

Kayak is a leading online travel agency and a meta search engine in the United States and handled by Booking Holdings. Their site can be accessed in 18 most spoken languages. Kayak allows you to compare hotels from hundreds of different travel sites at once and find the best price for your budget.

It offers different categories like flight search, hotel search and flight ticket along with hotel packages. Kayak offers easy and swift booking along with offering you ‘set a price alert’ feature to help you get notified whenever there is a change in prices.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: Key Features

Skyscanner and Kayak

Features	Skyscanner	Kayak
Can search cheap rental car prices fast. Allows the research through model and location.	❌	✔️
Offers an app available to download on the Google play store and App Store.	✔️	✔️
Offers a user-friendly website.	✔️	✔️
Offers vacation packages	✔️	✔️ (Flight + Hotel)
Meta search engine to compare prices.	✔️	✔️
Offers review and rating section for better understanding for Viewers.	✔️	✔️

Along with the aforementioned features, both Skyscanner and Kayak have common features like offering the cheapest deals first, offering multiple deals all the time of the year and sending notifications of alerts whenever there is a change in prices.

They also offer a detailed list of amenities and other additional information required to be reviewed before moving ahead.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: Pros and Cons

Skyscanner

Pros:

1. Skyscanner will push forward the cheapest deals first before medium and expensive ranges.
2. Although their website is user-friendly, their app acts as a better Bridge between you and accurate search results. With the help of its easy user interface, you can carry out your research and booking process swiftly.
3. The brand covers over 90% of the airlines and flights from across the world.
4. The multi-city feature is a helpful tool for frequent or long-term travellers to understand when is the cheapest time to travel and how to connect cities accordingly.
5. Skyscanner alerts you whenever there is a change in prices of your desired destination, especially when there is a price drop, through email.
6. Skyscanner will tell you the approximate distance of the hotels from the nearest landmarks.

Cons:

1. Even at the time of research, the meta-search engine does not include all the airlines and flights. They do not offer deals from all airlines and thus, will not include them in your searches even if it is the most relevant result.
2. Their official website has too many advertisements and most of them are not even relevant.
3. The website glitches a lot at times, especially at times of festivals and peak seasons when there is a high increase in the traffic of viewers.
4. They do not deal through promo codes. If you wish to save a sum from your booking, you will have to comply with any deal or otherwise, you will have to pay the exact amount mentioned.
5. The main drawback of Skyscanner is that after showing you an Outlook of most of the hotels, if you wish to know more about the place then you will have to visit their site.

Kayak

Pros:

1. As the main motive of Kayak is to offer you the best and lowly price deals first, it will push forward the cheap or the medium range deals before the expensive ones.
2. With the help of Kayak’s price alert feature, you can track the drop and rise in prices in the travel accommodation section per week.
3. Kayak offers a tool named ‘Kayak trip planner’ which will save your time in searching, reserving and gaining any information you gather. You can add these information in the trip planner and you do not have to research them twice for comparison or booking purposes.
4. Before booking or even visiting the actual website of hotels, Kayak will give you an introduction as well as additional details about the place.

Cons:

1. Not all, but some of the travel booking websites associated with Kayak will ask for your personal or financial information before offering you any or complete data you are looking for.
2. Unlike other leading brands like Kayak, the results you see through the Kayak meta-search engine do not seem inventive enough. They also have fewer people reviewing for accommodations.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: Which is Cheaper?

Although there is a change in pricing according to different factors like the occasions, festive seasons, peak months and times, on an average record Kayak has cheaper deals than Skyscanner. One of the major highlights of Kayak is that it is known for offering the cheapest options.

While Skyscanner will show you prices at higher rates even for the 3 or 4-star hotels, Kayak will charge you reasonably based on the actual star rating of the hotel. In short, Kayak is cheaper than Sky scanner.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: What’s the difference?

To start with, the success rate of Kayak’s API is higher than Skyscanner for many visible reasons. But, while Skyscanner offers a free service to help you browse on its API, Kayak will charge you whenever you step out of the limit of high usage.

Kayak is considerate enough to offer you a planning and travelling guide under a separate category in its main menu while Skyscanner does not offer any such or even relevant services. 

But, it does offer a sitemap page where you can have a look at all the pages of the site and learn which is useful for what reason which is, of course, not offered by Kayak.

Talking about the main difference, the style of working can be differentiated although both of them work in similar fields. Not the main, but this can be one of the reasons why Kayak is more famous than Skyscanner. 

While similar to other websites, Skycanner focuses on putting forth the promising deals and most recommended ones, Kayak makes sure you have viewed all the cheapest and cheaper deals first before heading onto the medium range stage. 

Although both Skyscanner and Kayak work in the same field and offer similar services in similar ways, the above-mentioned differences make them two of each kind.

Skyscanner vs Kayak: Which is better?

One of the best features of the Skyscanner is that it tells you the distance in kilometres between the hotel and the nearest landmark. This helps users to know the accurate location of the destination.

But, the main drawback of the Skyscanner can be that it asks you to visit the official website of most of the hotels without giving you more details about it. This may not be a wrong action for many but if you are in a hurry or not willing to open many tabs, you are going to have a bad impression.

Unlike Kayak, Skyscanner does not have a possibility of potential risks and you will rarely find any website which will first ask for your financial information or personal details before helping you move ahead.

Although Skyscanner was founded three years prior to Kayak, it has received less fame and feedback from the customers. For many reasons, Kayak has received better and more positive responses from clients and visibly has more patrons compared to Skyscanner.

In conclusion, both Skyscanner and Kayak have advantages and disadvantages. But, if you look for fragments, Kayak is a better option, especially if you are new to booking online or have had a bad experience with Skyscanner before.

Final Words 

Although all the information we have collected and presented in the above article states that Kayak is a better choice, both the sites have given good and bad experiences to many people.

It simply depends on you as to which company you choose for a better experience according to the information we have given and the data you already possess. 

If you ask us, we will suggest you to opt for Kayak’s services before you try Skyscanner. One among the many reasons why we recommend this is because Kayak has cheaper and thousands of low-range deals compared to Skyscanner.

We hope by reading our comparison article between Skyscanner and Kayak, you now have all the answers to your questions and have enough data to decide whether Skyscanner or Kayak suits your tastes the most.

Frequently asked Questions 

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