Terms of Use

Hello and welcome to KAYAK.

Last Updated: July 1, 2026

We're here to make sure you get your trips right. But before you start searching for the flight, hotel, rental car or package your trips needs - we have something for you to read. Our Terms of Use (the "Terms") contain important information about KAYAK.com, our mobile app, websites, the KAYAK platform and our other products and features (our "Site").

By using our Site, you are agreeing to these Terms, so it really is worth a read. If something doesn't sit right with you, please don't use our Site.

Heads up, this part is important so it's in ALL CAPS:

FOR U.S. CUSTOMERS ONLY: PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SECTION 7.4 CONTAINS PROVISIONS GOVERNING HOW TO RESOLVE DISPUTES BETWEEN YOU AND KAYAK (THE "ARBITRATION AGREEMENT"). AMONG OTHER THINGS, SECTION 7.4 INCLUDES AN AGREEMENT TO ARBITRATE WHICH REQUIRES, WITH LIMITED EXCEPTIONS, THAT ALL DISPUTES BETWEEN YOU AND US WILL BE RESOLVED BY BINDING AND FINAL ARBITRATION. THIS SECTION ALSO CONTAINS A CLASS ACTION AND JURY TRIAL WAIVER. PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY.

UNLESS YOU OPT OUT OF THE AGREEMENT TO ARBITRATE WITHIN 30 DAYS: (1) YOU WILL ONLY BE PERMITTED TO PURSUE DISPUTES OR CLAIMS AND SEEK RELIEF AGAINST US THROUGH BINDING, FINAL ARBITRATION, WITH LIMITED EXCEPTIONS, AND YOU WAIVE YOUR RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OR OTHER REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING OR CLASS-WIDE ARBITRATION; AND (2) YOU ARE WAIVING YOUR RIGHT TO PURSUE DISPUTES OR CLAIMS AND SEEK RELIEF IN A COURT OF LAW AND TO HAVE A JURY TRIAL.

1. The basics.

TL;DR: If you use our Site, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy.

These Terms are like your GPS, they tell you where you can and cannot go. Ignoring them tends to end badly. In other words, these Terms are a binding agreement between you and us, KAYAK Software Corporation, a Delaware corporation, and its subsidiaries ("KAYAK", "us", "we"). When we say "you," "your," or "user," we mean you. If you're accessing our Site on behalf of a legal entity (like your employer), you agree that you have the authority to bind that entity to these Terms, and "you" and "your" will refer to that entity.

By using our Site, you agree to our Terms just like you agree to follow the route and turn right after the stop sign.

Like a GPS that occasionally reroutes you, we may update our Terms from time to time. You agree to our updated Terms by continuing to use our Site. You also agree to our Privacy Policy.

2. Who we are.

TL;DR: We're a travel search engine. We help you compare options. We don't sell Travel Products.

KAYAK was created for travelers, by travelers, born from a simple belief: travel makes the world better. We pioneered the concept of travel metasearch with every traveler in mind. Because no matter your budget, preferences, or favorite providers, you should be able to compare all your options in one place. And know you're getting your trip right.

KAYAK does not provide, own, or control any of the travel services and products that you can access through our Site, such as flights, accommodations, rental cars, packages, or travel insurance (the "Travel Products"). The Travel Products are owned, controlled, or made available by third parties (the "Travel Providers") either directly (e.g., airline) or as an agent (e.g., online travel agency). Travel Providers (not KAYAK) are responsible for Travel Products.

3. How we work.

TL;DR: We work hard to make things great, but we can't promise perfection. When you book, you book with the Travel Provider.

A simple search on KAYAK scans for prices on hundreds of travel sites in seconds. Whether you're looking for flights, hotels, rental cars, or more, we gather deals from across the web and put them in one place. Compare your options for the same flight, hotel, or rental car and choose where you book.

KAYAK is free to use for travelers.

Travel Providers may pay us a fee when you click through or complete a booking and that is how we keep the lights on. We work hard to be objective and to show you the options that we think are most relevant to your search.

Because you book directly with the Travel Provider:

  • The Travel Provider sets the price and any fees, taxes, or surcharges.
  • The Travel Provider is responsible for confirming, modifying, canceling, or refunding your reservation.
  • KAYAK is not a party to the contract between you and the Travel Provider, and we cannot process refunds, changes, or cancellations on their behalf.
  • The booking, payment, ticket, reservation, and any related customer service are handled by the Travel Provider, not by KAYAK.
  • The Travel Provider's own terms and privacy policies apply to your booking. Please read them carefully before you confirm anything.

The fact that a Travel Provider or Travel Product appears on our Site does not mean that KAYAK recommends, sponsors, approves, affiliates with, or verifies that Travel Provider or Travel Product.

We offer our Site "as-is". We do our best to show accurate and current information, but prices, availability, and details can change quickly. We cannot guarantee that every result is perfectly up to date the moment you see it.

Just like a teenager's mood, the prices we display may change on a whim, and additional feelings (or charges, or currency conversion) may apply. To learn more, see how pricing works.

You may come across a "Hacker Fare" while using KAYAK. With a Hacker Fare, KAYAK plays airfare matchmaker by finding two one-way tickets that together make a cheaper round-trip flight. Sometimes you'll fly out with one airline and home with another. Other times, it's the same airline, but they have you in the system as two one-way flights. Either way, you'll get there and back, usually paying less than you would for a regular round-trip flight. Each segment of the journey is booked separately and may have different rules and policies (for example, for baggage fees, change fees, and refunds). Any changes made to one of your bookings will not affect the other booking (for example, if your initial flight is canceled by either you or the airline, the other airline with which you booked your return flight is not obligated to issue a refund or change your itinerary). If you are traveling internationally, you may need to provide proof that you have a return flight at check-in and at immigration.

Learn more about how we work.

4. Play nice on the playground.

TL;DR: Our acceptable use rules - be nice, keep it legal and don't break our Site.

We want this to be a safe place. Please use our Site for what it's designed for: searching, comparing and planning travel. To keep things running, you agree not to:

  • Scrape, harvest, deep-link to, train AI on, or otherwise use automated tools on our Site without our written permission.
  • Bypass any security feature, access restriction, or robot exclusion header.
  • Introduce malware, viruses, or denial-of-service attacks, or try to gain unauthorized access to our systems.
  • Reproduce or commercially exploit our Site without our written permission.
  • Use our Site to develop competing products.
  • Reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble our software, except where applicable law expressly permits.
  • Make any false, fraudulent, or speculative reservation, or any reservation in anticipation of demand.
  • Use our Site for any unlawful purpose, or encourage anyone else to do so.
  • Do anything else that disrupts our Site, restricts other travelers' access to our Site or exposes KAYAK, our users, or our affiliates to liability or reputational harm.

If you break these rules, we may suspend or end your access at any time.

5. Your account.

TL;DR: Create a KAYAK account and access member-only discounts and easy booking.

Create a KAYAK account and access member-only discounts and easy booking with saved details by inputting your email on the login page. We'll guide you from there. Learn more about accounts in our help center. You must be over 18 years old to create an account or use booking features. You are responsible for your account and any account activity. You can delete your account in your account settings.

6. Content on our Site.

TL;DR: We give you access and limited rights to our content and content from Travel Partners and other third parties. You give us permission to use User Content you post.

6.1 Our content

Everything you see on KAYAK that we created (our logos, designs, text, graphics, software and the look and feel of our Site) belongs to KAYAK or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use our Site for your own travel planning. That is it. Please do not use our brand or content for anything else without our written permission.

6.2 Your Content.

If you post a review or any other content on KAYAK ("User Content"), you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, sub-licensable license to host, use, display, reproduce, modify, distribute and create derivative works from your User Content in connection with our Site. If your User Content includes your name, image, voice, likeness, or other personal attributes, you also grant KAYAK a worldwide, royalty-free license to use those attributes in connection with our use of your User Content as described above. If you do not wish to grant this additional license, do not submit User Content that includes those attributes.

When you post User Content, you confirm that:

  • It is your own work, or you have the right to share it.
  • It is honest, accurate, and based on your real experience.
  • It is not unlawful, defamatory, hateful, harassing, obscene, misleading, or otherwise inappropriate.
  • It does not include private information about another person without their consent.

We may review, edit, refuse, or remove User Content at our discretion.

Please notify us of any potential infringements of your intellectual property by emailing us at copyright@kayak.com.

6.3 Trips

Trips lets you store and organize your travel plans in one place. You are responsible for any travel information you upload, share, or transmit through Trips, including keeping your own backup copies.

8. Our AI features.

TL;DR: We use AI to help make KAYAK smarter and to help you plan and search.

Some features on our Site use artificial intelligence ("AI"), including third parties' large language models ("LLMs"), which process information you submit ("Inputs") and generate content in return ("Outputs"). We do not guarantee the accuracy, relevance, or completeness of Outputs, and we are not responsible for any loss or damages arising from your use of them.

8.1 How we use your data

TL;DR: We do not train on your Inputs, Outputs, or personal information. We do learn from Feedback and usage data.

Neither KAYAK nor any third party LLM provider will use your Inputs, Outputs, or any personally identifiable or sensitive information to train LLMs. However, we may use feedback you submit to us ("Feedback") for any purpose, including to improve our Site or train AI models. When you submit Feedback, you grant us the right to use and exploit it without restriction or compensation. When you rate an Output (for example, using the thumbs up/thumbs down icon), we may store the related conversation and rating as Feedback. We also use usage data (for example, anonymized signals about which AI features travelers use, how often, and which Outputs travelers find helpful) to evaluate, improve, and develop our AI features.

8.2 Who owns what

TL;DR: You own your Inputs. We pass through to you any rights we have in your Outputs. But Travel Provider or other third parties' content inside an Output (prices, photos, descriptions) still belongs to them.

As between you and KAYAK, and to the extent permitted by law, you own your Inputs, and KAYAK assigns to you any rights it has in Outputs. Outputs may include content from Travel Providers, third party data sources, or third party AI models, such as prices, schedules, photos, descriptions, reviews, and similar materials, and that content remains owned by those third parties and subject to their terms. This assignment does not give you rights to reproduce, redistribute, or commercialize third party content, and it does not apply to Outputs received by other users or to Outputs that are the same as or similar to Outputs received by other users.

8.3 Playground rules apply when you use AI too

TL;DR: Don't jailbreak our AI, don't use its Outputs to build a competing product and don't pass them off as human work.

When you use our AI features, you agree not to:

  • Try to outsmart our AI's safety features, content rules, or rate limits. No jailbreaks, prompt injection, or adversarial prompting. Security researchers reporting vulnerabilities, please see our security disclosure page.
  • Use AI Outputs to train, develop, or improve any AI model, dataset, or service that competes with KAYAK or our licensors. Our AI isn't looking for a side gig.
  • Dress up AI Outputs as man-made. AI can plan a great trip, but it can't sign its own postcards.

9. Air Carrier Rules.

TL;DR: Don't try to game airline pricing with tricks like hidden-city or back-to-back ticketing. Airlines take a dim view of it, and it can get your ticket canceled.

The circumvention of an air carrier's rules, including practices such as back-to-back ticketing (purchasing two or more tickets with overlapping travel dates in order to circumvent minimum stay requirements) and hidden-city ticketing (purchasing tickets including segments which the purchaser does not intend to use in order to circumvent an air carrier's pricing structure), is prohibited by many air carriers. The use of prohibited ticketing practices may result in the air carrier taking actions, including the cancellation of the ticket, denied boarding, revocation of frequent flier miles and other benefits, additional charges to the purchaser's credit card, additional charges collected at the airport, or future invoicing.

10. Mobile App.

TL;DR: If you got our app from Apple's App Store or Google Play, that store's rules also apply alongside ours. Apple has a few extra protections because Apple's rules require it.

If you download our mobile app, these Terms, along with the rules and policies of the app store you got it from (such as Apple's App Store or Google Play) apply. We may release updates from time to time to keep things running smoothly.

If you download our app from the Apple App Store, the following terms also apply to you and supersede any conflicting terms above with respect to your use of the App from the App Store: (a) these Terms are between you and KAYAK only, and not with Apple Inc.; (b) Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for the App; (c) if the App fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the App's purchase price to you (if applicable), and to the maximum extent permitted by law Apple will have no other warranty obligation with respect to the App; (d) Apple is not responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the App, including product liability claims, claims that the App fails to conform to any applicable legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer-protection laws; (e) Apple is not responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, or discharge of any third party intellectual-property infringement claim relating to the App; (f) you represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist-supporting" country, and you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties; and (g) Apple and its subsidiaries are third party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance Apple will have the right to enforce these Terms against you as a third party beneficiary.

11. A few more things.

TL;DR: Standard housekeeping stuff like these Terms are the whole agreement between us, and a few other basics.
  • Prevailing-party fees. In any legal action or proceeding arising out of or relating to these Terms that is not subject to the Arbitration Agreement (including without limitation any small-claims action, any intellectual-property action, and any action by a user who has validly opted out of arbitration), the prevailing party will be entitled to recover from the other party its reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, including taxable and non-taxable costs, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
  • Headings and TL;DRs. Headings and TL;DRs used throughout these Terms are used for convenience and reference only, and have no legal effect, nor shall affect the interpretation of these Terms.
  • Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any additional terms we link to, make up the entire agreement between you and KAYAK regarding your use of our Site.
  • No waiver. If we do not enforce a right or provision in these Terms, that does not mean we have waived it.
  • Assignment. These Terms are personal to you. You shall not be entitled to assign these Terms in whole or in part to any third party without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms without notice to or permission from you.
  • Survival. The following sections survive any termination of these Terms or of your access to the Site: Sections 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and any other provision that by its nature is intended to survive.
  • No agency. Nothing in these Terms creates an agency, partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship between you and KAYAK.
  • Enforceability. If any part of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid, that part will be enforced to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and the remaining parts will continue in full effect.

Contact.

KAYAK Software Corporation 1266 E Main Street, STE 700R Stamford, CT 06902 USA