Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a metasearch engine for travel; it does not sell tickets directly but aggregates and displays real-time fares for flights, hotels and car hire from hundreds of airlines, OTAs and rental suppliers. Price points span budget no-frills fares to full-service premium cabins, with filters that surface the cheapest, fastest or “best” option for any route. The service is online-only—accessible via skyscanner.net and mobile apps—and monetises through referral clicks rather than inventory ownership. The platform’s core asset is its fast, unbiased price comparison engine that checks supplier sites every few minutes and shows total trip cost including baggage fees. Notable features include the colour-coded monthly “Cheapest Month” calendar, price-alert push notifications and the flexible “Everywhere” search that ranks global destinations by lowest fare. These tools have made Skyscanner one of the world’s most downloaded travel apps and a top traffic driver to airline and agency sites. Primary users are value-driven leisure travellers aged 18-45 who research and book trips independently, prioritising transparency and control over brand loyalty. They tend to be digital natives comfortable with mobile-first planning, open to off-peak dates and alternative airports, and motivated by maximising experience per unit of spend. Skyscanner competes in the travel metasearch segment against other aggregators and, indirectly, supplier-direct sites. It differentiates through breadth of partners (1,200+ airlines and OTAs), absence of default bias toward any single seller, and continuous product iteration such as CO2 emissions sorting and multi-city trip builders, positioning itself as the impartial, data-rich starting point for trip planning.