Glossary · Travel distribution
Metasearch
Travel metasearch is a search service that queries many sellers — airlines, hotels and online travel agencies — for the same trip, shows their prices side by side, and sends the traveller to the chosen seller to book instead of selling the trip itself.
Reviewed 30 Oct 2026
Metasearch vs an online travel agency
| Metasearch | OTA | |
|---|---|---|
| Who takes the booking | The seller you click through to | The OTA itself |
| What it shows | Prices from many sellers for one trip | Its own offers from many suppliers |
| How it earns | Fees from sellers for referrals or bookings | Commission or margin on each booking |
| Customer relationship | Ends at the click | Owns booking, payment and changes |
The UK competition authority's study of digital comparison tools, which covered flights, found such tools are usually free to consumers and earn by charging suppliers commission. More on the selling side under OTA.
Where metasearch prices come from
Sellers send prices through feeds and APIs; the metasearch site caches them and refreshes on its own schedule, often re-checking live when a traveller clicks. The gap between a cached listing and the price on the landing page is the price-accuracy problem metasearch operators and sellers both watch.
Why metasearch data needs a market and a timestamp
Results differ by point of sale and change through the day, so a listing is only meaningful with the market it was seen in and when. Collect each market from an exit inside it and store both values; travel metasearch monitoring covers the setup, and rate parity explains why hotels watch these listings closely.
FAQ
Questions
Something not covered? Write to contact@arcproxies.io.
Is a metasearch site the same as an OTA?
No. A metasearch site compares prices and hands the traveller to a seller to book. An OTA is a seller: it takes the booking and the payment and handles changes.
How do travel metasearch sites make money?
Mostly from the sellers listed, through fees per referral or per booking. Comparison tools are generally free to the traveller, as the UK Competition and Markets Authority noted in its 2017 study.
Why does the price change when I click through from metasearch?
Listings are often cached prices from a seller's feed. The seller's own site prices live, so if the fare or room rate has moved since the cache refreshed, the landing page shows the new price.
Can metasearch results be monitored by country?
Yes, by running the same searches from an exit in each market and recording the market and time with every result. Results vary by point of sale, so mixing markets in one dataset makes it unreadable.
Sources & review
Last reviewed by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.
- [1]Competition and Markets Authority: Digital comparison tools: summary of final report
In practice