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Should I use Kayak?

Search Flights, Hotels & Rental Cars - kayak.com

Worth it. Use KAYAK free to compare flights, hotels, and cars — the search side is solid and the app is well reviewed. Most complaints come from third-party bookings, so book direct or with a seller you trust.

Confidence

Medium. Based on ~15 usable public sources; many review snippets were truncated, and several 'kayak' results referred to boats, not the travel site, and were excluded.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support quality
  • Security posture

Pricing

Free

Traveler search

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes

Best for

  • Deal-hunting leisure travelers
  • Price comparison across many sites
  • Flexible-date and destination explorers

Not for

  • Travelers wanting one accountable party for the whole booking
  • Corporate travel needing policy controls and managed support
  • Anyone booking on price alone without verifying the final total

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

ConsumerAffairs lists misleading-pricing complaints; confirm the final price before paying

medium

KAYAK is mostly a search engine — final bookings sit with airlines, hotels, or OTAs, so disputes aren't KAYAK's to fix

medium

An account-takeover flaw was disclosed in 2022; enable passkeys or 2FA

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free meta-search across flights, hotels, and rental cars
  • Public bug bounty program on HackerOne
  • Cited as a good passkey and passwordless login example
  • Published security page backed by a dedicated security team

Cons

  • ConsumerAffairs documents misleading-pricing and booking complaints
  • Reddit users question trustworthiness of booking through KAYAK
  • Trustpilot reviewers flag price and cost issues
  • Bookings often route to third parties; Reddit flags the risks

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/27/2026 - 10 sources - Security page, dedicated team, and HackerOne bounty exist; two incidents: a 2012 data-exposure glitch and a 2022 account-takeover disclosure.

official x2review x5security x2news x1
  • Account takeover vulnerability, Fluid Attacks disclosed an unauthenticated account takeover in KAYAK (Nov 2022).
  • 2012 data exposure, A search engine glitch exposed customer information; KAYAK investigated.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 4/5

    Rating

  • Free

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 4/5. Free to search; complaints center on third-party bookings
  • Ease of use: 4/5. Clean search; positive App Store reviews
  • Feature depth: 4/5. Flights, hotels, cars, price alerts in one place
  • Support quality: 2/5. Complaint sites document hard-to-resolve booking disputes
  • Security posture: 3/5. Bug bounty and passkeys offset past incidents
  • Free Cost to search Flights, hotels, rental cars
  • 2 Public security incidents 2012 exposure glitch; 2022 account takeover
  • Active Bug bounty Public program on HackerOne

Pricing

Traveler search

Free

  • Compare flights, hotels, rental cars
  • Free to search and compare

Security

Security page, dedicated team, and HackerOne bounty exist; two incidents: a 2012 data-exposure glitch and a 2022 account-takeover disclosure.

  • Account takeover vulnerabilityFluid Attacks disclosed an unauthenticated account takeover in KAYAK (Nov 2022).⁵
  • 2012 data exposureA search engine glitch exposed customer information; KAYAK investigated.⁶

What users say

Users like the search experience, but a vocal minority report misleading prices, booking disputes, and hard-to-reach support.

“Kayak is a scam”
Reddit, r/travel
“Good example of passkeys and password-less auth (Kayak)”
Reddit, r/Passkeys
Full analysis

Based on ~15 usable public sources; many review snippets were truncated, and several 'kayak' results referred to boats, not the travel site, and were excluded.

Free travel meta-search. Great for comparing prices; complaints spike when third-party bookings go wrong. Book carefully.

Methodology

Based on ~15 usable public sources; many review snippets were truncated, and several 'kayak' results referred to boats, not the travel site, and were excluded.

Sources

  1. KAYAK Reviews on Trustpilottrustpilot.com
    review
  2. Is KAYAK a trustworthy site to use? Risks?reddit.com
    review
  3. KAYAK Reviews & Complaints — ConsumerAffairsconsumeraffairs.com
    review
  4. KAYAK app reviews — App Storeapps.apple.com
    review
  5. Account takeover in KAYAK — Fluid Attacksfluidattacks.com
    security
  6. Kayak.com investigates search engine glitch — Infosecurity Magazineinfosecurity-magazine.com
    news
  7. KAYAK Bug Bounty — HackerOnehackerone.com
    security
  8. Security at KAYAKkayak.com
    official
  9. KAYAK: Search Flights, Hotels & Rental Carskayak.com
    official
  10. KAYAK vs Competitors — FareArenafarearena.com
    review

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