If you built a travel app on the Amadeus Self-Service API, your keys stopped working on 17 July 2026. If you are starting a new one, the free test tier that many tutorials still tell you to use is gone.
The painful part is that there is no single replacement. Amadeus Self-Service did several jobs at once: it searched flight prices, booked tickets, looked up airports and airlines, and reported flight status. The alternatives each do one or two of those, and each has a different catch: a licence, a verification step or a bill that surprises you.
We read the shutdown reports and the pricing pages of each alternative, checked what is still online on Amadeus's side, and wrote down which alternative fits which job. We did not sign up to any of them, and we say so wherever it matters.
What happened to Amadeus Self-Service#
Here is the sequence, from the reports we could read:
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 9 February 2026 | Amadeus confirms in a letter to users that it is shutting down the self-service portal. Registration for new users is to be paused "next month". | PhocusWire |
| March 2026 | New registrations paused. | PhocusWire (reported as planned) |
| 17 July 2026 | Portal fully decommissioned. API keys disabled and the portal inaccessible. | PhocusWire; Amadeus's developer site |
| 3 September 2026 | PhocusWire reports Amadeus is working with Anthropic to give developers access to its content inside AI coding tools, and describes the portal as already shut down. | PhocusWire |
Amadeus said it is "decommissioning only the self-service section" and that "the Enterprise portal and Enterprise APIs remain fully available". It gave no reason in its message to users, according to PhocusWire. Industry commentators quoted in the same article called the move a barrier for startups, which is an opinion, not a fact.
What we checked ourselves#
On 1 November 2026 we looked for the traces:
test.api.amadeus.com, the host the old tutorials used for the free test environment, returned no DNS record.- All 20 repositories in the
amadeus4devGitHub organisation are archived. developers.amadeus.comstill loads, and Amadeus's own banner on it says the self-service portal "has been decommissioned on July 17th" and that the website is now for the "Amadeus Enterprise API Portal only". We did not call any Amadeus API with credentials.
This is one machine on one day. The DNS and GitHub checks match both the news reports and Amadeus's own banner.
What you used Amadeus for, and what covers it now#
Start with the endpoints you actually called. This map uses the vendors' own statements, so each "covers" is a claim to test, not a fact we verified.
| If you used Amadeus for... | A self-serve option | What the vendor says it does not cover |
|---|---|---|
| Flight offers search (prices) | Ignav, SerpApi, SearchApi | Ignav: no ticketing or booking, seat maps or fare rules |
| Cheapest dates | Ignav (cheapest-dates endpoint) | Check against your own routes |
| Booking and orders | Duffel | Live mode needs verification |
| Airport and city search | AirLabs, or APIHiver's airport and airline lookup | AirLabs: not offers search |
| Flight status | AirLabs, Aviationstack | Aviationstack free plan is non-commercial |
| Seat maps, delay prediction, hotel search | None claimed by AirLabs or Ignav | Plan for Enterprise or a different supplier |
The last row matters. If your product used seat maps or hotel search, none of the vendor pages we read claim to replace them.
Option 1: Flight price search APIs (SerpApi, SearchApi, Ignav)#
These return flight search results, the same kind of thing you see when you search for a flight online. They do not sell you a ticket.
| API | Free allowance | Paid plan we read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | 250 searches a month | Starter $25 for 1,000; Developer $75 for 5,000 | SerpApi pricing page |
| SearchApi | 100 free requests as a sign-up promotion | Developer $40 for 10,000 searches | SearchApi pricing page |
| Ignav | 1,000 free requests (its own claim) | $2.00 per 1,000 successful requests (its own claim) | Ignav's migration page |
The catch: these are search-result services, not airline distribution. You get prices and links to book elsewhere. We did not read the terms of SerpApi or SearchApi on using the data inside a product, so check them before you build on them. We also did not run any of them, so we cannot tell you how accurate or fast they are. Our guide to the Google Flights API explains what this kind of data is and is not.
Ignav's page is the most direct Amadeus migration guide we found: it maps Flight Offers Search to its /api/fares/one-way, /api/fares/round-trip and /api/fares/search endpoints, and swaps the OAuth token flow for an X-Api-Key header. It is also a vendor selling that service, so everything it says about itself is a claim.
Option 2: Duffel, if you need to book tickets#
Duffel is the self-serve option we found for actually selling flights.
- Getting started: you create a test access token in the dashboard. Test tokens start with
duffel_test_and only see test-mode resources. - Going live: Duffel's guide lists email verification, then verification that asks for your business type, your personal details, business information and Know Your Customer checks, which vary by country.
- Pricing from its pricing page: $3.00 per order, charged monthly; 1% of order value for managed content; $2.00 per paid ancillary; 2% on currency conversion; and "pay as you go" with no upfront cost.
The catch is the search fee. Duffel charges $0.005 per search above a 1,500 searches per order ratio. Its own example: with 10 orders, 15,000 searches are free, and at 25,000 searches the fee is $50. That is cheap for a shop that converts well. For an app where people browse a lot and rarely book, such as a price tracker, the ratio can flip the economics.
Option 3: Airport, airline and status data (AirLabs, Aviationstack)#
If your Amadeus use was lookups and flight status, this is the easy part.
| API | Free plan | Paid | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aviationstack | 100 requests a month; non-commercial | Basic $49.99 a month for 10,000 requests | Real-time flights; schedules, historical data and autocomplete are paid |
| AirLabs | Free key (limits not stated on the page we read) | Not stated on the page we read | Airports, airlines, routes, flight info |
AirLabs' migration page rates its airport, nearest airport, airline, flight info and routes endpoints as replacements for the matching Amadeus ones. It also says the example in its guide drops the date parameter from the Amadeus request, so the two calls are not one-to-one. Test the response shape before you rely on it. For plain code lookups, APIHiver's airport and airline lookup API is another option, and our guide to free flight data APIs covers the no-key ones for live aircraft positions.
Option 4: The gated ones (Amadeus Enterprise, Sabre, Skyscanner)#
- Amadeus Enterprise: still running. Amadeus's portal says you can "request access to over a 100 Enterprise APIs" and test them in an Enterprise sandbox, with help from its travel consultants. It lists no prices, so treat it as a sales conversation.
- Sabre: from secondary sources only, Sabre gives test credentials for a proof of concept and live credentials through an account manager or agreement. We did not read Sabre's current terms, so verify them with Sabre.
- Skyscanner: its affiliate page says a website needs more than 5,000 unique visitors a month, HTTPS and current travel content, and that it must not book tickets on behalf of customers. The page says nothing about eligibility for its Travel API.
None of these is a quick swap for a developer who wants a key today.
A worked cost example (our arithmetic, not a quote)#
Take a small app with 10,000 searches and 200 bookings a month. Using only the public prices above:
| Provider | What the arithmetic gives | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | 10,000 searches does not fit Developer (5,000), so the next plan is Production at $150 for 15,000 | It does not book tickets |
| SearchApi | Developer plan at $40 for 10,000 searches | It does not book tickets; no headroom |
| Duffel | 200 orders x $3.00 = $600, plus 1% of order value if you use managed content. 10,000 searches is well inside the 300,000 free searches that 200 orders allow (1,500 per order) | Currency conversion at 2%, ancillaries at $2.00 each |
Three things follow. A price-only app is cheap, a booking app pays per sale instead of per search, and the two cannot be compared on price alone because they do different jobs. If your 200 bookings turn into 20, the Duffel bill falls to $60 but the free search allowance falls to 30,000, which 10,000 searches still fits.
If you are migrating code, not starting fresh#
These are general checks, not Amadeus-specific facts we verified:
- Authentication changes. Amadeus used an OAuth token flow. Ignav's page says its API uses a single
X-Api-Keyheader, and Duffel uses access tokens created in the dashboard. Your token-refresh code can usually go, but your secrets handling stays. - Response shapes differ. AirLabs' own guide shows that the same question can need different parameters. Write a thin layer between your app and the provider so the next change is a one-file job.
- Offers expire. A price you showed a minute ago may be gone. Test what each provider returns when you try to book a stale offer.
- Run both for a week if you can. Pick 20 real routes your users search, call the old and new sources, and compare. We could not do this, because the old source no longer answers.
How to choose#
- List the Amadeus endpoints you call. Prices, booking, lookups, status, seat maps, hotels.
- Need to book tickets? Duffel is the only self-serve one we found. Plan for verification before you can go live.
- Only showing prices and sending people elsewhere? A search-result API is enough. Check its terms.
- Only lookups or status? Use AirLabs or Aviationstack, and check the commercial terms of the plan you use.
- Need seat maps, hotels or airline-level content? That is Enterprise territory. Ask Amadeus or Sabre early, because approval takes time.
- Price the real case. Multiply your expected searches and bookings by each provider's rates. A per-search plan and a per-order plan behave very differently at your volume.
For a wider view of the options, see our flight booking API guide and the best travel APIs roundup. For hotels, read the hotel booking API guide.
What we did not test#
- We did not sign up to or call any alternative, so we have no first-hand numbers on speed, accuracy or coverage.
- We did not read the full terms of use of SerpApi, SearchApi or Sabre, or Skyscanner's Travel API terms.
- Ignav's and AirLabs' claims are vendor claims and appear here labelled as such.
- Our Amadeus checks are from one machine on 1 November 2026. We did not call any Amadeus API with credentials, and we did not read Amadeus's original letter to users. The February and March dates come from PhocusWire's reporting. The 17 July date is also on Amadeus's own site.
- Prices change. Re-check the pricing page before you decide.
Sources#
PhocusWire (9 February 2026 and 3 September 2026 articles on Amadeus), Ignav's Amadeus migration guide, AirLabs' Amadeus shutdown page, Duffel's pricing page and getting-started guide, SerpApi pricing, SearchApi pricing, the Aviationstack product page, the Skyscanner affiliate page, Amadeus's own developer site, secondary reports on Sabre's access model (we did not open Sabre's own pages), and our own DNS and GitHub checks on 1 November 2026.