Gareth Williams wanted to visit his brother in the Alps. Searching site after site for a flight was a slog, so he wrote a few lines of code instead.More than 20 years on, that code is one of the best-known names in travel search, and it charges travellers nothing.
So how does Skyscanner make money? We checked the company’s own statements, its reported accounts and contemporary press coverage, and left out anything we couldn’t confirm.
What Is Skyscanner and How Does It Work?
Founded in Edinburgh in 2003, Skyscanner is a travel search platform for comparing flights, hotels and car hire. It isn’t an airline, hotel chain or traditional travel agency.
It brings prices from many providers into one place, and travellers usually click through to the airline or booking partner to pay.
The company says it attracts more than 160 million monthly users and works with over 1,200 travel partners.
That audience is the asset.
Skyscanner doesn’t sell travel. It sells access to people who are about to buy it.
Who Owns Skyscanner?
Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes founded Skyscanner in 2003.
In 2016, Chinese travel company Ctrip agreed to acquire it in a deal valued at about £1.4 billion, completed that December.
Ctrip later became Trip.com Group, and Skyscanner continues as a travel search brand within it. In June 2025, Bryan Batista became chief executive.
How Does Skyscanner Make Money?
Skyscanner earns mainly through commissions and referral fees from travel providers, with advertising and commercial partnerships adding to it.
- A traveller searches for a flight, hotel or car rental.
- Skyscanner displays options from its partners.
- The traveller clicks through to a provider or booking site.
- If the referral leads to a qualifying booking, Skyscanner may receive a commission or referral fee.
The terms vary by partner and product. Some deals pay on completed bookings, others use different referral or advertising arrangements. The common thread is that the money comes from the supply side, so the traveller never sees a search fee.
Why the Marketplace Works?
The Skyscanner business model connects travellers who want competitive prices with providers who want customers.
What makes that valuable is intent.
Someone searching London to Barcelona on specific dates is close to buying, which is worth far more to an airline than a reader casually browsing travel content. Providers pay for that proximity to a purchase, not for raw traffic.
Scale feeds itself.
More travellers make the platform more attractive to providers, and more providers give travellers better coverage and a reason to return. But the loop runs both ways. If prices look uncompetitive or results get less useful, travellers leave, and when travellers leave, providers have no reason to pay.
Skyscanner has to keep both sides satisfied at once.
Where Does the Money Come From?
The Skyscanner revenue model breaks down like this, according to contemporary financial coverage of the company’s results for 2022 and 2023:
The table shows more than the headline split. Our calculations from these figures:
Flights dominate: Flight commissions made up roughly 78% of revenue in both years. Skyscanner is, in financial terms, mostly a flight business. That concentration makes it exposed to anything that affects air travel demand or airline commission terms. Skyscanner doesn’t set fares or operate flights. It compares options and sends travellers to a provider.
The small lines are growing fastest: Hotel commissions grew about 41% between 2022 and 2023 and car hire about 34%, against roughly 22% for flights. Together they were still only about 6% of 2023 revenue, but they are the clearest sign of diversification. They also monetise the same visitor, since someone who has just booked a flight is likely to need somewhere to stay and a way to get around.
Advertising is a different kind of income: The £56.9 million from advertising and partner analytics, about 16% of 2023 revenue, doesn’t depend on a traveller completing a booking in the same way. Travel companies use it to reach people already researching trips, and partner analytics and related services sit in the same category. It gives Skyscanner a revenue stream that doesn’t move one-for-one with booking conversions.
Overall revenue rose about 23% from 2022 to 2023.
How Much Revenue Does Skyscanner Make?
Skyscanner Limited’s filed accounts show turnover of £540.6 million in 2025, up from £389.9 million in 2024, an increase of about 38.7%. Pre-tax profit moved the other way.
Turnover rose by about £150 million while pre-tax profit fell by about £50 million, roughly 51%. Pre-tax margin dropped from about 25% to about 9%. In plain terms, costs and other items combined grew by around £200 million, far faster than income.
The accounts don’t explain why, and we won’t guess. Growth that outpaces profit can reflect heavier spending, changes in how the business is run or other accounting items.
All we can say from the filings is that the extra turnover was not kept as extra profit.
Two caveats matter.
These are Skyscanner Limited’s filed accounts, not the consolidated results of its parent, Trip.com Group. And they lack the product-by-product breakdown available for 2023, so it would be misleading to credit the 2025 jump to flights, hotels or any one category.
Does Skyscanner Charge Airlines to Appear First?
Not under one universal rule.
For flights, Skyscanner says its default ranking considers price, journey duration and whether a flight is direct, so the top result is not simply the highest-paying provider. Hotel and car hire recommendations can use additional factors, including estimated revenue potential.
The tension is built into any commission-funded comparison site: it earns from the businesses it ranks.
Skyscanner’s defence is that default flight ranking is based on traveller-relevant factors, and users can re-sort by lowest price. A sensible approach is to treat the default order as a starting point and sort by price yourself.
How Does the Affiliate Programme Work?
Skyscanner also runs an affiliate programme for eligible publishers and travel sites. Affiliates use search widgets, banners and text links to send visitors, and when that traffic produces qualifying bookings with Skyscanner’s supply partners, the publisher may receive a share of the commission Skyscanner earns.
That makes the Skyscanner affiliate commission variable.
It depends on Skyscanner’s own commission from the provider, not on a fixed fee per click or booking. Skyscanner gets traffic without paying for it up front, and the affiliate only earns when the traffic converts.
What Can Founders Learn From Skyscanner?
Skyscanner’s model offers founders four lessons: the payer needn’t be the user, inventory can be skipped, concentration carries risk, and trust holds it all together.
- The payer isn’t always the user: Skyscanner serves travellers for free and earns from providers who want those travellers. That works because users bring intent and providers pay for it.
- You don’t need to own the inventory: Skyscanner owns no aircraft, hotels or rental fleets. It owns the comparison layer between buyers and sellers.
- Concentration is the trade-off: With around 78% of 2023 revenue coming from flights, the Skyscanner business model is efficient but narrow. The faster growth in hotels, car hire and advertising suggests where diversification is coming from.
- Trust is the real dependency: Results must stay useful enough for travellers to rely on, and traffic must stay valuable enough for providers to keep paying. Losing either side breaks the model.
FAQs
1. How does Skyscanner make money if it is free?
Mainly through commissions and referral fees from travel providers, plus advertising and commercial partnerships. Travellers pay no subscription.
2. Does Skyscanner earn commission on every flight?
No. It depends on the agreement with the airline or booking partner and whether the referral meets the relevant conditions. Not every search or click generates revenue.
3. Does Skyscanner own airlines or hotels?
No. It compares options from airlines, hotels, car rental companies and booking partners without operating them.
Sources: Skyscanner’s official Help, About and Partner Support pages; Companies House filings for Skyscanner Limited; financial reporting by City AM and other business publications; Ctrip’s Form 6-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2016; and relevant coverage from Skift, The Scotsman, Deloitte UK Fast 50, Global Venturing, PhocusWire, Travolution and Life Insurance International.
Financial figures are presented for the periods stated. Revenue breakdowns and company-account figures come from different reporting periods and should not be treated as directly comparable.
The EP+ Editorial Desk covers UK startups, founder stories and venture capital. All editorial content is independently produced and human-reviewed before publication.
