The autocomplete suggestions reveal valuable structured data such as airport codes, city names, airline routes, and popular destinations, making them incredibly useful for data collection and travel analysis.

For developers, analysts, and travel companies, scraping Google Flights autocomplete data can unlock a variety of use cases. This includes building travel search tools, analyzing popular routes, tracking airport and airline coverage, generating destination datasets, improving internal search experiences, and enriching travel databases with standardized airport and city identifiers. Autocomplete data is especially valuable because it reflects real user search behavior and Google’s own travel data relationships.

However, scraping Google Flights directly can be difficult due to rate limiting, request headers, tokens, and anti-bot protections. Instead of maintaining complex scraping infrastructure, you can use SerpApi to access Google Flights autocomplete data reliably at scale. SerpApi handles the scraping, parsing, and anti-bot challenges, allowing you to focus on collecting and using the data rather than maintaining scrapers.

SerpApi Result Structure

First let's take a look at what data you will receive from SerpApi's Google Flights Autocomplete API.

{
  ...
  "suggestions": [
    {
      "position": "Integer - Position of the suggestion in the list",
      "name": "String - Name of the suggested location",
      "type": "String - Type of the suggested location. Possible values are: <code>city</code> and <code>region</code>",
      "description": "String - Description of the suggested location",
      "id": "String - Google Knowledge Graph ID (<code>kgmid</code>) of the suggested location",
      "airports": [
        {
          "name": "String - Name of the airport",
          "id": "String - Airport code (IATA code)",
          "city": "String - City where the airport is located",
          "city_id": "String - Google Knowledge Graph ID (<code>kgmid</code>) of the city where the airport is located",
          "distance": "String - Distance from the city to the airport",
        },
        ...
      ]
    },
    ...
  ],
  ...
}

Setting up SerpApi

Are you new to SerpApi? We'll walk you through the steps from sign up to integrating with SerpApi.

Getting Started with SerpApi

To get started with SerpApi, I recommend following the steps in this blog post:

Getting started with SerpApi: The Web Search API
Learn what SerpApi is, how to use it, and why you need it.
SerpApiHilman Ramadhan

Google Flights Autocomplete API Documentation

We recommend familiarizing yourself with the available parameters and details in the Google Flights Autocomplete API documentation here:

Google Flights Autocomplete API - SerpApi
Scrape Google Flights Autocomplete suggestion results with SerpApi’s Google Flights Autocomplete API.
SerpApiSerpApi

Integrations / Libraries

Some examples below will include our SerpApi libraries. If you would like to use one of our SerpApi libraries, we offer instructions for each language here:

SerpApi: Integrations
Easy integration. SerpApi provides integrations in multiple languages. Start integration using your preferred language.
SerpApi

Now you should be set up with SerpApi and familiar with the Google Flights Autocomplete API.

How to Scrape Google Flights Autocomplete using SerpApi

You can use any programming language in order to call our APIs. The parameters and results we reviewed above will not differ between the request methods, however the syntax used to call the APIs may differ.

You will see across the examples the engine is always set to "google_flights_autocomplete", the api_key will be set to your API key, and we include the q (search parameter) in every query. In this example we are going to look for the word "New" to see what cities / countries populate.

GET Request

The syntax for the actual GET request between languages will of course vary between programming languages.

However, the URL used each time is consistent. When you are sending a GET request in any language you will use this URL to make the request:

https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google_flights_autocomplete_url&api_key=YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY&q=New

Python (using SerpApi library)

import serpapi

params = {
  "engine": "google_flights_autocomplete",
  "q": "New",
  "api_key": "YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY",
}

search = serpapi.search(params)
results = search.as_dict()

cURL

curl --get https://serpapi.com/search \
 -d engine="google_flights_autocomplete" \
 -d api_key="YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY" \
 -d q="New"

Results

Here is a snippet of the suggestions you receive with the q parameter set to "New". You can see results from New York to New Zealand with multiple airports within each. 

"suggestions": [
    {
      "position": 1,
      "name": "New York",
      "type": "city",
      "description": "City in New York State",
      "id": "/m/02_286",
      "airports": [
        {
          "name": "LaGuardia Airport",
          "id": "LGA",
          "city": "New York",
          "city_id": "/m/02_286",
          "distance": "8 mi"
        },
        {
          "name": "Newark Liberty International Airport",
          "id": "EWR",
          "city": "Newark",
          "city_id": "/m/0hptm",
          "distance": "8 mi"
        },
        {
          "name": "John F. Kennedy International Airport",
          "id": "JFK",
          "city": "New York",
          "city_id": "/m/02_286",
          "distance": "12 mi"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "position": 2,
      "name": "New Zealand",
      "type": "region",
      "description": "Country in Oceania",
      "id": "/m/0ctw_b"
    },
    {
      "position": 3,
      "name": "New Orleans, Louisiana",
      "type": "city",
      "description": "City in Louisiana",
      "id": "/m/0f2tj",
      "airports": [
        {
          "name": "Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport",
          "id": "MSY",
          "city": "New Orleans",
          "city_id": "/m/0f2tj",
          "distance": "11 mi"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "position": 4,
      "name": "New Delhi, India",
      "type": "city",
      "description": "Capital of India",
      "id": "/m/0dlv0",
      "airports": [
        {
          "name": "Indira Gandhi International Airport",
          "id": "DEL",
          "city": "New Delhi",
          "city_id": "/m/0dlv0",
          "distance": "6 mi"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "position": 5,
      "name": "New Jersey",
      "type": "region",
      "description": "US state",
      "id": "/m/05fjf"
    }

No Code

Google Sheets

To connect your code with Google Sheets first follow this blog post:

Connect SERP API with Google Sheets (No Code)
Here is how to connect SERP API (SerpApi) to Google Sheets using a no-code solution
SerpApiHilman Ramadhan
=SERPAPI_RESULT("engine=google_flights_autocomplete&q=New")

Make.com

While not every API we offer is on Make.com, there is a Universal Module where you can use any API.

Review this blog post to get started:

Announcing SerpApi’s Make App
We are pleased to announce the release of our Custom App on Make.com. This makes it easier than ever to integrate SerpApi with other systems without having to write any code.
SerpApiAlex Barron

N8N

Similar to Make.com, not every API is currently included in N8N. However, you can use the HTTP Request node to still call any of our APIs.

To get started review this blog post:

Boost Your n8n Workflows with SerpApi’s Verified Node
Add real-time search to your n8n workflows and AI Agents with SerpApi’s node. Featuring over 20 APIs including Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, and more.
SerpApiAlex Barron

Conclusion

By using SerpApi, you can easily retrieve autocomplete suggestions based on a keyword you choose. You can even gather specific airport info for use within the Google Flights API itself!

Together, these APIs provide a scalable, reliable way to access Google Flight Autocomplete data without managing scraping infrastructure.

If you haven’t created an account with SerpApi yet, you can sign up and receive 250 free credits per month to get started here: https://serpapi.com/users/sign_up.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at contact@serpapi.com

Hope you find this useful 🙂