googleflights-mcp

Search Google Flights from Claude, Codex, or any MCP client — running entirely on your own machine.

A local stdio MCP server that searches Google Flights and returns structured, price-sorted flight options — no central server, no hosting cost, no shared-IP ban risk, no API key. Every user runs their own copy on their own IP.

Exposes one tool: search_flights.

{
  "count": 5,
  "cheapest_price": 2715,
  "results": [
    {
      "airlines": ["Turkish Airlines"],
      "price": 2715,
      "currency": "TRY",
      "stops": 0,
      "stops_label": "direkt",
      "departure": "2026-09-14 21:15",
      "arrival": "2026-09-14 22:40",
      "duration_label": "1h 25m"
    }
  ]
}

Table of contents

• Why this exists

• What can you use it for?

• Installation

• Client configuration

• How to use it

• search_flights reference

• Recipes for power users

• How the Google consent wall is handled

• Development

• FAQ

• Troubleshooting

• Legal notice

Related MCP server: Google Flights MCP

Why this exists

Google doesn't offer a public Flights API. googleflights-mcp scrapes the same public web interface Google Flights itself uses, wraps it in the Model Context Protocol, and runs as a local process launched by your MCP client — so your assistant can search real flight prices without a hosted backend or shared API key.

What can you use it for?

Once it's connected, your assistant can answer real travel questions by actually querying Google Flights — not guessing from training data. A few concrete things people use it for:

• Find the cheapest option, fast — "what's the cheapest flight from IST to AYT next Friday?" gets a real, price-sorted answer in one round trip.

• Compare a handful of dates before booking — ask the assistant to check 3–5 candidate dates in a row (or see the scripted version below) to spot the cheapest day to fly without opening a browser tab per date.

• Plan round trips — pass both departure_date and return_date and get a real round-trip fare instead of adding two one-ways together.

• Stick to an airline (or alliance) — loyalty-program members can filter to airlines: ["TK"] or compare two carriers head-to-head with ["TK", "PC"]. See Filtering by airline.

• Direct flights only — business travelers or anyone avoiding layovers can set max_stops: 0.

• Book for a group — adults/children produce real per-passenger pricing instead of a single-traveler estimate.

• Shop in your own currency — set currency to TRY, EUR, whatever you think in, instead of mentally converting from USD.

• Compare cabins — run the same search with seat: "economy" and then seat: "business" to see the real upgrade cost, not a rule-of-thumb multiplier.

• Factor in carbon emissions — every result includes carbon_grams and carbon_vs_typical_grams, so an assistant can point out the lower-emission option on a route, not just the cheapest one.

• Automate price-watching — since flights.py has zero MCP dependency, you can import and call search() from your own script or cron job (see Recipes) to track a route's price over time — no separate scraping code to maintain.

• General travel-assistant conversations — trip planning, "which is cheaper, flying into JFK or EWR," multi-city comparisons — anything you'd ask a human travel agent, phrased naturally in chat.

Installation

Requires Python 3.10+.

git clone https://github.com/altunoren/googleflights-mcp.git
cd googleflights-mcp
pip install -e .

Or install isolated, without cloning:

pipx install git+https://github.com/altunoren/googleflights-mcp.git
# or
uv tool install git+https://github.com/altunoren/googleflights-mcp.git

Any of these gives you the googleflights-mcp command on your PATH.

Client configuration

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "googleflights": {
      "command": "googleflights-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (CLI)

claude mcp add googleflights -- googleflights-mcp

Codex CLI (~/.codex/config.toml)

[mcp_servers.googleflights]
command = "googleflights-mcp"
args = []

If googleflights-mcp isn't on your client's PATH (common with pipx/uv tool installs or restricted app sandboxes), use the absolute path instead — e.g. python -m googleflights_mcp, or the full path to the binary inside your virtualenv (/path/to/venv/bin/googleflights-mcp).

How to use it

You don't call the tool yourself — you just talk to your assistant, and it maps your request onto search_flights's parameters. Some example prompts, grouped by what they exercise:

Whatever you ask, the model calls search_flights and gets back options sorted by price, cheapest first — it doesn't have to guess, it's reading a real Google Flights response.

search_flights reference

Each result includes airline names, price, stop count, departure/arrival times, per-leg detail, total duration, and estimated carbon emissions vs. the route's typical emissions. Errors (no flights found, network failure, consent wall not bypassed) come back as {"error": "...", "query": {...}} instead of raising, so a failed search never crashes your MCP session.

Filtering by airline

airlines takes a list of 2-letter IATA airline codes (not airport codes) — e.g. TK for Turkish Airlines, PC for Pegasus, BA for British Airways. Three ways to use it:

• One specific airline — airlines: ["TK"] returns only Turkish Airlines flights.

• Several specific airlines — airlines: ["TK", "PC"] returns flights from either carrier, still sorted together by price.

• Mixed / all airlines (default) — omit airlines entirely (or pass null/an empty list). You'll get every airline serving the route, mixed in one price-sorted list — which is what the example at the top of this README shows.

Verified against a live search (IST → LHR): no filter returned Turkish Airlines, British Airways, Austrian, and LOT mixed together; airlines: ["TK"] returned only Turkish Airlines; airlines: ["BA"] returned only British Airways.

Ask your assistant in plain language too — e.g. "IST'ten LHR'ye sadece British Airways ile" or "only show Turkish Airlines and Pegasus flights" — the model will map that to the airlines parameter for you.

Recipes for power users

src/googleflights_mcp/flights.py has zero MCP dependency, so you can drive it directly from a plain Python script — useful for anything beyond a single chat query.

Recipe: cheapest day to fly

Check a whole date range and find the cheapest day to depart:

import datetime as dt
from googleflights_mcp.flights import search

start = dt.date.today() + dt.timedelta(days=14)
candidates = []

for offset in range(7):  # check a week of candidate dates
    d = (start + dt.timedelta(days=offset)).isoformat()
    out = search(from_airport="IST", to_airport="AYT", departure_date=d,
                 currency="TRY", max_results=1)
    if "error" not in out:
        candidates.append((d, out["cheapest_price"]))

candidates.sort(key=lambda c: c[1])
for date, price in candidates:
    print(f"{date}: {price} TRY")

Recipe: compare two airlines head-to-head

from googleflights_mcp.flights import search

for code, name in [("TK", "Turkish Airlines"), ("PC", "Pegasus")]:
    out = search(from_airport="IST", to_airport="AYT", departure_date="2026-09-14",
                 currency="TRY", airlines=[code], max_results=1)
    price = out.get("cheapest_price", "no flights")
    print(f"{name}: {price}")

Recipe: price-watch cron job

Run the date-range check above on a schedule (cron, GitHub Actions, a launchd/systemd timer, or Claude Code's own /loop/schedule skills if you're driving this from an agent) and alert yourself — email, Slack webhook, whatever you prefer — whenever cheapest_price drops below a threshold you set. Because search() returns plain dicts, wiring it into any alerting pipeline is just a few lines.

How the Google consent wall is handled

Requests originating from the EU/Turkey are frequently redirected to Google's consent.google.com "before you continue" cookie page. This project does not use fast_flights.get_flights's default fetcher, which breaks on that page (AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'text'). Instead it sends its own request with consent-bypass cookies and parses the resulting HTML directly — see src/googleflights_mcp/flights.py. If Google changes its consent flow and the bypass stops working, the tool returns a clear {"error": "..."} instead of crashing.

Development

pip install -e '.[dev]'
pytest -q            # fast tests, no network
pytest -q -m live     # includes a live Google Flights smoke test

src/googleflights_mcp/flights.py has no MCP dependency — you can import and call search(...) directly:

from googleflights_mcp.flights import search
import datetime as dt, json

d = (dt.date.today() + dt.timedelta(days=14)).isoformat()
out = search(from_airport="IST", to_airport="AYT", departure_date=d,
             trip="one-way", seat="economy", currency="TRY", max_results=5)
print(json.dumps(out, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2))

Project layout:

src/googleflights_mcp/
├── __init__.py
├── __main__.py     # `python -m googleflights_mcp`
├── server.py        # FastMCP + search_flights tool
└── flights.py       # fetch + parse + normalize (MCP-independent)
tests/
├── test_normalize.py    # no network, always runs
└── test_smoke_live.py   # live network, opt-in via `-m live`

FAQ

Does this work with ChatGPT? Not as-is. This project is deliberately built as a local stdio MCP server — no hosting cost, no shared-IP ban risk (see Why this exists). ChatGPT's web/desktop app currently only supports remote MCP connectors reachable over a public HTTPS URL; it can't spawn and talk to a local subprocess on your machine the way Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Codex CLI do. To use it from ChatGPT you'd have to rewrite the transport to HTTP/SSE and deploy it somewhere public — which reintroduces the hosting cost and shared-IP risk this project was built to avoid. It works out of the box with the three clients listed in Client configuration.

Can I say "find me a cheap flight" and it just works? Yes, in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Codex CLI, once configured — plain language in your own words maps onto search_flights's parameters automatically. See How to use it for example prompts.

Does it have reminders / price-drop alerts? Not built in. search_flights is a single request-response query — it doesn't run in the background or notify you on its own. For "tell me when the price drops" behavior, you (or an agent you run) need to poll it on a schedule and alert yourself — see Recipe: price-watch cron job.

Troubleshooting

{"error": "Google consent wall not bypassed ..."} The bundled consent cookies may be stale. Open an issue with the date and your region — a cookie refresh is usually a one-line fix.

{"error": "No flights found for ..."} Either the route/date genuinely has no results, or Google served an unexpected page layout. Try a well-known route (e.g. IST → AYT) to confirm the server itself is working.

Client can't find the googleflights-mcp command Use an absolute path in your client config — see the note under Client configuration.

Legal notice

This tool scrapes Google Flights' public web interface — it is not an official Google API. It's intended for personal/local use only. Heavy automated request volume can lead to IP blocking. Compliance with Google's Terms of Service is your responsibility.

License

MIT