Booking.com vs Expedia: Which Is Cheaper? We Priced the Same Night at 3,614 Hotels

Booking.com vs Expedia is usually argued on inventory, loyalty points, and app design, so we compared the one thing a traveler pays: the price of the same room-night.
At 3,614 hotels listed on both sites, the price was the same 54% of the time.
When they differed, Booking.com was cheaper slightly more often (24.0% of hotels against 22.5%), by a median of about 9%.
Where you're going decides most of it: Booking.com wins in Asia, Expedia in southern Europe, and in US cities the two mostly tie.
We read every booking site's price on Google Hotels for the first 150 hotels in each of 50 cities, for one Tuesday night (November 17, 2026), and kept the hotels Google priced for a US shopper.
Below: the head-to-head, the city map, the sister sites, the hotel's own website, and what checking several sites saves.

Key Takeaways

• Booking.com and Expedia showed the same price at 54% of hotels. When they differed, Booking.com was cheaper at 24.0% of hotels and Expedia at 22.5%, and the gap was a median 9%.
• In the US they tie two times in three; elsewhere, one time in four. US hotels showed the same price at 68.5%, against 26.2% outside the US, where the gaps also run wider.
• Booking.com wins in Asia and Expedia in southern Europe. Booking.com was cheaper at 67% of Tokyo hotels and 70% in Bali; Expedia at 49% in Paris and Rome and 62.5% in Antalya.
• Hotels.com undercuts its own sister site. It was cheaper than Expedia at 12.3% of hotels and dearer at 1.3%, by about 3%.
• The hotel's own site beat both about 3 times in 10. It was cheaper than Booking.com at 28.6% of hotels and cheaper than Expedia at 31.2%; our average hotel price study has what that night costs city by city.

Booking.com vs Expedia: How Often Is One Cheaper?

At more than half of all hotels, it makes no difference which of the two you open.
Across the 3,614 hotels listed on both, 53.5% showed the same price, and 57.4% came within 1%.
Google Hotels shows prices in whole dollars, so "the same price" means the same whole-dollar price.

When the prices differed, neither site ran away with it.
Booking.com was cheaper at 868 hotels (24.0%), by a median 9.0% or $9.
Expedia was cheaper at 812 (22.5%), by a median 8.2% or $8.

Hotels	Listed on both	Same price	Booking.com cheaper	Expedia cheaper
All 50 cities	3,614	53.5%	24.0%	22.5%
29 US cities	2,334	68.5%	15.2%	16.3%
21 cities elsewhere	1,280	26.2%	40.1%	33.8%
3-star hotels	1,600	59.7%	22.4%	17.9%
5-star hotels	257	44.0%	25.7%	30.4%
No star class on Google	305	25.6%	40.0%	34.4%

The US is where ties live: 68.5% of US hotels showed the same price on both sites.
That fits hotels keeping one rate on every site, which our rate parity guide covers from the hotel's side, though matching prices alone can't show a hotel's policy.
Outside the US, only a quarter of hotels matched, and when prices differed, the median gap was 10.1% against 5.7% in the US.
Tripadvisor's offers for other hotels in the same 50 cities, for the Tuesday a week earlier, tell the same story: the two sites matched at 63.1% of US hotels and 14.5% elsewhere, with a median gap of 6.8% elsewhere.
Class shifts the odds a little, but not the US gap.
US hotels matched at 65% to 72% from 2-star to 5-star, and hotels elsewhere at 17% to 35%.
Expedia leads at 5-star hotels (30.4% against 25.7%), and Booking.com at places without a star class on Google, such as guesthouses and hostels (40.0% against 34.4%).

Where Booking.com Wins and Where Expedia Does

The city decides more than the class does.

City	Hotels on both	Same price	Booking.com cheaper	Expedia cheaper
Tokyo	63	6.3%	66.7%	27.0%
Bali	46	6.5%	69.6%	23.9%
Seoul	54	18.5%	61.1%	20.4%
Dubai	86	51.2%	40.7%	8.1%
London	71	33.8%	31.0%	35.2%
New York	104	55.8%	22.1%	22.1%
Atlanta	100	86.0%	6.0%	8.0%
Paris	84	38.1%	13.1%	48.8%
Rome	41	29.3%	22.0%	48.8%
Antalya	40	7.5%	30.0%	62.5%

In East and Southeast Asia, Booking.com is the better first check.
It was cheaper at 66.7% of Tokyo hotels, 69.6% in Bali, 63.3% in Osaka, and 61.1% in Seoul, and ties are rare there.
In southern Europe and Turkey, Expedia is.
It was cheaper at 62.5% of Antalya hotels, 48.8% in Paris and in Rome, 44.2% in Milan, and 41.4% in Barcelona.
In most US cities, either one will do.
Atlanta (86.0% ties), Scottsdale (85.1%), Denver (79.6%), and Nashville (78.4%) barely split, and New York splits evenly.
London is the closest three-way split: Booking.com cheaper at 31.0%, Expedia at 35.2%, ties at 33.8%.
Our data doesn't show why the regions split; one likely factor is which site holds the stronger hotel contracts in each region.
Either way, the split is consistent enough across each region's cities to use as a rule of thumb for where to look first.

Hotels.com vs Expedia, Agoda vs Booking.com: Same Company, Different Price?

Both big travel companies run several booking sites, and they behave very differently.
Expedia Group's sites (Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Orbitz, per its 2025 annual report) showed one price at 88.7% of the 4,446 hotels where two or more listed.
When they didn't, the spread was a median 3%.
The odd one out is Hotels.com: it was cheaper than Expedia at 12.3% of hotels and dearer at only 1.3%, usually by about 3%.
Booking Holdings' sites (Booking.com, Priceline, and Agoda, per Booking Holdings) agreed on one price at only 42.9% of 4,431 hotels, and the spread was a median 9.4% when they didn't.
Agoda vs Booking.com is the sharpest split inside one company.
At the 3,088 hotels listed on both, they tied at 45.8%, Booking.com was cheaper at 27.8%, and Agoda at 26.5%.
When Agoda was cheaper, it was by a median 12.5%; when Booking.com was, by only 3.8%.
Booking.com vs Hotels.com, across companies, came out close to even: Hotels.com cheaper at 22.4%, Booking.com at 19.3%, ties at 58.3%.
So within Expedia Group, checking one site covers the others, with Hotels.com worth a look.
Within Booking Holdings, Agoda and Priceline are worth checking separately.

Is It Cheaper to Book Directly With the Hotel?

Sometimes, and more often than either big site beats it.
The hotel's own website appeared on Google's list at 66.5% of the hotels with two or more offers.
Where it did, it beat Booking.com at 28.6% of 2,912 hotels and lost at 24.1%, with ties at 47.3%.
Against Expedia, it won at 31.2% of 3,228 hotels and lost at 25.2%, with ties at 43.6%.
When the hotel's site was cheaper, it was by a median 9.1% ($10) against Booking.com and 10.1% ($12) against Expedia.
When it was dearer, it was by a median 6.8% and 7.4% ($8 either way).
So direct wins a little more often than it loses, and wins by more.
One caveat makes direct look a little worse here than it is: signed-in member rates aren't on Google's list.
Marriott, for one, says its Bonvoy member rate runs at least 2% below the public rate on weekdays and up to 5% on weekends when you book direct (Marriott).
The practical version: open the hotel's own site as one of your checks, signed in if you're a member.
Where it was listed, it tied or beat every other big site at 57.6% of hotels, the best record of the seven sites ranked below.

What Is the Cheapest Hotel Booking Site?

None of them, reliably.
We took the seven big sites (Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline, Agoda, Trip.com, and the hotel's own site) and the 4,802 hotels listed on three or more of them.
No site had the lowest price at more than 58% of the hotels where it was listed.

The hotel's own site came out on top: where it was listed, it was the cheapest or tied at 57.6% of hotels.
Hotels.com (54.8%), Booking.com (52.3%), Agoda (51.9%), and Priceline (50.6%) sat within about 4 points of each other.
Expedia (42.9%) and Trip.com (38.5%) trailed.
Ties count for every site at the lowest price.
What checking pays: Booking.com's price was already the lowest of the big sites at 52.3% of hotels.
At the rest, the cheapest big site saved a median 10.5%, or $12 a night.
Starting from Expedia, the price was already the lowest at 42.9% of hotels, and the saving elsewhere was a median 11.8% ($13).
Smaller sites widen the spread.
At hotels with five or more sites, the dearest offer ran a median 57% above the cheapest for the same night.
One site, Super.com, came in a median 14.5% below both Booking.com and Expedia, and lower at almost 9 in 10 of the hotels they shared; we left it out of the ranking because we couldn't confirm what its price requires.

For Hotels: What Travelers See Next to Your Rate

On Google Hotels, a traveler sees a median of 22 booking sites' prices for one hotel and night, your own site among them when you advertise there:
- Outside the US, most hotels show different prices on Booking.com and Expedia (74%), so travelers there see your rate split across sites.
- Your own site wins 3 times in 10 against each big OTA, and ties more often than it loses.
- Expedia Group's sites move together; Booking Holdings' sites don't. A rate that differs on Agoda or Priceline shows up as a lower price next to your own.
What we didn't measure is how often the lowest listing wins the booking; that needs your own booking data next to the market's.
StayAPI reads the same Google Hotels offers for any hotel and night, and the Google Hotels API page lists the endpoints.

How We Priced 3,614 Hotels on Every Site

We searched Google Hotels for "hotels in" each of 50 cities (29 in the US, 21 elsewhere) and kept the first 150 hotels in Google's order, for one night (Tuesday, November 17, 2026, 2 adults, US market).
A hotel's prices panel on Google Hotels lists each booking site's offer for the night.
StayAPI's Google Hotels prices endpoint returns that list, using the entity_token the search gives each hotel:

curl -G "https://api.stayapi.com/v1/google_travel/prices" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d entity_token=ChcI9aKIlJuEypK2ARoKL20vMDJwamRkZxAB \
  -d check_in=2026-11-17 \
  -d check_out=2026-11-18 \
  -d adults=2 \
  -d currency=USD

The answer for The Tremont Chicago Hotel, truncated (each offer also carries a booking_link):

{
  "success": true,
  "price": { "formatted": "$191", "value": 190.51562 },
  "price_range": { "low": 142.0, "typical": 191.0, "high": 285.0 },
  "offers": [
    { "partner": "The Tremont Chicago Hotel", "price": "$209" },
    { "partner": "Hotels.com", "price": "$191" },
    { "partner": "Expedia.com", "price": "$202" },
    { "partner": "Booking.com", "price": "$244" },
    { "partner": "Travelocity.com", "price": "$202" }
  ]
}

One hotel, most of the study: Hotels.com under its sister Expedia, the hotel's own site in between, and Booking.com $53 above the cheapest.

Field	Example	What it is
offers[].partner	Booking.com	The booking site, or the hotel's own site
offers[].price	$244	That site's lowest price for the night
price_range.typical	191.0	Google's typical price for this hotel

Across the 50 cities, 7,072 listings had at least one offer.
We kept 5,317 of them, with 111,984 offers (a median 22 sites per hotel).
We left out 1,223 vacation rentals that Google lists among "hotels in" a city, and 532 hotels Google priced for a shopper outside the US (mostly the UK and Canada) instead of the US shopper we asked for.
We merged country domains (Expedia.co.uk counts as Expedia) and matched the hotel's own site by name; our Google Hotels API guide covers the other endpoints.
The limits:
- One Tuesday night, priced for a US shopper, with prices before taxes as the US site shows them, in whole dollars.
- Outside the US, Booking.com converts each price from the hotel's own currency, so a small gap there can come from the exchange rate; only 8.5% of hotels elsewhere differ by 2% or less.
- Each site's lowest offer can be a different room or rate (a non-refundable rate, or a dorm bed at a hostel), so a few big gaps compare unlike rooms.
- Prices you see only after signing in, or only in an app, aren't on Google's list.
- The first 150 hotels in Google's order lean toward well-ranked hotels.

Getting Started

1. Compare one hotel's offers across sites with the free Google hotel search tool.
2. Check the hotel's own website too, signed in if you're a member, since member rates don't show on Google.
3. Set a price alert for the hotel, as in our guide to tracking hotel prices on Google, if your dates are weeks away.
4. If you run a travel app or a hotel team, sign up for StayAPI at stayapi.com (free tier, 50 requests, no credit card) and call the prices endpoint for the hotels you list or compete with.
5. To cover a whole city, pair the search endpoint (one entity_token per hotel) with the prices endpoint, as we did here. For a recurring rate feed across many hotels, book a demo call.

FAQ

Is Booking.com or Expedia cheaper?

Neither, most of the time: they showed the same price at 53.5% of 3,614 hotels.
When they differed, Booking.com was cheaper at 24.0% of hotels and Expedia at 22.5%, so check both, especially outside the US.

Expedia vs Booking.com: which is better for hotels abroad?

By price, it depends on the region: Booking.com was cheaper more often in Asia (67% of Tokyo hotels), and Expedia in southern Europe (49% in Paris and Rome).
In US cities, the two tied at 68.5% of hotels.

What is the cheapest way to book a hotel?

Compare several sites, including the hotel's own: no single site had the lowest price at more than 58% of the hotels where it was listed.
Against Booking.com's price, checking the other big sites saved a median 10.5% at the hotels where it wasn't already the lowest.

Is it cheaper to book directly with the hotel?

About 3 times in 10: the hotel's own site beat Booking.com at 28.6% of hotels and Expedia at 31.2%.
Signed-in member rates, which Google doesn't show, can make direct cheaper still: Marriott's runs 2% to 5% below its public rate.

Is Hotels.com cheaper than Expedia?

Slightly, at times: the two showed the same price at 86.4% of hotels, Hotels.com was cheaper at 12.3%, and Expedia at 1.3%, usually by about 3%.

Is Agoda cheaper than Booking.com?

About as often as the reverse: Agoda was cheaper at 26.5% of hotels and Booking.com at 27.8%, with ties at 45.8%.
Agoda's wins were bigger, though: a median 12.5% against Booking.com's 3.8%.