TripAdvisor API Pricing: What Terra Costs After the Content API Shutdown

TripAdvisor API pricing changed on August 31, 2026, when TripAdvisor retired its Content API and moved self-serve developers to a platform called Terra.
The old answer ("free, up to a monthly call cap") no longer applies.
Terra's self-serve package, Discover, publishes a real price table: the first 1,000 billable entities are free once per account, and after that each entity costs $0.015, falling to $0.009 at volume.
That part is simple.
The catch is what counts as an entity, because a search that returns 30 hotels bills 30 of them.
This guide lays out the full cost picture: the tier table, what each endpoint bills, what the free allowance covers, how to get a key, and what common jobs cost per month.

Key Takeaways

• The Content API is gone. TripAdvisor retired it on August 31, 2026, deprecated the old keys, and moved self-serve access to the Terra Discover package.
• The free allowance is one-time. The first 1,000 billable entities per account are free, once, and the allowance never resets.
• After that, you pay per entity. List prices run from $0.015 down to $0.009 per billable entity per billing cycle, and search calls bill one entity per location returned.
• Reviews come from a small pool. Discover returns a limited number of recent reviews per location, which suits a ratings widget and falls short of full review history.
• Match the route to the job. Terra fits apps that display TripAdvisor content; review analysis and portfolio monitoring usually need a TripAdvisor data API with full history.

What the TripAdvisor API Costs on Terra

Terra is TripAdvisor's content platform for partners, and Discover is its self-serve, pay-as-you-go package (Terra migration FAQ).
Discover bills per billable entity, added up per monthly billing cycle, after the one-time free allowance (Discover usage-based pricing):

Tier	Billable entities per billing cycle	Price per entity (USD)
1	1 to 1,000	$0.01500
2	1,001 to 2,000	$0.01350
3	2,001 to 3,000	$0.01215
4	3,001 to 4,000	$0.01094
5	4,001 to 5,000	$0.00984
6	5,001 and up	$0.00900

The prices are easy to read, and the unit is where budgets slip.
An entity is a location, and each endpoint counts it its own way:

Endpoint	How it bills	Example
Location details	1 per location ID returned	Details for 5 hotels in one multi-get call = 5 entities
Search and nearby search	1 per location ID returned	A search that returns 30 hotels = 30 entities
Location reviews	1 per location, per call	One page of reviews for one hotel = 1 entity
Location photos	1 per location, per call	One photo call for one hotel = 1 entity
Geos	1 per geo ID returned	One city lookup = 1 entity

Failed calls (4xx and 5xx responses) don't count toward usage.
Above Discover sit contracted packages with higher limits, sold through TripAdvisor's sales team (rate limits):

Package	Requests per second	Daily quota	Pricing
Discover	10	10,000	Self-serve, the per-entity table above
Growth	25	50,000	Flat per-location pricing, through sales
Scale	50	200,000	Through sales
Innovate	100	Custom	Through sales

TripAdvisor's own FAQ points teams above 25,000 calls a month toward Growth, where flat per-location pricing is more predictable.

What Changed From the Content API

TripAdvisor Content API pricing worked differently, and most of the cost advice still floating around describes it.

	Content API (retired August 31, 2026)	Terra Discover
Free usage	5,000 calls a month	1,000 billable entities, once per account
Billing unit	Per call	Per billable entity (per location)
Paid usage	Pay-as-you-go past the free cap	Six published tiers, $0.015 to $0.009 per entity
Keys	Deprecated on August 31, 2026	New account and key from TripAdvisor's developer site

Old Content API accounts and invoices don't carry over, so a team still holding an old key needs a new Terra account.
What changed in the review data itself is covered in our TripAdvisor reviews API guide.

What the Free Allowance Actually Gets You

The honest answer to "is the TripAdvisor API free" is: for a trial, yes.
1,000 billable entities is enough to wire up an integration and test it.
It covers 1,000 review calls for single hotels, for example, or 33 searches that each return 30 hotels.
Once it's spent, every call bills, and the allowance doesn't come back next month.
What Discover serves well: TripAdvisor ratings, review counts, and a few recent reviews shown next to your own listings, with TripAdvisor attribution displayed.
The limits that matter:

Limit	Practical effect
One-time allowance	1,000 free entities per account lifetime, then every call bills
Review pool	A limited number of recent reviews per location, from a fixed pool set by the package
Rate limits	10 requests per second and 10,000 calls a day, on a rolling 24-hour window
Search bucket	The four search endpoints share 1 request per second (burst of 5) on every package
Endpoint access	Each package authorizes specific endpoints; any other call returns 403
Display rules	TripAdvisor branding and attribution appear with the content

The review pool is the limit that reroutes most projects.
Each request draws from a fixed pool, either the N most recent reviews or the reviews from the last M months, and filters narrow that pool without widening it (Location Reviews reference).
Sentiment analysis, competitive monitoring, or anything that needs all 359 reviews a property has can't run on Discover's pool, however many calls you buy.
For a small hotel group checking its own ratings, Discover is enough, and cheap.
Ten hotels checked weekly is about 43 review calls a month, well under $1 once the free allowance is gone.

Getting a TripAdvisor API Key

Terra keys are self-serve:

1. Create an account at tripadvisor.com/developers and sign up for the Discover package.
2. Generate a key in the Terra Dashboard and keep it server-side; every request sends it in the X-API-KEY header.
3. Set a daily call cap in the dashboard, so a loop bug can't run up the bill.

Content API keys were deprecated on August 31, 2026, and they don't migrate: Terra treats your account as a new product with a new contract.
Calling an endpoint outside your package returns 403 with the message "API Key does not have access to endpoint" (access and limits).
Every lookup also needs a location ID.
Terra's search endpoints return them, but they bill one entity per ID, so reading IDs straight from TripAdvisor URLs saves money at scale.
Our TripAdvisor location ID guide covers every way to find one.

The Per-Call Math for Terra and the Alternatives

Terra's docs give the tier boundaries and list prices, and its billing system computes the exact total for each cycle.
Read the table two ways and you get a range: each band billed at its own rate, or every entity billed at the tier you reach.
Monthly totals after the free allowance is used up:

Billable entities per month	Each band at its own rate	All at the tier reached
1,000	$15.00	$15.00
2,500	$34.58	$30.38
5,000	$61.43	$49.20
10,000	$106.43	$90.00
25,000	$241.43	$225.00

A worked job: tracking new reviews for 50 hotels once a day is about 1,500 review calls a month, so roughly $20 to $22 on Discover.
Each of those calls returns the same small recent-review pool.
Here's how the routes compare for 1,000 property-review lookups:

Route	Cost for 1,000 review lookups	What you get
Terra Discover (free allowance)	$0, once per account	A limited pool of recent reviews, attribution required
Terra Discover (paid)	$15 at the first tier	The same pool per location
Terra Growth and above	Quoted by sales	Higher limits and wider access
Scraper tools	Varies by tool, plus failed runs	Full page data, breaks when the page changes
Data API (StayAPI)	Flat monthly plan, 1 request = 1 credit	Full review history, 20 reviews per request, structured JSON

Third-party data APIs cover what the pool leaves out: full review history for any listed hotel, paged 20 reviews at a time.
StayAPI is one example, with search, hotel details, prices, and full reviews as separate endpoints on flat monthly plans.
Scraper tools also price per run and add a maintenance cost: TripAdvisor runs active bot detection, and failed runs still burn engineering time.
Our TripAdvisor scraper guide works through that math.
For a one-off academic pull of a few dozen properties, a scraper run is probably the cheapest path.
For anything recurring, compare each route's monthly total with the work it takes off your plate.

What Full Review Access Looks Like

Here's the data route in practice, with StayAPI's reviews endpoint and the kind of property Terra's pool caps.
Location 305165 is a Phuket resort with 359 reviews.

curl -X GET "https://api.stayapi.com/v1/tripadvisor/hotel/reviews/305165?page=1&per_page=10" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

The response (truncated):

{
  "reviews": [
    {
      "rating": 5,
      "title": "A Quiet and Peaceful Retreat Wrapped in Beautiful Gardens",
      "trip_info": { "stay_date": "2025-09-01", "trip_type": "FAMILY" },
      "additional_ratings": { "rooms": 5, "location": 5, "service": 5 },
      ...
    }
  ],
  "total_count": 359
}

Field	Description
rating	Guest score out of 5
trip_info.trip_type	Family, couples, solo, business, friends
additional_ratings	Sub-scores: rooms, location, service, value, sleep quality
review_url	Link back to the review on TripAdvisor
total_count	Full review count, all of it pageable

That total_count field is the whole story: 359 reviews reachable in 18 pages of 20.
Sub-ratings and trip types come structured, which is what sentiment and segmentation work runs on.
The full parameter list is in the TripAdvisor reviews endpoint documentation.

Getting Started

1. For ratings and a few recent reviews in a consumer app, start with Terra Discover (the key steps are above). It's the right tool for that job.
2. For full review history or portfolio monitoring, sign up at stayapi.com: 50 free requests, no credit card.
3. Preview the data first with the free TripAdvisor reviews tool: paste a hotel URL and see the structured response.
4. Collect location IDs for your properties (from the URL or the extract-id endpoint) and make your first reviews call with the curl example above.
5. Pipe the JSON into your stack: a database, Google Sheets, Looker Studio, Power BI, or no-code platforms like N8N and Make.com. For portfolio-scale monitoring, book a demo call.

FAQ

Is the TripAdvisor API free?

For testing, yes: Terra Discover's first 1,000 billable entities are free, once per account.
After that, every call bills per entity, from $0.015 down to $0.009, so ongoing use is paid on every route.

How much does the TripAdvisor API cost?

Terra Discover bills $0.015 per billable entity for the first 1,000 in a billing cycle, stepping down to $0.009 above 5,000.
A review call costs one entity per location, and a search costs one entity for every location it returns.

What happened to the TripAdvisor Content API free tier?

It ended with the Content API on August 31, 2026.
The old 5,000 free calls a month became Terra Discover's one-time allowance of 1,000 billable entities.

How do I get a TripAdvisor API key?

Create an account on TripAdvisor's developer site, sign up for the Discover package, and generate a key in the Terra Dashboard.
Old Content API keys don't carry over.

Is there a TripAdvisor API free download?

There's nothing to download: Terra is a hosted REST API you call over HTTPS.
Bulk data feeds belong to higher packages, and Discover is API-only.
Searches for a download usually mean a dataset export, which data APIs handle through paginated calls.

Can I get review data for hotels I don't manage?

Yes.
Terra returns its review pool for any location your package can access, and data APIs return the full public review history for any listed hotel, including competitors.