Kayak
Flight and hotel metasearch paying per click-out rather than per booking — the only pure CPC programme in the directory.
About the Kayak affiliate program
KAYAK US has been on CJ since January 2019 (advertiser 5144910), with separate Canadian and Asia-Pacific CPC programmes. It is the only pure cost-per-click programme we list, and the mechanics are specific: KAYAK pays on the click-out, not the click. A user arrives on KAYAK from your link, searches, and then clicks out to a provider — a particular airline or hotel — and that second click is what earns. Up to five click-outs from one user within a single search session are commissionable. The published range is $0.08 to $1.09 per click-out, with KAYAK stating affiliates can earn up to $0.70 on flight, hotel and car searches and that it can fund higher CPCs for certain optimisations through its account team. The attribution window is 30 minutes, described as a session window, and only post-click conversions count — there is no post-view attribution. That is the shortest window in this entire directory, shorter than SHEIN's one day and Booking.com's in-session rule. Several exclusions apply: no commission on error fare traffic, none on more than five click-outs per user per search per session, and none on traffic exceeding 2,000 clicks in a calendar day where booking conversion falls below 1%. KAYAK is an independently managed subsidiary of Booking Holdings. The '50% of referral fee' figure previously recorded here has no basis in these terms.
Pros and cons
- ✓Paid on click-outs, not bookings, so no purchase is needed for you to earn
- ✓Up to five click-outs can earn from a single user in one session
- ✓KAYAK says it can fund higher CPCs for certain optimisations — worth asking the account team
- ✓Part of Booking Holdings, with over 1.5 billion searches across 40 international sites
- –A 30-minute session window — by far the shortest attribution of any programme we list
- –Per-click-out amounts are small, so this needs real traffic volume to matter
- –US serviceable area only
- –No commission on error fare traffic, or on any traffic exceeding 2,000 clicks a day with booking conversion below 1%
Topics
Kayak runs its affiliate program through CJ Affiliate. Search for it by name inside your CJ Affiliate dashboard. We list program details for reference and don’t link out — always confirm the current terms with the program itself.