TripAdvisor API: Content API pricing, API key and reviews access
The TripAdvisor Content API gives you the first 5,000 calls free every month, issues a key the same day with no approval queue, and returns up to 5 reviews and 5 photos per location. That free tier is the most generous of any major review API. The catches are the five review ceiling, unusually strict display rules, and the fact that TripAdvisor is migrating partners to a new platform called Terra, which prices per location returned and permits almost no caching. Everything below was read at TripAdvisor's own documentation in August 2026.
No API key required
Sources
Layout
Brand color
Minimum rating
No reviews match those filters
Turn a source back on or lower the minimum rating.
·
reviews shown
from Google · G2 · direct
Drops next to any CTA: signup, pricing, checkout.
Paste this once, anywhere in your HTML. The widget inherits your settings from the studio and stays in sync when you change them.
Create your account to activate your embed code.
Automated request email
From: Your Company <[email protected]>
Subject: Quick favor? It takes 40 seconds
Hi Jordan,
You've been with us for 3 months, thanks for that. Would you share how it's going? One click below, 40 seconds, done.
Sent automatically 90 days after signup · timed to the customer's timezone
See it land in your own inbox
We'll send you this exact sequence the way your customers would receive it.
Most people searching for a reviews API only want reviews rendering on their own pages. That is a script tag, not an integration. Our widget covers Google, G2, Trustpilot and direct reviews; TripAdvisor is not one of our sources, so if you need TripAdvisor content specifically, the API below is your route.
The question behind most TripAdvisor API searches
How much does the TripAdvisor API cost?
Two answers, because there are two products. The legacy Content API is pay as you go with a 5,000 call monthly freebie. The newer Terra API publishes exact per unit tiers, and it bills per location returned rather than per call, which changes the arithmetic completely.
| Tier | Billable entities per cycle | Price per entity | Cost of that tier in full |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free allowance | First 1,000 per account, once | $0.00000 | $0.00 |
| Tier 1 | 1 to 1,000 | $0.01500 | $15.00 |
| Tier 2 | 1,001 to 2,000 | $0.01350 | $13.50 |
| Tier 3 | 2,001 to 3,000 | $0.01215 | $12.15 |
| Tier 4 | 3,001 to 4,000 | $0.01094 | $10.94 |
| Tier 5 | 4,001 to 5,000 | $0.00984 | $9.84 |
| Tier 6 | 5,001 and above | $0.00900 | Per entity |
Terra usage based pricing, read at docs.terra.tripadvisor.com on 31 August 2026 and quoted as published. Tiers apply within a monthly invoice cycle. TripAdvisor states that 4xx client errors and 5xx server errors are not counted toward billable usage, so a failed call is not a charged call.
A worked example: 200 properties refreshed daily
Say you run a hotel group with 200 properties and you refresh each one once a day. That is 200 location IDs returned, 30 times a month, so 6,000 billable entities. Walking the tiers: $15.00 plus $13.50 plus $12.15 plus $10.94 plus $9.84 for the first 5,000, then 1,000 more at $0.00900, which is $9.00. Total $70.43 a month. The number people get wrong is the unit. You are not billed per API call, you are billed per location the response contains, so one search that returns 30 hotels costs 30 entities, not one.
The legacy free tier is genuinely good
The Content API FAQ states you get the first 5,000 API calls for free every month after you sign up. No competitor comes close: Yelp has no free tier at all and Google bills the review carrying SKU from the first call past a small monthly credit. If your volume is modest, TripAdvisor may cost you nothing.
Terra free is once, not monthly
Read this carefully before you plan around it. Terra states the first 1,000 billable entities for your account are free, which is a one time allowance over the life of the account rather than a monthly reset. It is an evaluation budget, not an ongoing subsidy, and it is a meaningful downgrade from the legacy 5,000 a month.
You must set a daily budget cap
TripAdvisor requires you to select a maximum daily budget when you sign up, and that budget is what determines your daily call ceiling and your queries per second. It is a useful guard against a runaway loop, but it also means a traffic spike can silently stop serving data rather than quietly overspending.
The constraint that decides most projects
How many reviews does the TripAdvisor API return?
Five per location, and there is no pagination past them. If you were planning a review archive, a sentiment trend or a competitor benchmark across a market, read this section before you write any code.
Up to 5 reviews and 5 photos
The Content API documents access to location details plus up to five reviews and five photos per location. A hotel with 4,000 TripAdvisor reviews arrives in your application as five of them. This is the same ceiling Google Places imposes, and it is the reason both APIs suit a listing card or a snippet block but cannot support anything that needs the whole review history.
No pagination, no selection
There is no cursor to walk past the fifth review and no parameter that asks for only the five bubble ones. You take what the endpoint returns. Combined with the display rule below about quoting from five bubble reviews, this means the reviews you are permitted to show and the reviews you actually receive are two different sets, and you have to handle the case where they do not overlap.
Terra bans the warehouse pattern outright
The legacy API merely recommended a 24 hour cache. The Terra caching policy is a different posture: caching, copying, downloading, storing or indexing content is not permitted for any content, except that the Location ID attribute can be cached, and only to improve the speed of your application. If your design assumed a local reviews table, that assumption does not survive the migration.
Billing follows locations, not requests
On Terra each location ID in a successful response counts as one billable entity, and geo endpoints count per geo ID. A broad Nearby Location Search that sweeps a city is therefore expensive in a way a per call meter would hide. Narrow your searches and cache the Location IDs, which is the one thing you are allowed to keep, then query details by ID.
| Endpoint | What it returns | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Location Details | Name, address, rating, ranking, category, contact fields | The property page or listing card |
| Location Reviews | Up to 5 reviews for the location | A social proof block, never an archive |
| Location Photos | Up to 5 photos for the location | Gallery thumbnails |
| Location Search | Locations matching a name or query string | Mapping your property to a Location ID once |
| Nearby Location Search | Locations near a latitude and longitude | Things to do near a hotel, priced per result |
Endpoint list per the Content API overview at tripadvisor-content-api.readme.io, read 31 August 2026. Terra publishes more than 20 endpoints covering the same ground plus recommendations, catalog search and feed downloads.
Where TripAdvisor is stricter than Google or Trustpilot
Can I display TripAdvisor reviews on my website?
Yes, and the answer is worth budgeting design time for. TripAdvisor publishes detailed display requirements that govern the logo, the bubble ratings, the quotation marks and even which reviews you are allowed to quote. A compliant TripAdvisor block looks like TripAdvisor, on purpose.
Reviews go inside quotation marks
Content from traveler reviews must appear within quotation marks, and you must make the source clear with wording such as Tripadvisor traveler review. You cannot silently blend TripAdvisor text into your own testimonial styling.
You must print the review date
TripAdvisor states plainly that you must include the date of the quoted review. That rules out an evergreen testimonial wall built from TripAdvisor quotes, because every quote carries a visible age.
The 4 out of 5 rule
You may quote from five bubble reviews only if the property rating is at least 4 out of 5. A property sitting at 3.8 cannot showcase its best reviews under these rules, which is exactly the property most motivated to.
Use their bubbles, not your stars
Always use the bubble ratings provided in the API response rather than your own rating icons. Minimum 55 pixels wide, white background, TripAdvisor Moss #00AA6C, or #84E9BD in dark mode where outlined unfilled bubbles are permitted.
Logo placement is specified
The logo and lockups must be displayed prominently and in close proximity to the content, at a minimum of 20 pixels high, and never inverted. Aggregate ratings additionally require the Ollie logo to the left of the bubble rating.
Rankings need a month and year
If you cite a ranking such as number 3 of 140 hotels, you must cite the specific month and year for that ranking reference. Rankings move, and TripAdvisor requires the timestamp that makes the claim checkable.
Summarized from the TripAdvisor Display Requirements at tripadvisor-content-api.readme.io and the Terra brand guidelines, read 31 August 2026. Read the source before you ship; these are the rules a partner review will check you against.
The thing most TripAdvisor API tutorials have not caught up with
Content API or Terra API: which should you build against?
TripAdvisor is moving partners onto Terra, a newer content delivery platform with its own documentation, pricing model and a published Legacy Content API Migration guide. If you are starting fresh in 2026, start on Terra. If you already run on the Content API, here is what changes.
| What changes | Legacy Content API | Terra API |
|---|---|---|
| Free allowance | 5,000 calls every month | 1,000 billable entities once per account |
| Billing unit | Per API call | Per location ID returned |
| Published unit price | Sliding tiered rate chosen at checkout | $0.01500 down to $0.00900 per entity |
| Caching | 24 hours recommended | Location ID only |
| Endpoints | 5 | More than 20, plus feeds and recommendations |
| Rate limits | 50 calls per second, 10,000 a day on Search | Derived from your daily budget, rolling 24 hours |
| Errors billed | Not published | 4xx and 5xx are not billable |
Compiled from tripadvisor-content-api.readme.io and docs.terra.tripadvisor.com, both read 31 August 2026. Terra documents its own allowlist management, versioning and a migration guide for developers moving off the Content API.
Faster than every other review API on this site
How do I get a TripAdvisor API key?
This is the part TripAdvisor gets right. There is no application form, no 60 day profile age requirement and no waiting on a partnerships team. You can be making calls the same afternoon.
Sign up on the developer portal
Create an account on the TripAdvisor developer site. Terra has its own portal and dashboard; the legacy Content API signs up through the readme documented flow.
Add a card and set a daily budget
A credit card is required even though the first calls are free, because it covers overages. You must select a maximum daily budget at this step, and it sets your call and QPS ceilings.
Allowlist your domains or IPs
The key will not serve requests from an origin you have not allowlisted. This is the single most common reason a fresh key appears broken on the first deployment.
Map your property to a Location ID
Run Location Search once for each property, store the Location ID, and query by ID from then on. The ID is also the one attribute you are permitted to cache indefinitely.
An honest read before you spend a sprint on it
Do you actually need the TripAdvisor API?
We sell review software, so treat this section with the skepticism it deserves. But the honest answer is that a large share of the people searching for this API do not need an API at all, and the ones who do need it for a reason no widget can serve.
Build on the API when
- You are a travel product showing content for properties you do not own, such as a booking engine, an OTA or a destination guide.
- You need TripAdvisor specifically, for hospitality credibility, and no other source substitutes for it.
- You run many properties and need location metadata, rankings and categories rather than just a few quotes.
- You are building a nearby attractions feature where Nearby Location Search is the whole product.
Skip it when
- You just want social proof on your own website. Five quoted reviews with mandatory dates and TripAdvisor branding is a worse testimonial section than reviews you own outright.
- You wanted a review archive or a sentiment trend. The five review ceiling and the Terra caching rules both block it.
- Your reputation problem is really a volume problem. More recent reviews across Google and your own site moves bookings further than a TripAdvisor embed does.
- You need reviews you can restyle to your brand. The display requirements exist precisely to prevent that.
What we do instead
ReviewJet collects, monitors and displays Google, G2, Trustpilot and direct reviews through one embeddable widget, and runs the request sequences that grow how many reviews you have in the first place. Flat pricing from $24 a month, no key, no quota, no display requirements to comply with. TripAdvisor is not one of our sources. If TripAdvisor content is the requirement, the API above is your route and we would rather say so than sell you something that does not do it.
Questions people actually search
TripAdvisor API questions, answered
Keep reading
Related review API and platform pages
Yelp API pricing
The other hospitality API. Plans from $229 a month, no free tier, and three review excerpts of about 160 characters.
Google Reviews API
The five review cap on Places, the Business Profile approval process, and the quota trick that tells you if you are approved.
Trustpilot API
The add-on that sits on a $319 a month floor, the public and private split, and the 100,000 record ceiling.
Google Business Profile API
Approval prerequisites, the 300 QPM quota signal, and why agency applications get rejected.
Review API pricing compared
Google, Yelp, Trustpilot and G2 priced side by side at source, with what each one actually returns.
Reviews aggregator
One feed across Google, G2 and Trustpilot instead of three integrations with three sets of display rules.
Reviews on your site without an API key, a quota or a display audit
Google, G2, Trustpilot and direct reviews in one widget, with collection sequences that grow the number you have. Flat pricing from $24 a month.
From $24/mo, billed yearly. No per-review fees.