Vacation-rental DATA for developers · REST + MCP · self-serve
The vacation rental API for developers, not vacationers.
This isn’t a booking site — it’s the data layer under one. ScoutingAPI returns live vacation-rental search, availability, and price across Airbnb, Vrbo, and the OTAs in one unified schema, so you build pricing, monitoring, and search on top instead of scraping four sites.
Airbnb + Vrbo (+ Booking & Google) in one call · 100 credits free, no card · failed or empty calls cost 0 credits
GET /v1/search
?location=Sibenik, HR
&checkIn=2026-07-13&checkOut=2026-07-20
&adults=2&children=2
&platforms=airbnb,vrbo{
"data": [
{
"id": "stays_airbnb_42307961", "platform": "airbnb",
"platformListingId": "42307961",
"url": "https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/42307961",
"name": "Seafront villa near Sibenik with pool",
"propertyType": "villa",
"guestRating": 4.92, "ratingScale": 5, "reviewCount": 86,
"maxOccupancy": 8, "bedrooms": 4, "bathrooms": 3,
"amenities": ["pool", "kitchen", "wifi", "air_conditioning", "sea_view"],
"host": { "name": "Ana", "isSuperhost": true },
"price": { "currency": "EUR", "nightlyPrice": 375, "totalPrice": 2625, "nights": 7 }
},
{
"id": "stays_vrbo_5663861ha", "platform": "vrbo",
"platformListingId": "5663861ha",
"url": "https://www.vrbo.com/5663861ha",
"name": "Awesome home in Pirovac with swimming pool",
"propertyType": "house",
"guestRating": 4.8, "ratingScale": 5, "reviewCount": 142,
"maxOccupancy": 8, "bedrooms": 3, "bathrooms": 2,
"amenities": ["pool", "kitchen", "air_conditioning", "wifi", "bbq"],
"host": { "name": "Croatia Retreats", "isSuperhost": false },
"price": { "currency": "EUR", "nightlyPrice": 350, "totalPrice": 2450, "nights": 7 }
}
],
"meta": {
"platforms": ["airbnb", "vrbo"], "cached": false,
"creditsCharged": 10, "currency": "EUR",
"platformResults": [
{ "platform": "airbnb", "status": "ok", "count": 1 },
{ "platform": "vrbo", "status": "ok", "count": 1 }
]
}
}Show, don’t sell
Airbnb and Vrbo — same object, same call.
This is an actual multi-platform /v1/search response. An Airbnb villa and a Vrbo house come back in one array with an identical shape — normalized property type, rating, amenities, and an embedded price. Add Booking.com and Google when you want hotels in the same feed.
platformairbnb or vrbo (or booking / google) — one merged array from every source you request.
propertyTypeNormalized: hotel | apartment | house | villa | cottage | other.
guestRating + ratingScaleThe rating and its native scale (Airbnb and Vrbo both use 5) so comparison is honest.
amenities[]One canonical taxonomy (pool, wifi, sea_view, …) across Airbnb and Vrbo.
priceEmbedded nightly + total price with fees when you pass dates — identical shape per platform.
meta.creditsCharged5 credits per successful platform leg — and 0 for any leg that fails or is empty.
Vrbo has no self-serve public API and Airbnb has none at all — yet here they are in one normalized array. The fields don’t change between them: normalized propertyType, guestRating on its native 5-point scale, the canonical amenity vocabulary, and an embedded price when you pass dates. Each failed platform leg would contribute 0 credits.
Self-serve access
Instant access. No partner application. No sales call.
Vrbo’s only “API” is gated connectivity-provider onboarding for property managers, and Airbnb has no public API — while enterprise STR data (AirDNA) is sales-gated. ScoutingAPI is self-serve: sign up, get a key, make your first vacation-rental call in under five minutes.
100 free credits — no credit card
Enough to build and test vacation-rental search against real Airbnb + Vrbo responses before you decide anything.
scout_test_ sandbox at zero cost
Deterministic Airbnb and Vrbo fixtures wire up your integration before you spend a credit.
One schema across every platform
Add Booking.com and Google Hotels to the same call without changing your code — the object shape never changes.
- 1Get your free key
- 2curl the /v1/search example
- 3Ship
The trust wedge
Reliability you can build a product on.
Scrapers and RapidAPI listings give you raw data and a shrug; connectivity portals give you a PM contract and a queue. We run a product — monitoring, multi-actor failover, retries, and caching behind one contract.
99.9% monthly uptime SLA
Committed on the ScoutingAPI response envelope and published on a public status page. Multi-actor failover, retries, and caching sit behind one contract.
Failed calls cost 0 credits
Failed, empty, or blocked calls are never charged. On an Airbnb + Vrbo call each failed leg contributes 0 and is surfaced as meta.partial — you pay only for what succeeded.
Airbnb and Vrbo, one schema
The unified Property object is identical for an Airbnb and a Vrbo listing — and for a Booking or Google hotel. Write your integration once.
Runnable in five minutes
curl it, import the SDK, or hand it to your agent.
Every sample calls /v1/search across Airbnb + Vrbo in one request, copy-paste runnable against your free key and generated from @scoutingapi/sdk so it never drifts from the live API.
curl -s -G "https://api.scoutingapi.com/v1/search" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer scout_test_YOUR_KEY" \
--data-urlencode "location=Sibenik, HR" \
--data-urlencode "checkIn=2026-07-13" \
--data-urlencode "checkOut=2026-07-20" \
--data-urlencode "adults=2" \
--data-urlencode "children=2" \
--data-urlencode "platforms=airbnb,vrbo"
# Airbnb + Vrbo in one call, one schema — plus Booking/Google when you want hotels too. scout_test_ is $0.The MCP tab adds ScoutingAPI’s native server (Streamable HTTP, OAuth 2.1 / PKCE) to Claude, Cursor, or n8n — then the agent calls search_stays({ location: "Sibenik, HR", checkIn: "2026-07-13", checkOut: "2026-07-20", platforms: ["airbnb","vrbo"] }) and reads the merged rentals straight from the tool.
The honest comparison
Vacation-rental data: scraper, gated portal, analytics tool, or ScoutingAPI?
| Capability | ScoutingAPI | Raw scraper / RapidAPI | Vrbo / connectivity portal | STR analytics (AirROI / AirDNA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access | Self-serve, free key in minutes | Self-serve, but per-actor | Gated PM / connectivity onboarding | $10 min (AirROI) / ~$50k, sales-gated (AirDNA) |
| Platform coverage | Airbnb + Vrbo (+ Booking + Google) | One platform per actor | Vrbo inventory only (for PMs) | Airbnb / Vrbo only (analytics) |
| Output schema | One unified schema, every platform | Different shape per actor | Channel-manager specific | Analytics-specific |
| Live availability & price | Yes — search, availability, price for real dates | Yes (raw) | Your own inventory only | No — historical analytics (occupancy, ADR, RevPAR) |
| Cross-OTA price-compare | Yes — one property, every OTA, computed min/median | No | No | No |
| Reliability | 99.9% SLA, status page, failover | None (~86% success, no SLA) | Platform-dependent | Vendor-dependent |
| Failed-call billing | Free — 0 credits | You pay per attempt | n/a | n/a |
| Agent-native (MCP) | First-class MCP + OAuth + Connectors | Bolt-on per actor | No | No |
| Pricing | Predictable credits + free tier | Pay-per-result | Contracts / revenue share | PAYG / enterprise contract |
The honest read: scrapers are powerful but you assemble and babysit the pipeline; connectivity portals only expose a property manager’s own inventory; analytics tools answer “how did this market perform,” not “what’s bookable now.” ScoutingAPI delivers live vacation-rental data across Airbnb and Vrbo — in one schema, with cross-OTA price-compare and an SLA.
Built for real work
What developers and agents build on vacation-rental data.
Not “extract listings” — the outcomes a specific reader recognizes, with Airbnb and Vrbo in one normalized feed.
Investment & arbitrage underwriting
Pull live nightly rates and availability across Airbnb and Vrbo for a target market and underwrite a deal in your own model — not just one source.
Dynamic & competitive pricing
Benchmark a host’s nightly price against comparable Airbnb + Vrbo inventory for the same dates and feed a pricing engine that doesn’t guess.
Portfolio benchmarking
Track a portfolio against its local competitive set — rating, amenities, price, availability — in one normalized feed across both platforms.
Availability & price-drop alerts
Poll /v1/availability for a property and date range and fire a Slack, email, or Telegram alert on a change — shippable from /workflows in minutes.
Cross-platform rental search
Power a rental-search experience that lists Airbnb and Vrbo side-by-side for the same dates — one schema, one call, no per-platform integration.
Rental-sourcing agents
Give your AI agent a dependable rental tool: “villa with a pool near Split, July 13–20, sleeps 8” → normalized Airbnb + Vrbo results via the native MCP server.
Answers
Vacation Rental API — frequently asked questions
The questions developers actually search — answered in full, with FAQ structured data for rich results.
Build on vacation-rental data — Airbnb, Vrbo, and more.
100 credits, no credit card. Search Airbnb and Vrbo in one call, in under five minutes.
Airbnb + Vrbo in one schema · failed calls cost 0 credits · native MCP included