Price Tracking & Alerts

Build fare monitors that poll routes on a schedule, compare prices over time, and notify users when fares drop.

Polling workflow

Run the same fare search on a cron schedule (e.g. every few hours). The API returns consistent, structured data that's easy to diff across runs.

curl -X POST "https://ignav.com/api/fares/one-way" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"origin":"SFO","destination":"HND","departure_date":"2026-05-25"}'

What data to store

For each poll, store the route, date, timestamp, and the lowest price across all itineraries (i.e. compute the minimum of each itinerary.price.amount). Optionally store the full itinerary list if you want to track specific carriers or flight times.

Comparing results over time

Compare the lowest price from each poll against the user's target threshold. When a fare drops below the threshold, fire a notification. You can also track the trend — if the lowest price has dropped 10%+ since the last check, that's often worth alerting on even without a hard threshold.

Operational notes

Fares change continuously. Polling more than once per hour for the same route and date is rarely useful. Keep a short polling window — start monitoring 1–3 months before departure and stop a few days before.

Only successful requests (HTTP 200) are billed. Empty itinerary arrays are valid successful responses — they mean no flights matched, not that the request failed.

Booking links are optional for alerts. You can show fare data and let users decide when to book, or include a booking link in the alert itself using ignav_id.