How Does trivago Make Money? The Click Business, Explained

How does trivago make money if it never charges you a cent? It sells your click. Booking sites and hotels such as Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda bid in an auction to show you their rates, and trivago gets paid when you click through to one of them, either a fixed fee per click or a share of the booking that follows.

Those fees, which trivago calls referral revenue, made up €532.9 million of its €548.9 million revenue in 2025, or 97%, according to full-year results released on February 3, 2026. The twist: its two biggest customers are Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, and Expedia also controls the company.

How does trivago make money from a free hotel search?

trivago is a metasearch engine. For most of its history it didn’t sell rooms at all. It pulls rates from many sellers for more than 7 million hotels and other properties in over 190 countries, and lines them up side by side.

Behind every search sits an auction. Advertisers submit their rates and bid for your click. When you tap “View deal”, you leave trivago and land on the seller’s site, where the booking happens. It’s a referral marketplace, one of the common business model types where the platform earns from routing demand rather than owning supply.

Cost-per-click vs cost-per-acquisition

Most advertisers pay on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis: a fee for every click-out, whether or not you book.

trivago also offers cost-per-acquisition (CPA), where the advertiser pays a percentage of the booking value only when your click turns into a reservation. CPC puts the risk on the advertiser. CPA puts it on trivago, which is why management keeps citing conversion; in August 2026 it said its conversion rate was up 64% since Q2 2023.

Is there a fee for using trivago?

No. Travelers pay nothing to search or click; the room price is set by whichever site you book on. Hotels can pay for trivago Business Studio, a set of listing and analytics tools, which trivago counts under “other revenue.”

trivago’s revenue streams: the latest reported split

trivago reports referral revenue for three regions, plus that catch-all “other revenue” line.

In the first half of 2026 the Americas grew 16% and Developed Europe 14%, while Rest of World fell 11% on weaker currencies and the Middle East conflict. India isn’t among the five countries trivago names as that segment’s largest (Japan, Turkey, Australia, Poland and New Zealand).

The new money: trivago DEALS and Book & Go

On July 31, 2025, trivago completed its purchase of Holisto, a hotel-booking business it had already invested in, and renamed it trivago DEALS. Through it, trivago now sells some rooms itself and books revenue on the transaction, closer to an online travel agency or Airbnb’s booking-fee model than to a pure click seller.

That powers Book & Go, trivago’s in-app booking flow, which management said in May 2026 had become a top-five player in its own marketplace. Other revenue reached €17.0 million in Q2 2026, about 10% of the quarter’s €168.4 million.

Two caveats. Q2 2026 included four months of trivago DEALS results instead of three, because trivago dropped a one-month reporting lag. And when Book & Go sends a click to trivago’s own DEALS unit, the internal fee is eliminated, so some money shifts from referral to other revenue. That’s why trivago now guides only on total revenue.

Its filings still call these side streams typically not significant. At a tenth of a quarter’s sales, that wording is getting stale.

Where the money goes: €76 of every €100 on ads

trivago’s one huge cost is buying traffic. In 2025 it spent €418.2 million on TV, search ads, display, affiliates and app marketing, 76% of revenue.

Its key metric is return on advertising spend (ROAS). Global ROAS was 128.4% in 2025, so each €1 of advertising brought back about €1.28 in referral revenue. The €0.28 left over pays for staff, tech, offices and any profit.

Is trivago profitable?

Barely. Net income was €11.2 million in 2025, after a €23.7 million loss in 2024. That 2025 profit had help from an €8.8 million one-off tax release and a €3.2 million accounting gain on the Holisto deal. Strip those two out and my rough math puts 2025 near break-even.

The bet is that TV campaigns build “branded” traffic, people who type trivago directly or open the app, which is cheaper than paying for every visitor through search ads. Logged-in members drove more than 30% of referral revenue in Q1 2026. In its Q2 2026 results, trivago raised its 2026 outlook to mid-teens revenue growth and about €30 million in Adjusted EBITDA. That’s a forecast, not a result.

Google is the risk that never leaves the filings. trivago lists reliance on Google, and Google’s competing hotel search, among its main risks, and is pursuing an antitrust damages claim against Google over self-preferencing in hotel metasearch.

Who owns trivago, and why it matters for the money

Expedia Group controls trivago. As of March 31, 2026, Expedia held 59.1% of trivago’s equity and 83.9% of the voting power, per trivago’s Q1 2026 interim financial statements. Expedia bought its controlling stake in 2013.

The gap comes from dual-class shares: Expedia’s Class B shares carry ten votes each, while the public’s Class A shares trade on Nasdaq as ADSs under the ticker TRVG.

Here’s what makes the business unusual: its controlling shareholder is also one of its two biggest customers. Expedia Group brands such as Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo paid 33% of trivago’s 2025 revenue, and Booking Holdings brands such as Booking.com and Agoda paid 39%, per the 2025 Form 20-F. Booking Holdings also owns KAYAK, a direct trivago rival.

That concentration is easing. In Q2 2026, Expedia brands supplied 28% of referral revenue before intersegment eliminations, down from 38% a year earlier, while Booking’s share held at 37%.

Why Expedia’s trivago number looks smaller

Expedia’s 2025 annual report says trivago generated $417 million of “third-party revenue” in 2025. trivago reported €548.9 million. Both are right.

Expedia leaves out what its own brands paid trivago, since that’s cash moving inside one group. Remove that 33% and about €368 million is left. At the ECB’s 2025 average rate of $1.13 per euro, that’s roughly $416 million, within rounding of Expedia’s figure.

What is the trivago controversy?

The big one played out in Australia. In April 2022 the Federal Court ordered trivago to pay A$44.7 million in penalties in a case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

The court had found in January 2020 that trivago misled consumers by suggesting its site would find them the cheapest rates, when its algorithm placed significant weight on which booking site paid the highest cost-per-click fee. Its strike-through prices also often compared a standard room with a luxury one at the same hotel.

My take: the case is the clearest picture of the tension built into this model. trivago is paid for your click, not for your savings. Regulators can police how deals are presented, but the incentive doesn’t go away.

What are the disadvantages of using trivago?

It’s still a quick way to see what a hotel costs across sellers. The catches are practical.

You usually book with someone else. Cancellations, refunds and complaints go through the site you clicked to, so check who that is before you pay.

The order comes out of an auction. Advertisers bid for placement, so the first deal you see isn’t automatically the cheapest. Open the other offers and compare the final price, including taxes and fees.

So what kind of business is trivago, really?

For most of its life, trivago has been a toll booth between Google and the big booking sites: it buys attention with ads, then resells it as clicks at a thin markup.

trivago DEALS changes that a little. Selling rooms itself puts trivago in partial competition with the booking sites paying 72% of its bills. Watch the “other revenue” line. If it keeps climbing, the answer to how trivago makes money will need a second paragraph.

FAQ