Look-to-book ratio calculator
The look-to-book ratio is the number of requests a seller sends to a supplier for every booking. Enter your own figures to estimate it and see which lever reduces it most. The defaults are example inputs only — replace them with your data. Nothing leaves your browser.
- Supplier requests / month
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- Requests avoided by cache
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- Conversion (searches → bookings)
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- Estimated excess fee / month
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What each lever would do
Ratio after one change, everything else unchanged.
How the calculation works
Supplier requests = searches × requests per search × (1 − cache hit rate), and the ratio is supplier requests divided by bookings. The duplicate and bot share does not change today's figure — those requests already reach suppliers — but it sets how much the filtering levers can save. If you enter a contracted limit and a fee, requests abovelimit × bookings are priced at your fee per thousand. Real contracts differ — some count only availability calls, some measure per channel or per period — so treat this as a planning estimate and check your agreement.
The engineering behind each lever is covered in Look-to-book ratios: why travel search costs moneyand caching strategies for flight search.
Frequently asked questions
How is the look-to-book ratio calculated?
Divide the number of searches or availability requests sent to a supplier by the number of bookings made with that supplier over the same period. 400,000 supplier requests and 200 bookings give a ratio of 2,000:1.
Does caching lower the look-to-book ratio?
Yes. Searches answered from cache never reach the supplier, so they do not count towards the ratio. Cached prices must still be re-checked with the supplier before booking.
Should bot traffic be counted?
Suppliers count every request they receive, including those triggered by bots and scrapers. Filtering automated traffic before it fans out to suppliers is one of the most effective ways to reduce the ratio.