trivago

Is trivago safe to use?

For comparing hotel prices, yes. trivago does not take your booking or your card, we found no confirmed breach of its accounts, and you can use it without signing in. Two things deserve caution. Its app is built around advertising, so your searches feed ad tracking. And its rankings have already been found misleading in court: in 2022 Australia's Federal Court ordered it to pay A$44.7 million. We score trivago 54/100.

Why Australia fined trivago

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued trivago over the way it ranked hotels. The Federal Court found in January 2020 that trivago's algorithm put rooms from the sites paying the highest cost-per-click fee at the top, while presenting them as the cheapest or best deals. Often they were not. In April 2022 Justice Moshinsky ordered a penalty of A$44.7 million, about US$33 million at the time, and wrote that "the loss or damage caused by Trivago's contraventions was substantial". trivago said it had changed its site to comply.

That case still shapes how to read the app. trivago earns money when you click through to a booking site, so the first offer it shows is the outcome of a ranking, and paid placement is part of the business. trivago's own annual report for 2025 says regulators in Europe, Australia and elsewhere keep looking at how comparison sites rank results and present discounts. It also reports an Israeli class action over its rankings and discount claims, which went back to court after mediation ended. By August 2026 the plaintiff had narrowed it to one claim about how trivago presents recommended offers; trivago filed its defence in May 2026, and the case was in discovery, with no ruling, according to its half-year report.

In the UK, trivago was one of six hotel booking sites that gave formal undertakings to the Competition and Markets Authority in 2019, alongside Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda and ebookers. They promised to stop pressure selling and misleading discount claims and to say when commission affects the order of results.

What the app tracks

trivago does not need much data to work, and it collects fairly little. What it does collect is aimed at advertising. Apple's label lists search history, device ID and advertising data as used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Precise location, search history and your user ID are linked to you for analytics and personalisation.

Google Play is more direct about sharing. It says device IDs and app interactions are shared with other companies for advertising and marketing, and so are name, email and user IDs if you have an account. The privacy policy, last updated in October 2025, names advertising and marketing firms, social networks and fraud-prevention services among the companies that receive data, some as processors for trivago and some as independent controllers using it for their own purposes. When trivago served us its policy at its US address, it came in German. In the EU, marketing cookies need your consent. In the US, people have filed arbitration demands, the first group on 18 March 2026, alleging that tracking technologies on trivago's website broke the California Invasion of Privacy Act, according to trivago's half-year report. trivago says it has substantial defences; these are claims, not findings, and as private claims they do not change the score.

Security

Most trivago users never give it card details, which limits what a breach could expose. trivago runs a private bug bounty on HackerOne, open to invited researchers only, and its 2025 annual report says its security programme is modelled on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISO 27001 and includes penetration testing. In June 2022 a hacker group listed trivago.co.il among more than 20 Israeli travel sites it said it had breached, most of them run by one local operator, according to The Jerusalem Post. We found no confirmation from trivago, so it does not lower the score.

How to use trivago well

1. Treat the first result as an ad-influenced ranking: open two or three offers before choosing.
2. Check the final price, fees and cancellation terms on the booking site, which may differ from the rate trivago showed.
3. Note which company you are booking with; its terms and customer service apply, not trivago's.
4. Use trivago without an account if you only want to compare prices.
5. Refuse tracking when the app asks on an iPhone, and decline marketing cookies on the website.

How we scored it

Privacy (42) is the weakest factor, since searches and identifiers feed ad tracking. Regulatory record (45) is close behind, because a court-ordered A$44.7 million penalty over misleading rankings is a large consumer fine. Security (66) is the strongest factor, helped by holding little sensitive data. KAYAK scores 60 and Skyscanner 63.