Sabre GDS API
One of the world's three major Global Distribution Systems — Sabre powers bookings for 400,000+ travel agents, 100+ airlines, and major corporate travel management companies globally.
What is Sabre?
Sabre Corporation is one of the three major Global Distribution Systems (GDS) — alongside Amadeus and Travelport — that form the backbone of global travel distribution. Founded in 1960 as a joint venture between American Airlines and IBM, Sabre is today an independent travel technology company that processes billions of travel transactions annually.
Sabre is particularly dominant in the North American market and is the preferred GDS for many large US carriers, corporate travel management companies, and enterprise-level travel agencies. Major airlines on Sabre include American Airlines, Delta, United, Southwest, and all international carriers distributed in the North American market.
For Indian travel businesses, Sabre is commonly used by IATA-accredited agencies targeting high-value corporate and international travel segments. Sabre's strengths are its depth of content, reliable uptime, and mature toolset for complex multi-city and corporate travel itineraries.
Core API Products
Sabre's flagship fare shopping API. Returns the lowest available fares for domestic and international routes with support for flexible dates, alternate airports, and branded fares.
Full PNR (Passenger Name Record) creation, modification, and management. Supports multi-passenger, multi-segment, and multi-city bookings with all associated passenger data.
Hotel availability and rates across 100,000+ properties. Full integration with Sabre Hospitality Solutions for direct hotel chain connections and wholesale rates.
Real-time car rental availability from major suppliers (Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, Budget) at 20,000+ locations globally.
Dedicated APIs for TMC (Travel Management Company) workflows — traveller profiles, corporate fares, policy compliance, approval workflows and expense reporting.
Sabre's NDC gateway provides access to airline NDC content alongside traditional GDS content — allowing agencies to offer the best of both worlds in a single interface.
Getting Started with Sabre APIs
- 1Register at developer.sabre.com — create a free developer account to access documentation, SDKs and the test environment.
- 2Obtain test credentials — Sabre provides sandbox credentials for development. Some advanced APIs may require a commercial agreement for sandbox access.
- 3Authenticate using token API — Sabre uses a two-step token authentication: exchange your client ID and secret for a short-lived access token.
- 4Explore using the API Explorer — Sabre's developer portal has an interactive API explorer allowing you to test endpoints directly from your browser.
- 5Sign a commercial agreement — for production access, you need an IATA number or a commercial agreement with Sabre. This requires going through a Sabre sales representative.
- 6Complete certification — Sabre requires API integrations to pass a certification test before going live to ensure data integrity and proper usage.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Deepest content for US/North American carriers
- Excellent for corporate travel and TMC workflows
- Mature platform with 60+ years of travel data
- Strong NDC Connect bridges legacy and modern distribution
- Reliable SLA — industry-leading uptime
- REST APIs available alongside legacy SOAP
Cons
- Requires commercial agreement for production
- SOAP/XML still prevalent on older endpoints
- Less suitable for startups — enterprise-focused
- Slower to implement than developer-first APIs
- Cost structure complex for small agencies
Integrate Sabre GDS into Your Travel Platform
UP17 Communication helps travel agencies and portal developers integrate Sabre APIs for flight search, hotel booking, corporate travel and PNR management.
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