ETG API (RateHawk)

# Fix list: ETG API (RateHawk)

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ratehawk, the October 2026 research run, assessed 8 October 2026. Grade D, 53 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on ETG API (RateHawk): work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Payments & pricing, 10 out of 100, up to 11.3 more on the total

Why it scored 10: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). No public price list, with net rates and limits set by contract (0). The landing page says the API key is free and the sandbox makes no charges, but a key comes from an account manager after registration and an agreement, so we give half (10 of 20). A person registers, requests keys and passes certification (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 2. Reliability, 45 out of 100, up to 11 more on the total

Why it scored 45: Graded as a hosted API. status.emergingtravel.com is a Better Stack page with nine monitors and 90 days of daily history, but its API monitors are named for the deprecated worldota.net hosts and it carries no written incident reports (15 of 20). The orders monitor recorded downtime of 6.9 hours on 21 July 2026, 2.4 hours on 24 July, 3.0 hours on 28 July and 1.3 hours on 14 September, and five other monitors show the 21 July outage, so we read several major outages (0 of 30). Request limits are per endpoint and per key, shown in four response headers and the overview call, with numbers only as examples (8 of 15). A 429 answers `endpoint_exceeded_limit` with the reset time, the docs say to retry 5xx with a cap on repeats, and `partner_order_id` makes booking retries safe, with no backoff guidance (12 of 15). No SLA found (0). Version 3 is generally available (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 3. Security & auth, 41 out of 100, up to 10.3 more on the total

Why it scored 41: HTTP Basic keys, separate for sandbox, test and production and per contract, never in the URL. No scopes, and no rotation or revocation procedure was found in the docs (20 of 30). Endpoint permissions are set per key by the account manager, a host or IP allowlist exists (`not_allowed_host`), and the sandbox makes no real bookings, with no confirmation step for cancellation (10 of 20). Hotel descriptions and guest reviews are third-party text and the docs give no injection guidance (3 of 15). Every response carries a `request_id` and bookings can be listed, with no operator log view documented (4 of 15). Card tokenisation is described as PCI DSS and booking webhooks carry an HMAC signature. No `security.txt`, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification page was found (4 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 4. Agent ergonomics, 69 out of 100, up to 5 more on the total

Why it scored 69: Search takes `hotels_limit`, a `timeout` and filters, and static content comes as dumps, but there is no field selection and booking responses are long (15 of 25). Bookings are paged with `page_size` and `page_number`, search is filtered by stars, kind, meal and price, with no paging in search (14 of 20). Errors are short slugs with a `debug` object naming the endpoint, limits and validation error, each documented with what to do next (18 of 20). `partner_order_id` identifies a booking, `lock` and `double_booking_finish` reject duplicates, and the docs give retry rules for booking and cancellation (16 of 20). A booking takes at least five calls, and the Python and PHP SDKs date from 2021 and point at the deprecated host (6 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 5. Transparency & trust, 56 out of 100, up to 3.9 more on the total

Made of editorial 32, provenance 80.

Why it scored 56: Closed service whose partner agreement is not published, so the terms an integrator accepts cannot be read in advance. The SDKs are MIT (5 of 30). The RateHawk privacy notice, version 1.0 of 8 May 2026, names nine group entities as controllers and says data is kept until the purpose is achieved, with no periods and no DPA found (12 of 30). Deprecations appear as dated changelog entries with no stated policy, and the old sandbox host was given six days' notice on 24 June 2026 (10 of 20). Recipients are described by type, with no sub-processor list or data locations (5 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Terms of service: not found (0 of 10)
- security.txt: not found (0 of 10)

## 6. Maintenance & community, 65 out of 100, up to 3.1 more on the total

Why it scored 65: The changelog's latest entry is 5 October 2026 (30). It has 15 dated entries between 10 July and 5 October 2026 (20). A public changelog, a named API support team and an address for support, with no public forum or issue tracker for the API (10 of 15). The official SDKs exist but are stale. `papi-sdk` 1.1.1 dates from 19 January 2021 and the PHP SDK from June 2021, and both default to `api.worldota.net` (3 of 15). The SDK repositories have CI workflows and no commits since 2021 (2 of 10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## 7. Schema & documentation, 85 out of 100, up to 2.4 more on the total

Why it scored 85: A public Swagger 2.0 file covers the B2B and Content APIs with 48 operations and 171 definitions. It lists only a 200 response per operation and leaves out the Affiliate API (20 of 25). `llms.txt` and a Markdown copy of each page at `index.md` (10). Pages state each call's purpose, which calls are required and where a call should not be used, such as choosing rates from search results (16 of 20). Fields are typed and marked required, with five enums in the spec and GET calls that take JSON in a `data` query parameter (10 of 15). Each call page has sandbox and production examples and a list of error slugs, and the sandbox reproduces named errors (14 of 15). Version in the path and a changelog with 64 dated entries in 2026 (15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- The partner agreement's terms, including any SLA, data processing terms and limits on automated or AI use, are not public
- Whether the worldota.net production host still answers and on what date it stops, since the docs call it deprecated without a date
- Whether the status page's worldota.net monitors reflect the ratehawk.com API hosts
- Real request limits for a new sandbox or production key, since the docs show only examples
- How a partner rotates or revokes a key
- unchecked: the old docs site at docs-old.emergingtravel.com and the Postman collection were not read
- unchecked: security certifications of Emerging Travel Group beyond the PCI DSS statement on the card token page

## Weaknesses

- No self-serve key. Registration is followed by a request to an account manager, and the docs say an agreement must be signed before use
- No public price list or API agreement was found. Rates and request limits are set per contract
- The status page's orders monitor recorded downtime of an hour or more on four days between 21 July and 14 September 2026, with no written incident reports
- Both official SDKs (Python and PHP) last changed in 2021 and default to `api.worldota.net`, a host the docs call deprecated
- No `security.txt`, disclosure policy or security certification page was found on ratehawk.com, emergingtravel.com or the docs site

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- Call `/api/b2b/v3/overview/` first. It lists the endpoints the key may use and each one's request limit.
- Keep sandbox IDs, keys and hashes inside `api-sandbox.ratehawk.com`. Sandbox region IDs are limited to 2011, 2395, 2734 and 6053839.
- Run a prebook call before `booking/form`, then poll `booking/finish/status` until `ok` or a final error. Treat `timeout`, `unknown` and 5xx as still in progress.
- Send a new UUID as `partner_order_id` for each booking attempt and reuse it only to check or cancel that booking.
- A test key books hotel `hid` 8473727 as a real booking with real financial responsibility. Cancel it afterwards.

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.