You open a travel app, watch the price prediction tick down, feel the dopamine hit of locking in a deal, swipe to book, and then the charge on your card is somehow bigger than the total you just confirmed.
That gap, it turns out, was not a glitch.
It was a design decision, one that a well-funded startup made deliberately, and one that federal regulators finally put a dollar figure on.
The app millions of travelers downloaded to outsmart airline pricing
Hopper is the travel app known for its AI-driven flight and hotel price predictions.
The pitch was irresistible: let the algorithm watch fares around the clock, tell you exactly when to buy, and save you money that humans sitting at a keyboard would miss.
Hopper launched in January 2014 and surpassed 120 million lifetime downloads worldwide by 2024.
That kind of traction attracted serious capital, and total funding raised by Hopper amounted to more than 700 million U.S. dollars, making it one of the best-known names in travel tech.
Most users never questioned the checkout screen. Why would they? The app said right there: no hidden fees.
What the checkout screen actually showed when you were ready to pay
The booking flow looked clean. A total price appeared. A slider sat at the bottom. But there was more happening underneath.
At the heart of the complaint are two charges, a “Tip” fee and a “VIP Support” fee, that Hopper added to bookings without clear disclosure. In both cases, the fee was technically optional but hidden and pre-selected.
Until mid-2023, when consumers were ready to purchase their booking, they saw a screen with the “total price” and a Swipe to Book button that failed to adequately disclose the added charges. Those “optional” fees were pre-selected and hidden on an app screen that only appeared if the consumer scrolled down.
Most people never scrolled. They swiped.
The complaint alleges that the company’s own internal testing showed that the fees were deceptively hidden: whereas 15% of users paid a disclosed and unselected Tip fee, 75% paid the fee when it was hidden and pre-selected, confirming that if Hopper adequately disclosed these fees and made them unselected by default, most consumers would decline them.
In internal emails, employees described the practices as “tricking users” and “deceptive UX.”
That internal knowledge is what made the pattern particularly striking to regulators.
The case is another example of regulators targeting the use of dark patterns, or interface designs that manipulate users into making choices they might not otherwise have made, including those that hide charges, pre-select optional add-ons, or make it difficult to understand the true cost of a service.
Hopper is not alone in this. Security researchers tracking data breach notices have noted repeatedly that consumer trust in familiar apps runs deep, which is exactly why design-level manipulation is so effective.
The promise that came with a “Price Freeze” and why it did not quite freeze
Beyond the pre-selected fees, Hopper also offered something called a Price Freeze, which sounded like a straightforward consumer protection.
The Price Freeze product was initially advertised as a refundable deposit, but was later changed to a non-refundable fee. Even after switching to a fee-based model, Hopper continued to describe the Price Freeze as a “deposit,” resulting in 45% of consumers incorrectly believing that the Price Freeze fee would be refunded.
The VIP Support promise had a similar gap.
Hopper overstated the benefits of its VIP Support add-on, promising near-instant customer service that frequently failed to materialize.
The FTC alleged that Hopper misrepresented the benefits of its VIP Support and Price Freeze services. In reality, many consumers were unable to receive a response at all, and those who did receive a response often waited only to receive an automated message that did not offer any actual assistance.
Paying for priority access and then waiting indefinitely is a specific kind of frustration that is hard to dispute in court.
A $35 million federal settlement and the total that regulators added up
On July 2, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $35 million settlement with travel booking app Hopper Inc. over allegedly deceptive hidden fees.
Although Hopper billed itself as “the travel app with no hidden fees,” the FTC alleged that the popular travel booking app unlawfully charged consumers tens of millions of dollars in hidden, frequently preselected fees.
The FTC alleged that Hopper collected approximately $18 million in Tip fees and $67.6 million in VIP Support fees between 2021 and 2023.
That is a combined total of $85.6 million from charges users largely did not know they were agreeing to.
The complaint charges that Hopper’s fee practices generally violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, and that certain lodging-related practices also specifically violated the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, commonly known as the “Junk Fee Rule,” which became effective in May 2025.
You can read the full complaint and proposed settlement order on the FTC’s official press release.
“Hopper deceived consumers by showing them a total price that did not include hidden, pre-selected fees,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The settlement hits differently knowing that VC-backed startups in the AI-powered app space are raising at record valuations precisely because consumer trust in algorithmic tools runs so high.
What the settlement actually changes for anyone booking travel on their phone
Under the proposed order, Hopper must pay the full $35 million toward consumer redress.
The company is also prohibited from misrepresenting any fees and must clearly and conspicuously disclose all applicable fees and charges, as well as the total price of any goods or services.
That means a real checkout total before the swipe, not after.
The settlement is the latest in a string of federal actions targeting so-called junk fees and reinforces a regulatory throughline that now spans travel, ticketing, lodging, and auto sales.
For anyone using a booking app today, the practical takeaway is simple: scroll the entire checkout page before you confirm, look for any pre-ticked boxes, and compare the final charge shown against the number you started with.
The algorithm may be watching fares for you. But right now, you still need to watch the checkout screen yourself.
