Best tools to book cheap flights

Inflation is slowing down, but travelers may still feel the sting of high flight prices. Finding cheap airfare to your desired destination at your preferred time can be challenging. For people with flexible schedules looking for great deals and inspiration, the array of available planning tools can be confusing and intimidating.

Fortunately, TPG is here to help by sharing some of our best tools, tips and tricks for finding the cheapest and best airfares. We’ve covered the topic of cheap airfare extensively and included many tried-and-true methods our staff uses to book travel that can also work for you.

TPG also regularly posts deal alerts on some of the best airfares to help you find affordable flights.

Here are our favorite tools, tips and tricks for securing cheap airfare deals. Be sure to click on the related links for more details.

Google Flights

Google Flights is perhaps the most intuitive, straightforward and useful flight search tool on the internet. Its many features and functionalities help you identify the best flight prices and options for specific flight times and flexible itineraries.

You can also search based on what TPG recommends as the best times of day to book flights.

When you’re exploring Google Flights, examine the map search feature. It can show you the least expensive fares to various destinations, which can be a great source of inspiration. You can also click on the date grid to see flight pricing for entire months at a time and the price graph to see overall trends for pricing on your target itinerary.

Another useful feature is Google’s price tracker. The tracker appears on the search results page, allowing you to track overall prices on the route you’re searching. When you sign into your Google account, you can receive notifications for price changes, new offers and expiration dates for an itinerary you are tracking. You’ll receive notifications of price changes directly to your inbox, preventing the need to manually search multiple times a day in the hopes of a price drop.

Note that while this tool includes nearly all airlines, it won’t show ticket prices on some carriers.

Google Flights also recently added a Price Guarantee program; this means you might be eligible to get a refund of the price difference if it drops. If a “guarantee badge” is next to the itinerary and the fare falls by more than $5, your flight is eligible for the program. You can receive up to $500 total per Google account across all eligible itineraries in a calendar year, and you can have up to three open Price Guarantee bookings at any time.

For more detailed information on how to use Google Flights, check out TPG’s how-to guides to some features and tips:

Google Explore

If you are flexible in your destination but still looking for the best flight deal, Google’s “Explore” functionality is a great tool. Within Google Explore, you can be specific or flexible with your travel dates. All you need to do is enter your departing city — you can leave the return open-ended — and the map will show you various flight options and their respective prices.

Or, if you have a specific region in mind, you can also include a general location, such as “Europe” or “Caribbean.”

Points Path

What if you prefer to use your airline points instead of actually paying for your flights?

While many sites are available to help you find award availability, there’s one tool that helps you within your Google Flights search. The Points Path tool is a top-notch web browser extension within Google Flights. It lists out the award pricing right next to the cash fare.

The tool will tell you which transferable points can be used with the airline you’re considering and will also recommend whether you should use miles to book the flight (ensuring you are getting good value) or pay cash instead.

Related: How to use the Points Path extension to compare cash and award rates in Google Flights

The tool is free, and once you find the itinerary that works best, you can book your flight as you typically would — either with Google Flights or through the airline’s loyalty program for an award reservation.

Points Path makes finding award availability extremely easy within a tool you are most likely already using. All you have to do is download the Points Path extension (currently available with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge). The installation takes less than a minute and you can view great deals — for both paid and award fares — within Google Flights.

Additional flight-comparison sites

Google Flights is a great site to use. However, there are a few other sites that work in a similar fashion with slightly different features. Just note that even though Southwest fares are now included with Google Flights, Southwest fares are not pulled on many of the sites below.

Kayak

One of the original fare-comparison sites, Kayak is a one-stop shop for finding the best price. The site pulls fares directly from the airlines and lets you compare them against third-party booking websites, such as Expedia and Orbitz.

Kayak also offers many enhanced filter options. You can search by a specific airline, an airline alliance, aircraft, layover airport and more.

If your dates are flexible, there’s also a calendar grid allowing you to see pricing up to three days before and after your desired dates. You just need to make sure to include that in your search.

Kayak also goes one step further than some other sites and displays the pricing of a round-trip flight with two separate airlines — one for the departure and one for the return — if pricing is, in fact, cheaper.

Momondo

Momondo is great for those who love a visual. If your travel dates are flexible, it’s very easy to find the least expensive dates at a quick glance. The site offers many filters and allows you to set up price alerts if the fare goes down. Momondo will also advise whether now is a good time to purchase or if you should hold out based on recent fare trends.

Unfortunately, though, if booking a round trip, the site will not display the cheapest airline for the departure and return; it will only list fares from the same airline. This means you’ll want to search as two one-ways, which can be time-consuming.

Skyscanner

If you are looking for a cheap flight to any destination, Skyscanner is the site for you. Just enter your departure city and select “Explore everywhere” in the “To” field. It’ll deliver a list of destinations in order of price.

The site is incredibly easy to use and can open your eyes to new parts of the world if you are destination agnostic.

Skyscanner also allows searches based on certain routes and even multicity flight options. But similar to Momondo, the site will only display fares from the same outbound and return airline.

The Flight Deal alerts

If you want to receive real-time deal alerts without searching for them yourself, following The Flight Deal on X is a great option. This team constantly finds deals from many destinations, and you might be lucky enough to find one from your home airport.

To get the most out of it, you should set up your X account to receive push notifications from The Flight Deal. This means anytime the team makes a post, you’ll receive a notification on your phone. That way, you don’t have to keep checking X.

Subscription sites

Many independent travel websites promise to find you the cheapest deals available. However, not all of these websites are worthwhile. Some are even flat-out scams that will direct you to travel agencies selling expensive tickets with hidden fees or extensive surcharges.

When looking for deals, TPG scans a few websites that generally provide reliable airfare notifications and highlighted offerings.

Many of these websites offer premium paid subscription services that could be worthwhile, depending on your appetite for travel and passion for deals.

Registering for regular email deal alerts from these websites and subscribing to their X feeds can provide regular travel inspiration and alerts for breaking deals to your favorite destinations.

Some of TPG’s favorite airline deal websites:

Note that many of these deal websites include links to “hacker fare”-type itineraries involving multiple airlines, circuitous routings, and extended layover and travel times.

Discounted fares on these flights may not include mileage awards features or be eligible for status points. So read the fine print and itineraries closely on these deals.

Assuming the details work for you, scanning or subscribing to airfare deal websites can be a great way to find super-discounted flight prices that may not appear on Google Flights or other standard booking platforms.

Related: TPG’s deals page

Book directly with airline websites

When trying to hack the system and find the best “secret” airfare deal, people often neglect to search the place where many of these deals originate: the airline itself.

Virtually every airline features a deals section on its website. Many of these so-called deals can be underwhelming. However, sometimes airlines offer incredible, short-term deals that will likely be fully booked before they even reach some deal-consolidating websites.

For example, Southwest has recently been offering many sales where tickets must be booked with a specific coupon code directly on the Southwest website.

You can find out the latest by regularly checking the deal pages on the websites of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. Many airlines also offer package deals combining hotels and rental cars; however, you should price these out individually, as the real value of these offers can vary.

Subscribing to airlines’ newsletters about deal alerts can be another way to discover the latest offers, but you’ll risk inundating your email inbox with destinations that might not interest you. Still, these push alerts may inspire you to take a last-minute vacation you didn’t think was affordable.

It’s worth watching out for airline miles and status promotions, too; you can use these to maximize your rewards. Usually, you’ll need to book these deals directly on the airline’s website.

Southwest Airlines is a special case for finding airfare deals because its fares are not generally available on many third-party websites. For example, you can book Southwest flights on the Kayak for Business website but not on consumer searches. It may be worthwhile to double-check any fare deal you find with a similar itinerary mapped on the Southwest website.

Particularly when booking directly on an airline website, branded airline cards can be a good call for earning status and rewards specific to those airlines. Options include the United℠ Explorer Card and the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® (see rates and fees).

Related: Book travel via a portal or directly? How to decide

Optimize credit card usage

Booking tools can help you find the most economical flight option for your next trip, but using the right credit card to pay for the flight is also important. There are a variety of top travel rewards cards that could fit this bill, but a few stand out:

Related: The best credit cards for airfare purchases

Bottom line

Finding the lowest airfare can be more of an art than a science, but a number of strategies and tools can help you with this search.

Everyone’s travel goals and circumstances differ. However, using one or more of the above strategies will put you on the right path to snagging that much-wanted trip without such a high price tag.