There are so many sites out there to book flights! While they all have their pros and cons, we tend to migrate to a select few when we begin searching for flights. Part of booking travel reservations is knowing when to actually commit to buying the tickets. It is important to know the general trends of the ticket prices, but be ready to pull the trigger if there’s a good deal! We always like to search a couple different sites to compare the flights on each one. Here are our top 8 sites for booking cheap flights.
Where to Find the Best Cheap Flight Deals
Google Flights
Google Flights has quickly become one of our favorite websites to find cheap flights. Google flights isn’t a booking engine, it’s purely a metasearch engine. Once you find the best travel dates and destination, you’ll want to book through a different website, preferably the airlines direct site. It’s super easy to look up cheap flights. Simply open Google.com/flights and type in where you want to go. Once you click on the date, you can see the prices of different dates. The lower priced dates will be in green.
On Google Flights you can search up to 7 departures and 7 destinations at once. So instead of having to do different searches, you can enter possible destinations and dates and it will pull them all up at once, which saves SO MUCH time. Once you hit search, you can see the flights by prices, and also see a price graph and date grid to easily pick the best travel dates.
Google Flights also has an explore part. You can find cheap destinations if you have the dates you know you want to travel. From there, you can see what the prices are and choose your destination. You can even search broad places like continents. So If you want to go to Asia, but have no preference where, just put in Asia and the range you want to look for, and you can find the best country during those dates.
And like most other flight search engines, you can track prices and be notified when flight prices drop.
Dollar Flight Club
Dollar Flight Club is a flight deal alert subscription service. Dollar Flight Club has quickly become our newest obsession. Instead of having to search for cheap destnations and flights, subscribe to Dollar Flight Club and get notified when deals become available. Once you sign up, pick your departure airport(s) and get notified when cheap airfare arrives. Dollar Fight Club will send emails and text messages so you’ll ever miss a cheap airfare again!
Plus, you save so much time by not having to search for the cheap flights yourself. What makes Dollar Flight Club so great is that you don’t have to spend time searching for cheap flights. Just by signing up, you are notified about the cheap deals when they become available.
If you like to travel, we recommend the premium option. By signing up for the premium, you’ll get 4x more flight deals, the weekend domestic flight deals, instant mobile alerts, and can set multiple departure airports. Just by signing up to Dollar Flight Club, the average savings per ticket is over $500 USD!
Click here to receive a free 7 day premium trial
When you get an email from Dollar Flight Club, it will tell you the departure and destination airports, price, travel dates, and airline(s). All you need to do is to follow the instructions to book your cheap flight. It’s really as simple as that.
*Premium prices go up on 8/1/19 at midnight, sign up for a free 7 day premium trial now
Scott’s Cheap Flights
Scotts Cheap Flights is similar to Dollar Flight Club, as it’s an email service that notifies you of cheap airfare deals. You simply pick your departure airport and get notified when deals come about. You don’t need to pay for the free option, but if you’re wanting more options, we suggest upgrading to the premium level.
The nice thing about Scotts Cheap Flights is you don’t have to do any of the work like researching different sites and airlines. Scott’s Cheap flights has a whole team that find cheap flights all over the world. When you receive an email from Scott’s Cheap flights, you’ll have everyting you need to know about the flight and dates in order to book it on your own. You must act fast though, as these deals don’t last long.
Heres what an email from Scotts cheap flights will look like
In the email with the cheap flight deal, it will also tell you how to book those flights through other sites like google flights and skyscanner. You can sign up for free, but you can upgrade to a premium membership for only $49/year. Premium members get up to 5x more deals, notifications about mistake fares, and peak season and holiday travel notifications.
Skyscanner
If you have flexibility in your dates and destinations, skyscanner is a great choice. Skyscanner searches all airlines, including “budget carries” such as Jet Blue or Air Asia. It allows you to search by a specific date, week, month or even see the best prices throughout the whole year. You can also search “everywhere” in the destination box and from there you can see the cheapest spots from your origin. Once you find the flight you want, it takes you to the airline. We have found some of the best flights on skyscanner.
Skyscanner lets you search “everywhere” to see the cheapest flights
If you’ve never used Skyscanner, download the app to find the cheapest flights everywhere. There are lots of other sites like skyscanner but we use skyscanner the most.
Kayak
Kayak is probably the simplest site listed. Kayak allows you to filter by airlines, duration, or price. If there is enough data on the selected flight, the price predictor will forecast if prices will go down or not. You can also search for dates 3 days before or after your ideal dates, or search nearby airports if your trip allows some flexibility. Kayak has recently added an “explore” option, where you can enter your destination and see a map of the prices to certain locations. The “explore” option even lets you narrow down search options by specific weather or things to do!
Kayak “explore” allows you to see the best prices across the world
Momondo
Momondo picks from airfare sites to find the lowest fare each way. It has a nice little graph at the top that shows the cheapest flights to that destination. You can filter the flights by the quickest, cheapest, or “best” flights for your desired flight choice. Momondo ranks the flights and shows smiley (or sad) faces based on the flight time and the price. Momondo also shows a nice little calendar at the top to allow you to compare prices on similar days.
Momondo shows a calendar with the ticket prices for each day
Hipmunk
Hipmunk is one of the newer searches we have been using. It allows you to search for flights by “agony” to optimize your flight by price, length, or layovers. We personally like to see the differences in flight times, as we don’t want to waste too much time on layovers if we can help it. The layout of this site allows you to easily compare the flight and layover times, including what time you will depart or arrive at the destination. Hipmunk has recently added flight deal alerts, allowing you to receive updates through email.
Hipmunk organizes flights by “agony”: price, flight time, and layover stop
Hopper App
Hopper, which is only available on your phone, is a newer site that we’ve recently discovered. Based on where you want to go, Hopper will show you a calendar with round trip prices on different dates. You choose the flight you want and if you aren’t ready to buy yet, you can watch the price. The app shows the cheapest months, what day is best to buy, which airlines have cheapest fares, and searches the closest airports. Hopper advises you if you should buy now or wait, and seems to predict how much prices are supposed to change (although we haven’t followed through to see if the predictions are correct). You can set up alerts to notify you when prices have changed. We have not actually booked through site, buy it has been fun to watch the flight prices. You can book directly through the app, although hopper does charge a small commission for the booking.
Hopper tells you if you have the best flight for that route
None of these are 100% perfect so make sure you check with a couple of them to see what brings up the best prices for your trip.
Other tips for finding cheap flights:
- Start researching as soon as you know
- Be flexible with your travel dates
- Don’t forget to use a private window or delete your cookies when you search so the site doesn’t save your searches
- Generally flights are lowest when you depart on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday. Fridays and Sundays are usually the most expensive to fly
- Double check with the airlines site as sometimes they will have cheaper flights only available on their site
- Longer layovers are generally cheaper
- Check the policy for luggage-sometimes you will have to pay extra even for one bag
- Read the fine print when booking, especially on budget airlines, as they may charge extra for certain things
- Sign up for email notifications in order to learn of deals before others do
- Don’t wait until the last minute!
Don’t forget to search around a little before you push the purchase button! And once you do buy, don’t look back! Enjoy and now it is time to start planning the next trip!
What is your favorite website for booking plane tickets? Are there any you think we need to add to our list?
I always used Momondo, but haven’t heard of Hipmunk or Hopper App, so will definitely have to check them out. Thanks for the tips 🙂
Thanks for sharing! I’ve always used skyscanner til now.
I really like sky scanner, that is one of my favorites! Thanks for reading 🙂
Thank you for this overview! We are just about to plan our trip to the US, so it is super helpful. So far, we have been only using skyscanner.
Glad you like it! We really like sky scanner too, but check those others to compare the prices. Where in the US are you going?
I just started using Hipmunk and love it. The app is more user friendly for me than on my desktop. It shows months at a time with prices for each date like Hooper. One feature i would really like to see are generic alerts. right now you need to add specific dates in order to configure an alert.
Thanks for this post! Super helpful. Looking for our next trip right now.
Hellen recently posted…Do airplanes have keys?