If you need to pay for a flight with cash instead of miles, it’s smart to compare fares with multiple airlines before booking with a relevant airline credit card or a general travel credit card. But since checking each airline’s website separately can be time-consuming, it can be helpful to use a third-party website that compares dozens of airlines at once.
Flight-checking websites fall into two main categories: online travel agencies (OTAs) and aggregators. Both types of sites allow you to search for flights, but OTAs take things a step further by directly handling the booking process as well. Another difference is that OTAs generally show just one fare for each flight, while aggregators let you compare prices from multiple OTAs and let you see what you’d pay to book directly with the airline.
Speaking of booking directly with the airline, there may be advantages to doing so that go beyond price. For one, it could be more complicated to deal with flight changes or cancellations when you’re working through a third party.
On the upside, you’ll likely still earn airline miles and receive status benefits when you book through an OTA, which isn’t usually the case for hotel bookings. In many cases, you’ll also be able to take advantage of any perks that may come with your airline credit card such as free checked bags or priority boarding.
For this study, we ran pricing tests and compared the features of 15 popular websites for checking flight prices. We excluded credit card travel portals like Chase Travel, Amex Travel and Capital One Travel, although those can be valuable too if you happen to have a rewards card with one or more of those credit card issuers. Based on the scores each site received, these five websites came out on top for finding the cheapest flights in 2024.
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Best Websites for Booking Cheap Flights of 2024
- Kiwi: Best for Combining Separate Tickets (Star Rating: 5.00)
- Expedia: Best for OneKey Rewards Members (Star Rating: 4.99)
- Skiplagged: Best for Hidden City Flying (Star Rating: 4.95)
- Momondo: Best for Search Filters (Star Rating: 4.85)
- Google Flights: Best for Price Prediction and Tracking (Star Rating: 4.80)
Summary of the Best Flight Booking Websites
Flight Booking Website | Overall Score | Star Rating |
---|---|---|
Kiwi | 90.32 | 5.00 |
Expedia | 90.14 | 4.99 |
Skiplagged | 89.39 | 4.95 ![]() |
Momondo | 87.69 | 4.85 ![]() |
Google Flights | 86.68 | 4.80 ![]() |
Best Website Sites To Book the Cheapest Flights
Kiwi: Best for Combining Separate Tickets
Website type: OTA
In terms of sheer pricing, Kiwi came out on top in our study. However, it’s important to note that it was often able to undercut competitors by offering unique itineraries that leveraged “travel hacks” including self-transfer ticketing, hidden city ticketing and throwaway ticketing.
Of these three hacks, we found that Kiwi had the strongest bent toward recommending self-transfer flights. Self-transfer itineraries combine two flights from separate airlines to offer a lower price than you’d otherwise pay by using either airline for the entire trip.
While self-transfer tickets can save you money, their hassle factor can also be high. Unlike flights booked with airlines that have codeshare agreements, the separate airlines in a self-transfer itinerary have no knowledge about your other flight. So if you checked a bag, you would need to get it from baggage claim (which usually means leaving the secure area) before you can check it with the second carrier. Also, if a delay from your first flight causes you to miss the second, you won’t have the usual recourse that would be available to you if both flights were booked with the same airline.
If that sounds too stressful, you can use the “travel hacks” filters to screen out these creative routes—and the good news is that Kiwi provides competitive fares on more traditional itineraries, too.
It also offers the ability to search up to five days before or after your target date. In addition to the normal one-way, round-trip or multicity search functions, Kiwi offers a unique Nomad option. Simply put in the travel period you plan to be away and the destinations you’d like to visit. Then Kiwi takes it from there, providing a unique itinerary that can save you the most money.
As an OTA, Kiwi is able to offer some built-in protection options that travel aggregators like Momondo and Google Flights can’t. For example, for a fee, you can lock in your price for three days. You can also pay to add the Kiwi.com Guarantee to your flight which will find an alternative itinerary or refund your money if one of your carriers makes an unexpected change. Adding this protection plan could provide peace of mind if you book one of the unusual routes that Kiwi is known for recommending.
While Kiwi does have a pricing trends table, it doesn’t offer any sort of pricing prediction. It also doesn’t have a rewards program.
Pros
- Shows unique “travel hacks” itineraries
- Multiple travel protection options available
- Nomad tool takes multicity searches to the next level
Cons
- No rewards program
- Can’t filter results by layover city
- Kiwi’s money-saving hacks can be risky and less convenient
Expedia: Best for OneKey Rewards Members
Website type: OTA
Expedia will be the best fit for OneKey Rewards loyalists. If you often earn OneKeyCash through Expedia, Hotels.com or Vrbo, you can use those rewards toward flights. Don’t expect to earn much OneKeyCash on your flight booking though. While all other eligible bookings earn 2%, flights earn a paltry 0.2%.
Even though their earning potential is low, all flights do earn 1 trip element toward higher OneKey status. And speaking of status, OneKey Gold and Platinum members get price drop protection for free on flights booked through the Expedia app.
Like other OTAs, Expedia offers a flight protection add-on. Just know that many credit cards come with built-in travel insurance benefits, so you’ll want to see what your credit card entitles you to before you pay for protection you don’t need. Expedia also offers a nice mix of sorting options, including less common ones such as earliest and latest departure or return. However, it’s one of the few sites that doesn’t give “best” or “value” as a filter option.
There’s another Expedia sorting quirk worth noting. If you’re searching for a round-trip flight and want to sort your results by anything other than the lowest price, you’ll need to select that option for both the departing and return flights. Even if you sort the departing flights by something else, like “Duration (Shortest),” Expedia will default to sorting your return flights by “Price (Lowest).”
Expedia tends to stick to offering straightforward itineraries. Unlike Skiplagged, which we’ll discuss next, you won’t find it recommending hidden city ticketing. We also found that Expedia generally only showed multiple airline tickets that involved codeshare partners (i.e. no self-transfer flights). Depending on whether your top priority is to find the absolute lowest price or to minimize hassle, that could be viewed as either a weakness or a strength.
Pros
- Each flight earns 1 OneKey trip element
- Free price drop protection for OneKey Gold and Platinum members
- Competitive prices despite excluding “hacky” itineraries
Cons
- Booking round-trip flights requires a few more clicks than other sites
- Flights earn just 0.2% in OneKey Cash
- Doesn’t give the option to sort by fares that offer the best value
Skiplagged: Best for Hidden City Flying
Website type: OTA
As indicated by its name, Skiplagged is a website that unashamedly recommends flights that involve skiplagging, also known as hidden city ticketing.
With this travel hack, you book a flight that involves a layover at your actual final destination. While it might seem counterintuitive, it’s common for these longer flights to be cheaper than direct flights to the layover city. Skiplagging means booking these longer flights to realize the savings and then walking away after the first flight rather than boarding the second plane.
Due to Skiplagged’s preference for showing hidden city fares, it can provide some incredible prices that other sites can’t match. But skiplagging can be dangerous. While self-transfer ticketing can be a hassle, it won’t necessarily bother the airlines. That’s not the case with skiplagging. Airlines really don’t like it and getting caught could lead to cancellation of your ticket, revocation of your frequent flyer miles or even a ban from flying with the airline.
To its credit, Skiplagged admits most of these risks exist, which is why it discourages against utilizing hidden city ticketing often. It also advises that you should travel with a backpack only so you don’t risk a carry-on being checked at the gate and then arriving at a different destination than you do.
Thankfully, it’s easy to uncheck the “Skiplagging” filter to remove these itineraries. Even apart from hidden city fares, the site consistently showed great prices. It also provides “Buy” or “Watch” fare recommendations based on its historical pricing data.
Skiplagged falls behind other sites in terms of pre- and post-search tools, however. For example, it doesn’t support multicity searches nor does it provide the option to search using flexible dates.
Another downside is that the initial prices Skiplagged shows on the results page don’t include its service fee, which ranged from $10 to $35, in our tests. Skiplagged does offer a rewards program whereby you can earn up to $25 per flight or hotel that you book or that someone else books from a link you shared.
Pros:
- Shows hidden city flights which can provide huge savings
- Provides “Buy” or “Watch” recommendations
- Has a rewards and referral program
Cons:
- Prices shown don’t include service fees
- No support for multicity searches
- Doesn’t offer as many filters as other sites
Momondo: Best for Search Filters
Website type: Aggregator
As an aggregator rather than an OTA, you generally won’t be able to book flights on Momondo directly. But it makes it easy to book directly with the airline while also showing if OTAs are offering the same flight at a cheaper price. You can also screen out any sites you don’t feel comfortable with or even select “Airlines only.”
Momondo has the same set of filters as its sister site, Kayak—and there are a lot of them. In fact, both sites achieved our top scores for filtering options. You can filter your results by airline, alliance, cabin, seat choice, baggage, trip duration, number of layovers and much more.
Despite these two sites functioning so similarly, we chose Momondo because of the unique pricing charts and insights it provides. At the top of the results page, you’ll see a chart that shows daily pricing for several days before and after your selected date.
Further, you can click on the expandable “insights” menu at the top of the page to see the cheapest month, day of the week, time of day and airline for your route. You’ll also see how far in advance you should typically book tickets to your destination to snag the lowest fares.
Since Momondo doesn’t sell flights itself, it does not have a rewards program. You also won’t be offered any travel protections from Momondo, although the airline or OTA it sends you to may have coverage options. You won’t see Momondo recommending any skiplagging fares, but it will sometimes show self-transfer tickets from Kiwi or other OTAs. To remove these flights, you can uncheck “show flights with self-transfers” from the “Flight quality” filters.
Pros:
- Best-in-class price history charts and graphs
- Bevy of filters to help you find the right flight for your needs
- Shows the airline’s own fares, in addition to third-party prices
Cons
- No rewards program
- No travel insurance or price protection
- Ads at the top of the search results can be misleading
Google Flights: Best for Price Prediction and Tracking
Like Momondo, Google Flights is a travel aggregator. Those booking flights in the U.S. may have the option to “Book on Google.” But even in these cases, Google is just passing your info along to the relevant OTA or airline. It only functions as an intermediary and doesn’t provide any of its own protections or rewards. Be aware that Google doesn’t give you the option to screen out any OTAs, but you can filter by airline.
Google’s DNA as a data company shines through Google Flights. Using historical pricing data, it tells you if prices are currently low, typical or high for your selected trip. If it predicts that prices are about as low as they’re going to get, Google even gives you a specific date to book your tickets before they’re likely to go up again.
If prices are high and you want to keep an eye on them, Google can track them for you and will send an email if prices change for your specific dates. While most competing websites offer price alerts too, Google Flights takes things further by also offering “Any dates” tracking for your route. For those with flexible travel plans, this could be a fantastic money-saving feature.
Speaking of having flexible travel plans, Google’s “Explore” tool is one of the best tools available today for those who want to travel somewhere, but aren’t locked into a specific destination. Simply input the city you’ll be traveling from and type “Anywhere” in the “Where to” field. Google will then pull up a map view that shows fares for a variety of cities.
You can drag the map to different regions or continents and zoom in or out to focus or widen your scope. While other sites have their own “Anywhere” tools, Google is able to leverage its Google Maps data to show top things to do in the area along with loads of pictures and traveler reviews. It’s perfect for the traveler who needs a little inspiration.
Google Flights is one of the few websites that includes Southwest flights in its search results. It can’t show prices, but it will provide a link to the Southwest page so you can check for yourself. Self-transfer tickets are shown by default, but you can screen these out by navigating to the “Separate tickets” filter and clicking “Hide separate tickets.”
Pros:
- Robust price prediction and tracking
- Anywhere search tool is delightful
- Will show Southwest flights, but doesn’t include prices
Cons:
- No travel protections offered through Google
- No rewards program
- Can’t screen out third-party sites that you don’t trust
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How To Book Cheap Flights
1. Check With Multiple Sites.
It might sound like overkill, but it’s a good idea to check with multiple third-party sites when you’re trying to book a cheap flight. Each site’s inventory may be slightly different depending on the airlines it’s able to check. Also, an OTA may be willing to undercut its competitors on certain flights to attract new business.
Bear in mind that no website can provide fares for every single airline. Southwest is notorious for barring third-party sites from showing its prices. Also, certain regional airlines may not be listed on OTAs, so you’ll still need to go to those airlines directly to check their rates.
2. Widen Your Scope.
Check alternate dates whenever you have the flexibility to do so. In some cases, moving your departure and/or arrival dates by a few days or weeks could net significant savings.
You may also find surprisingly low prices by flying into a city’s regional airport instead of its large international hub. Plus you’re likely to deal with smaller crowds. All of the websites on our list allow you to search by “city” as well as by specific airport.
3. Determine Your Hassle (and Risk) Tolerance.
Self-transfer tickets could save you real money, but they could also add a lot of nuisance, especially if you need to check a bag. Plus, buying separate tickets can cause major headaches if your first flight is delayed and you miss the following flight.
Skiplagging can also provide savings, but it’s risky as you could incur consequences from the airline. If these negatives aren’t worth the potential savings to you, you’ll want to screen out these types of itineraries from whichever search engine you use.
4. Consider Booking With Miles.
Finally, compare the cash price for a flight to the award flight cost, if you have frequent flyer miles available. If a flight would cost you $300 or 15,000 miles, for example, you’d get a value of 2 cents per mile by booking the award flight. That’s a solid redemption value.
Even if you don’t have miles with an airline’s loyalty program, you may be able to transfer your credit card points to it. Examples of rewards programs that support points transfers to various airlines include American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards® and Citi ThankYou Points.
How To Save On Flights Using Credit Cards
There are two types of credit cards that can help you save on flights. The first are co-branded airline credit cards. These will be most valuable if you’re loyal to a particular airline. In addition to earning miles that can be redeemed toward flights, they often offer additional benefits like free checked baggage.
Co-branded cards won’t be as useful for bargain shoppers who like to keep their options wide open. You aren’t able to use your cardmember benefits with other airlines and, while you may have the option to redeem miles with partners, finding partner award space may be difficult.
General travel rewards cards are more flexible because they earn miles or points that can be used toward any qualifying travel purchase. Some also allow you to transfer your points to airline partners. And a few premium travel rewards cards even offer fee credits for airline incidentals like bag fees, in-flight food and drink, as well as airline lounge fees.
When Are Flights Cheapest To Book?
In the past, travel experts often gave general advice regarding how early or late flights should be booked. But thanks to the abundance of data at our disposal today, it’s now possible to get specific recommendations for the flight you’re looking to take.
Most of the best flight-booking websites today provide some historical data that show how prices have moved up or down over time. Some will take things a step further by stating if a flight’s prices are currently higher or lower than usual or about average. Others will even predict whether prices will go up or down in the future. This can help you decide if you should book now or wait.
Note that your strategy when booking with miles should be different than when you’re booking with cash. Since flights often have limited award availability, it’s generally recommended to book award seats as early as possible. Keep in mind that most airlines open up their award ticket windows about a year out from a flight’s departure.
Related. Miles Or Cash: What’s The Best Way To Pay For An Airline Ticket?
Methodology
For this study, we rated 15 different flight booking websites on the following six factors:
- Average price: 75% of total score
- Pre-search tools: 5% of total score
- Post-search sorting options: 5% of total score
- Post-search filters: 5% of total score
- Price prediction and protection: 5% of total score
- Rewards program: 5%
To determine each site’s average price score, we checked their rates for three domestic and three international routes for the same travel dates. These routes were:
- New York to Los Angeles (one way)
- Atlanta to Las Vegas (round trip)
- Kansas City, Missouri to Honolulu (one way)
- New York to London, United Kingdom (one way)
- San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan (round trip)
- Chicago to Bali, Indonesia (one way)
For each website, we recorded their first search result (excluding ads) in both the “cheapest” and “fastest” category. We also noted the flying time for each flight. Our ratings system awarded the highest score to flights that provided the best combination of low prices and reasonable travel times.
Bottom Line
No one website will be the best for every circumstance, but the five listed above are great places to start your search for affordable flights. Rather than using one exclusively, we recommend that you check with multiple websites (or all five if you’re ambituous), when you’re shopping around for fares.
Remember that you may need to check directly with smaller airlines, as well as larger airlines like Southwest that don’t play well with third-party sites. Finally, don’t forget that the cheapest website for you might actually be your credit card rewards program or frequent flyer program site, if you have points or miles that could be redeemed for free or discounted flights.
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Source: forbes.com
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George Barham, an accomplished journalist and avid gambling enthusiast, serves as the esteemed Editor-in-Chief at fly-to-australia.com, Australia’s leading source for comprehensive gambling news and insights. With an unwavering passion for both the written word and the ever-evolving world of betting and gaming, George brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the helm of our editorial team.