The best sites for cheap flights

Traveling isn't as expensive as you think. You just have to book strategically.
By Leah Stodart  on 
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Overview

Best place to start

Google Flights

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Best overall cheap direct option

Southwest

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Best direct option for frequent, flexible flyers

Frontier

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Best for looking at dates

Hopper

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Best if you're flexible location-wise

Skyscanner

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Best deals alerts

Going

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Best for long layovers

Airwander

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Best for bundling flight, hotel, and car

Expedia

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See 3 More

Table of Contents

Frequent travelers aren't necessarily rich. A handful probably are, but a lot of those people you see on social media who are always somewhere have simply mastered the art of finessing the online cheap flight market.

To accomplish that, you just have to know where to book cheap flights — and know how to strategically weigh your options before biting on a ticket.

Several websites and apps are dedicated solely to finding passengers cheaper flights than what they may find when searching directly on an airline's official website. Some require flexibility date-wise and some require flexibility location-wise, and which one will work best for you may vary depending on how far into trip planning you are each time. Regardless of how set or not you are on a certain itinerary, all of these sites can keep tabs on price fluctuations and ping you when prices on tickets that match your filters drop.

Before the rundown of why these are our favorite sites for cheap flights, we're unpacking the planning-related questions that have popped into any traveler's head at one time or another.

What is the difference between an OTA and a metasearch engine?

When struggling to find plane tickets at digestible prices, your first mistake is starting and ending your search at the airline's official website. Rather, the best sites for cheap flights are one of two types of comparison services: online travel agencies and metasearch engines.

Metasearch engines simply pull prices across airlines, dates, and locations for streamlined comparison — think Google Flights, Kayak, and Skyscanner. These are the best way to put the feelers out in the beginning stages of trip brainstorming when you probably only care to preview upcoming price and destination combinations (preferably in a cute color-coded calendar). Metasearch sites and apps provide super simplified results by shucking overwhelming details like airport initials, layover gunk, and flight times that can cloud the initial search and cause some serious decision paralysis.

Those details do become important in the later planning stages when you need to compare specifics and actually do the booking. This is when an online travel agency comes in handy. Online travel agencies (OTAs) are to travelers sort of what Resy or OpenTable are to food reservations, offering both searching and direct booking capabilities on the same site or app — think Expedia, Hotels.com, and Priceline. If you find a flight you like through a metasearch engine, you can book that flight through an OTA or the airline itself. However, we recommend booking through the airline itself as a cushion for the OTA confirmation mishaps that happen more often than they should. (More on that in the FAQ.)

Don't sleep on price drop notifications for flights

Airfare changes in the weeks leading up to the trip due to an algorithm fueled by factors like how full (or not) the plane is, competitor prices, and overall demand during a certain time period. You can try to somewhat outsmart the system by booking on a certain day (Tuesdays are generally considered the cheapest day to book) and flying on a certain day (Tuesdays and Wednesdays are generally considered the cheapest days to fly midweek, and Saturdays are cheaper than Sunday or Monday).

Don't bank on tickets getting cheaper closer to the flight date — while the sites we've mentioned in this list will be the most helpful for finding good last-minute deals if being pressed for time is out of your control, there's really no legitimate evidence that says plane tickets get cheaper closer to the departure date.

This means that price alerts are a crucial planning tool regardless of the site you use. Here, the metasearch engines and OTAs track these fluctuations and ping you when a route you're eyeing drops in price. Typically, the tool will also let you know whether the data predicts you can do better or if you should make your move now.

Our Pick

Casually scoping out potential flight prices is one of the easiest ways to begin solidifying a travel plan — even if you just hatched the idea for that trip minutes ago. TikTok's favorite way of doing so seems to be on Google Flights.

A bar graph or simple calendar view show snappy visuals of how prices for your destination might fluctuate over several months, offering a quick way to determine how much you may (or may not) save if you push your summer European vacation to January. Google Flights doesn't flinch at filters, either, updating results with your tweaks without reloading the page.

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Details

Blue Southwest Airlines logo with striped heart on transparent background

Southwest

Best overall cheap direct option

If you'd just feel safer buying direct, check Southwest first. This sweet spot of affordability and reliability offers more digestible fares than the infamously-steep ones offered by the likes of American, United, and Delta while creating fewer policy discrepancies around things like carry-ons than Frontier. In fact, Southwest will do you one better with not one, but two free checked bags, plus free iMessaging on board.

The reason you don't see Southwest fares pop up in an OTA or metasearch comparison isn't that Southwest's prices aren't competitive — the airline simply doesn't allow its fares to be shown on any website aside from its own. Upon entering Southwest.com, you'll be greeted with several one-way options under $100, going as low as $49 when Southwest has one of its frequent sales. The Rapid Rewards system, which is free to join, rewards frequent flyers with perks like no blackout dates and participation in promotions that you rarely see elsewhere, like its BOGO 50% off flights sale or bring a friend for free sale.

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Green Frontier Airlines logo on transparent background

Frontier

Best direct option for frequent, flexible flyers

The logic behind Frontier's GoWild! All-You-Can-Fly flight pass is reminiscent of buying groceries in bulk to save money in the long run. A flat fee of a few hundred dollars lets you fly as much as you want to any Frontier destination (both domestic and international) within a seasonal time frame of five-ish months. The 2023 summer pass, which debuted at $399 but has since gone up in price, was the original headline maker and covered most of April through September, followed by the $299 2023 fall and winter pass, which picked up in September and covers flights through the end of February 2024.

The GoWild! pass probably isn't the best choice for folks planning a single vacation, but the potential savings are palpable for anyone who finds themselves on a plane on a regular basis. However, those frequent flyers will need to be flexible. GoWild! domestic flights can only be booked 24 hours ahead of time (or 10 days for international flights), and you can only book one way at a time — so you'll likely be booking your return trip during — not before — your trip.

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Coral Hopper logo on white background

Hopper

Best for looking at dates

Hopper may feel like a niche newcomer in comparison to nearly 30-year-old regulars like Expedia and Trivago. But the start-up's rapid success story is fueled by everyone's favorite (or least favorite) buzzword as of late: AI.

Hopper's AI-predictive technology tracks prices on millions of flights and uses historical data to predict the cheapest time to book, displayed on a color-coded calendar that's super easy to read. Hopper also applies that algorithm to a customized newsfeed of the best flight prices out of your home airport based on destinations or dates you've peeked at recently.

If you find a price that you like, the Price Freeze fee lets you lock it in before actually completing the booking — a clutch cushion for planning. Hopper will cover the rest (within a certain coverage amount) if the price goes up in the offered time frame.

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Blue Skyscanner logo on white background

Skyscanner

Best if you're flexible location-wise

If your budget is pickier than your wanderlust or time frame, Skyscanner's Explore Everywhere feature is a more streamlined way to get a glimpse of the cheapest place to visit than... well, Googling the cheapest places to visit. Rather than plugging potential destinations and dates into a search engine one by one, Skyscanner quickly produces a super simple grid of options by country and price (starting at the lowest) based on a time frame or a month in general.

Instead of a text-based list clogged up by flight times, the eye-friendly grid features nothing more than a name, picture, and roundtrip cost, painting a super quick picture of the countries to which you could travel under a certain dollar amount. Click on a country to see the cities that fall under that price range and then peruse departure and return flights through a calendar with prices listed on each day.

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Green Going logo on white background

Going

Best deals alerts

For those who aren't not gonna hop on a killer travel opportunity if it presents itself, subscribing to Going is key. Formerly Scott's Cheap Flights, Going is a recurring newsletter that alerts you on hidden gems between 40% and 90% off (typically saving $500 or more on international flights). The hands-off approach alleviates the numbness of scrolling through seemingly infinite volatile ticket prices — and is one of the internet's favorite travel hacks.

Each email is curated by Scott Keyes, a self-proclaimed professional cheap flight finder and founder of Scott's Cheap Flights. The subject line names a city or country, the ticket price, and the range of months that you'd be traveling to secure that price. Suggestions fluctuate based on your designated home airports and membership tier, with the two paid options ($49 or $199/year) sending more frequent deals including mistake fares and first-, business-, or premium economy–class tickets.

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Blue Airwander logo on white background

Airwander

Best for long layovers

Tired: Buying two separate roundtrip fares to visit the two cities that you couldn't decide between. Wired: Hitting both locations on the same trip. That's the cost-effective logic behind Airwander, a combination flight search engine that peruses routes based on the thing that travelers often filter out: layovers.

Airwander's specialty is actually stopovers, which are essentially layovers that are long enough for you to leave the airport and explore a bonus city on the way to your final destination. Because these stops are more than 24 hours — sometimes lasting for days, depending on how you customize your search — you'll be able to access your luggage and check it back in before the next flight.

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Navy blue Expedia logo and airplane in circle on white background

Expedia

Best for bundling flight, hotel, and car

Even if you've never used any other app in this list, you've probably used Expedia (or Hotels.com, Orbitz, Trivago, or one of the other many travel sites Expedia owns). Aside from good last-minute deals and large sales during shopping holidays like Black Friday, the go-to travel tech giant actually isn't likely to regularly pinpoint the absolute lowest prices like other sites in this list can. It's still great for one thing, though: bundles. If you need lodging as well, booking your hotel along with your flight can save you up to 30% total on both.

The full-fledged online travel agency produces more nitty gritty results than oversimplified apps like Hopper, which detail-oriented, old-school planners may prefer. An Expedia search will immediately lay out all potential route options including the specific airport, takeoff and landing times, as well as layover locations and times.

Somehow, more than 20 years of experience in the field hasn't been sufficient time to perfect customer care. Countless travelers have been burned by Expedia's flighty cancellation policies and irresponsible communication with the actual airlines, leading folks to check in 24 hours early just to find that the actual airline has no record of their booking.

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Frequently Asked Questions


Calculating the average price of plane tickets is tricky because "normal" airfare prices are so relative to the time of year, day of the week, size of the airport, and the airline itself. Barring an unprecedented deal like Frontier's seasonal unlimited flight pass for a flat fee of a few hundred dollars, no airline is immune to these impacts.

At any rate, Hopper attempts to provide some sort of tangible baseline in its quarterly Consumer Travel Index, where it stated that the average "good deal" domestic roundtrip airfare cost was $285 in its latest forecast for April through June 2023. That's a 15% drop compared to summer 2022 prices, which were plagued by the worst flight disruptions the country has seen in a while. Hopper predicts domestic flight prices will reach pre-pandemic levels for late summer and early fall — a promising prediction compared to the skyrocketing prices we saw in the spring.


Worldwide tourism is still feeling the effects of general inflation, plus supply chain issues for new airplanes themselves, as well as pilot and other staffing shortages. Tickets to fly outside of the U.S. are the most expensive they've been in five years — a bummer of a statistic for those whose wanderlust hasn't worn off since Covid made travel feel so precious. Hotel and rental car prices are also seeing lingering price hikes compared to before the pandemic.


While domestic travel is finally feeling more approachable again, the light at the end of the tunnel is dimmer for international travel. If you see a headline about falling airfare prices, it's probably referring to domestic flights. The Bureau of Labor's statistics, which keeps tabs on those falling numbers, are mostly tracking flights between two points in the U.S.

Worldwide tourism is still feeling the effects of general inflation, plus supply chain issues for new airplanes themselves, as well as pilot and other staffing shortages. Tickets to fly outside of the U.S. are the most expensive they've been in five years — a bummer of a statistic for those whose wanderlust hasn't worn off since Covid made travel feel so precious. Hotel and rental car prices are also seeing lingering price hikes compared to before the pandemic.


It's not necessarily the day that you book, but the day that you're planning to fly that can affect ticket prices. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are often mentioned in this ongoing debate, and according to an analysis of Hopper data from 2022 by NerdWallet, it's true that those midweek days are the cheapest to fly — with tickets dropping by as much as 24% compared to a pricey Sunday flight. If you can't fly midweek, Saturdays are your next best bet.

While Tuesday is technically slightly cheaper for domestic flights than Wednesdays, Wednesdays win as the cheapest day for international traveling.


Yes, booking directly with an airline ensures that all of your bases are covered.

The best rule of thumb is to search for flights on a metasearch engine or online travel agency and then book directly with the airline. Though you can technically book straight from the OTA's website, even the most accredited OTAs have a history of not confirming those flights with the airline itself. This breach of communication has screwed countless travelers into a situation where they're checking in for their flight 24 hours ahead of time and the airline (either the app, website, or human customer service agent) has no record of the confirmation number provided by the OTA. If that flight was canceled, there's no guarantee that the OTA will communicate that to you, either.

If you do stay loyal to an OTA like Expedia to rack up rewards points, double check that you can find that confirmation number on the airline's official app or website — OTA confirmation isn't enough.

Though price tracking tools from metasearch engines and OTAs usually outweigh trying to do your own tab-by-tab comparison at specific airlines' websites, there are a few occasions when going directly to the airline is wise. Southwest frequently offers sitewide-ish sales that even the best sites for cheap flights don't always catch. Frontier offers seasonal unlimited flight passes for a flat fee that, of course, don't exactly apply to flight-by-flight price tracking, but could still save you a ton of money in the long run.


Any frequent flyer knows that nonstop flights are typically more expensive than flights with a layover. A hidden city flight takes advantage of that layover by treating it as your final destination. So yes, you'll be searching for and purposefully purchasing a ticket based on the location of its layover, where you'll get off rather than boarding the second leg of the trip.

The only catch? You can't exactly check a bag on a hidden flight because you obviously won't make it to the final destination where baggage claim is.

Leah Stodart
Leah Stodart
Senior Shopping Reporter

Leah Stodart is a Philadelphia-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable where she covers essential home tech like vacuums and TVs as well as sustainable swaps and travel. Her ever-growing experience in these categories comes in clutch when making recommendations on how to spend your money during shopping holidays like Black Friday, which Leah has been covering for Mashable since 2017.

Leah graduated from Penn State University in 2016 with dual degrees in Sociology and Media Studies. When she's not writing about shopping (or shopping online for herself), she's almost definitely watching a horror movie, "RuPaul's Drag Race," or "The Office." You can follow her on X at @notleah or email her at [email protected].

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