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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.)
The best travel deals of the week include a Labor Day sale with flights to Europe under $200
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.
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