5 Best Websites For Booking The Cheapest Flights Of 2024 (2024)

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