The 10 Best (and Worst) Airfare Search Sites

There are three ways to find the best rates for airfares: OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) through which you can book directly; aggregators, or meta-search engines, which troll the databases of dozens of OTAs, booking engines, and airlines to return the best results; and the airlines’ own websites.

 

Sometimes an OTA will turn up a rate the aggregators doesn’t at first show (and vice-versa). Additionally, while you’re unlikely to find a lower fare on an airline’s own site, a quick visit could key you into sales announcements or other bargains you wouldn’t know about from other sources. 

 

We ran the top and most famous OTAs and aggregators through a battery of flight searches to determine who found the lowest prices overall as well as—where possible—the lowest fares on a direct flight. We tested each on last-minute flights (leaving within 72 hours) and APEX fares (booked six weeks out). We covered major gateways (NYC to LAX, Miami to Rio) and secondary ones (Philly to Rome). We even threw in a few curve balls (Denver to New Delhi) and included a flight with no North American legs (London to Barcelona) just to test how well each handled Europe‘s thicket of no-frills carriers. 

 
So who won? 

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Not ranked: Southwest Airlines

The first thing to know is that Southwest Airlines does not allow its results to be aggregated or sold through third party OTAs, so to get its fares, you have to search Southwest.com on your own. 

Other things to know about your searches: 

 

•  An aggregator is only as good as the OTAs it canvasses—and some discounters and booking sites are more reliable than others. As with any unfamiliar company, always do a quick BBB.org check and complaints search. Also, some OTAs are prone to dangling lead prices a few bucks below what they will actually offer once you get to the site, and some misleadingly categorize "direct" flights—which do stop, but do not require you to change plane—as "non-stop."

• A split search (or segment search) means you can select each flight leg as one-ways (rather than being locked into buying pairs of flights as round-trip tickets), which allows for more flexibility.

 

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#10: Orbitz

The booking engine started by the airlines themselves (but acquired by rival Expedia in 2015), Orbitz.com has plummeted to become the weakest major player by far. It returns results that are, frankly, pathetic. Orbitz returned the worst results in our tests most of the time (and most other times, its results were near the bottom). When Expedia bought former rival Travelocity.com earlier in 2015, it quickly replaced Travelocity’s sub-par search engine with its own; we can only hope Expedia will do the same with Orbitz. 

So why include it in our list? Because it's famous, and you should know.

 

Pros: Can search nearby airports within 80 miles; vacation packages

Cons: Seemingly incapable of finding the cheapest tickets, instead frequently delivering the worst "lowest fare" of any site we tested; won’t show Amtrak options as alternatives for domestic flights, but will clutter results with plane routes that include a (tedious) Amtrak connection to a "nearby" (in reality, often distant) airport; rounds dollar amounts down, even if it ends with 99¢—a tiny detail, but it feels sneaky and undermines trust

 

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#9: Kayak

Kayak is probably the most famous aggregator—and one of the least useful. While this Priceline subsidiary was able to match (though never beat) our top three finishers on domestic flights, it fared miserably on international flights to the point of ranking among the worst even on popular routes like NYC-Paris and LAX-Hong Kong that should have been easy to find deals for. On the plus side, it can "Flex Search" up to three days on either side of your dates, which can find bargains, and it had the most complete set of filter options, including obscure ones like aircraft type and layover cities.

 

Pros: Split search; fare alerts; excellent filters, (though, for "airlines," you must eliminate carriers one at a time rather than being able to select just one or two); flex dates "Explorer" shows bar graph of typical fares on your route over the selected month (and the year); advice on whether to buy now or wait based on historical price trends; though an aggregator, Kayak does now offer direct booking on fares from select partners

Cons: Other sites match or beat it on price every time; performs extremely poorly on price for international flights

 

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#8: Priceline

No offense to William Shatner, but his negotiating skills need work. The only time Pricelinefound the lowest fare for us (on a popular domestic route six weeks out), it was matched by six of our other contenders, and most of them performed better on every other search. Priceline is also one of the few holdouts (along with last-place Orbitz) that refuses to include most no-frills airlines in its results. Priceline does offer the "Name your Own Price" feature that first made it famous, offering up to 40% off, but if you use that, you only get to pick your airports and dates—not flight times, airlines, or stopovers—and that isn't worth it for most people.

 

Pros: Split search; bidding option can save up to 40%; vacation packages

Cons: Is mediocre or poor price; limited filters (solely number of stops and a slider for departure times); doesn’t include low-cost carriers

 

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#7: CheapOAir

The results from this smaller discount OTA were all over the place. CheapOAir performed the strongest of any on several last-minute international fares, but its results on flights booked far ahead of time were only average to sub-par. It was also one of several that mysteriously could not rustle up a direct flight from Philly to Rome.

 

Pros: Split search; vacation packages; quickly filters results to show nearby airports or flexible fares (within 3 days of your entered dates); details on baggage fees and fare rules (and, for some US carriers, seat selection map)

Cons: With a few exceptions on last-minute international travel, not reliable at finding the best price

 

 

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#6: SeatGuru

SeatGuru leverages its deep knowledge of plane configurations in its flight search function to provide excellent details about amenities (legroom, seat pitch, seatback TV, outlet, Wi-Fi), as well as combining all those factors into a "G-Factor" comfort rating. That's all great. Unfortunately, its performance on the all-important price point was merely average, landing in the worst to near-worst category of results 25% of the time, and in the near-best only 20% of the time. If it could just gin up better search results, it has the potential to rule the ratings.

 

Pros: Wonderful detail on amenities and bag fees; informed "comfort ratings;" provides shortcuts to cheapest, shortest/nonstop, and best value

Cons: Poor performance on price; clunky usability annoyances ("return" calendar doesn’t automatically jump to a date after the one you’ve entered for "departure")

 

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#5: Expedia/Travelocity

Expedia replaced Travelocity’s search engine with its own soon after acquiring its rival in early 2015, so now both provide identical, middle-of-the-road results on airfares. Expedia only shines domestically—and, to its credit, it found by far the best fare on a direct NYC-LAX flight on Virgin America. However, while it does an average job with the biggest gateways—rarely the best, rarely the worst—it fumbles the secondary cities, especially internationally, falling to the bottom of the curve on Philly to Rome and bottoming out at the back of the pack on our curveball, Denver to New Delhi.

 

Pros: A price champ on major domestic routes; split search; baggage fees; vacation packages; blind booking "Bargain Fares" (all you know is airports, dates, and price, not departure times or whether it stops)

Cons: Pricing is only fair to poor outside major domestic routes; limited filters/options

 

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#4: Hipmunk

Hipmunk has always thought outside the search-results box. We love its unique bar graph presentation—you can see at a glance the relative flight lengths, departure and arrival times, stopovers, and Wi-Fi availability on all results. Its innovative "Agony" filter, which showcases flights with the best balance of price, duration, and stopovers, is so cool that several competitors now imitate it. Unfortunately, on price this aggregator’s performance is only average, defeated in almost every test by the top three. 

 

Pros: Unique graphic display of results; very user-friendly (example: you can pick departure and return dates on the same pop-up calendar, saving clicks); fare alerts; split search; includes Amtrak (but not Eurostar trains in Europe) alternatives; vacation packages

Cons: Only managed to find the lowest fare on one test (and nearly all its competitors found the same one); only twice did it come within range for finding the truly lowest fares 

 

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#3: Google.com/flights

Google's purchase of the IATA Software flight engine a few years ago hasn’t been the game-changer many predicted (yet), but the titan of online search combined that database with its own algorithmic wizardry to produce a lightning-fast search engine that roots out good fares—at least domestically. International needs some work (though kudos for matching the best fare on our intra-European test).

 

Pros: Probably the fastest, automatically and instantly refreshing results as you alter parameters; consistently finds the lowest fares domestically; pop-up calendar is populated by prices for each day, with same info in bar-graph form at the bottom; great filters, including ability to include or (brilliant!) exclude a given airline or connecting airport from results; mentions amenities (seat outlets, entertainment, Wi-Fi) and warnings about typical delays; fabulous "Explore map" allows you to select any two major city pairs and see lowest fare for your dates, plus their price trends

Cons: Though it did a good job on last-minute transatlantic travel, on most other international fares it floundered, frequently ranking in our second highest price tier of results (though never the worst); includes only results direct from airlines, none from discounters

 

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#2: Skyscanner

The aggregator Skyscanner was famously one of the first to include low-cost airlines (though these days most do—except Priceline and Orbitz)—and it remains an excellent place to find some of the lowest fares available. That said, it stumbles on direct flights, sometimes coming in dead last (or nearly so) in our tests. But is has good filters, and a great, albeit hidden, where-can-I-go-cheap function: Just type "Everywhere" in the destination field and you will get a list of the cheapest fares to many popular places from your departure airport.  

 

Pros: Among the best at ferreting out the lowest fares (usually); shows price for same flight from multiple OTAs/airline sites; default is to hide duplicate codeshares (so your results aren’t cluttered with separate results that are actually on the same plane); price alerts; can find lowest fares to many places at once with the "Everywhere" feature

Cons: Oddly bad at finding the best fares on direct flights, even when it finds a great price on the same itinerary requiring a connection; no split search

 

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#1: Momondo

Momondo remains, hands-down, the best place to find the cheapest airfares every single time. In our 28 search scenarios, this aggregator found the lowest price 14 times, and the second-lowest eight times—and it was never off the lead price by more than a few dollars. Oddly, the only place where it batted average—not worst, but not best either—was on a routine NYC-LAX domestic flight. Its overall score tells the story: We used a complicated, weighted scoring system (including negative points for finding the highest “lowest” fare). The results for the top three finishers? Google Flights: 3 points. Skyscanner: 9 points. Momondo: 36 points. ‘Nuff said. This is why Frommer's selected it to serve as our airfares partner, although its test results earned its placement on this ranking.

 

Pros: Provides shortcuts to cheapest, quickest, and best overall results; nifty fare calendar graph shows average prices for a wide range (one week before and two weeks after each flight), so you can quickly see if another date might cost much less; does not track you with cookies, so can’t raise prices on you; includes Amtrak and Eurostar trains; filter by airport (including "nearby airports" in neighboring cities); fare alerts; split search ("Ticket Builder"); "Flight insight" feature offers insider intel on your city pair (the cheapest and most expensive fares, on average, pegged to season, airline, time of departure, day of the week, and more); shows price for same flight from multiple OTAs/airline sites

Cons: Is sometimes beat (but only by a few dollars) on domestic flights; lacks a few bells and whistles of our #2 and #3, such as Google’s robust filters and "Explore" map, or Skyscanner’s "Everywhere" option

By Reid Bramblett