The Best Travel Sites for Booking Cheap Flights

There are numerous ways to search for flights online, from legacy online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Orbitz to a host of newer OTAs and flight search engines that have popped up in recent years, like Hopper.

Despite the plethora of options, there are a few OTAs and metasearch sites we routinely recommend because they have the best tools and typically unearth the best fares. Here, we break down the most popular flight search sites and OTAs and give you our take on each, plus some tips on when to use each one depending on your flight search needs.

Key takeaways

• Google Flights is the best starting point for most searches, thanks to its flexible date calendar and multi-city search.
• Momondo often finds lower fares than other metasearch sites because it searches smaller OTAs. 
• Skyscanner's "Everywhere" search is best when you're flexible on destination, not just dates.
• Skiplagged is the only major search engine built around hidden-city fares.
• No search engine surfaces every deal. Cross-reference 2–3 sites, then compare against Going's deal alerts for fares that don't show up in any of them.

Quick comparison: the best travel sites for cheap flights

Going

Going is not a traditional flight search engine or online travel agency (OTA). Rather, it’s a flight deal alert service that tracks airfare price drops and sends notifications directly to members, eliminating the need to constantly search for cheap flights yourself.

Why we love it: Going offers a hands-off, automated way to discover the best flight deals. Flight experts monitor thousands of routes in real time to catch unadvertised sales and mistake fares 40–90% below typical prices. Members set their departure airports and travel preferences and receive alerts directly to their inbox or mobile device.

Once an alert points you to a deal, you can seamlessly complete your booking through the airline or search engine of your choice.

Google Flights

Google Flights is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly flight search engines around, offering plenty of features to fine-tune your selections. It's also great for exploring flight options for a range of destinations if you're not set on traveling to one specific place. We frequently include Google Flights search results in our deals, and for travelers who want to do the deal-searching themselves, we often recommend they start their search on Google Flights, particularly if they have flexible dates or locations.

Why we love it: Google Flights makes finding great deals easy with features like a map to explore prices from your home airport to destinations across the entire world, a low-price calendar to help you find the cheapest flight if you have flexibility with dates, and a multi-city search function so that you can check for the best prices between up to seven origin airports and seven destination airports at one time. The search engine has an easy-to-use interface that displays straightforward results.

While Google Flights is pretty comprehensive, it sometimes misses the cheapest flights, as it pulls its data from the airlines, and some airlines either aren’t displayed in results or only show partial schedules, including Air China and Aeroméxico. Also, while Google Flights has pretty good OTA coverage, it’s known to exclude smaller OTAs from search results.

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a UK-based flight search engine that's ideal for people with flexible travel plans, as you don't need to search for flights to or from specific destinations. Instead, you can choose an origin as broad as an entire country and a destination as broad as "everywhere." Skyscanner redirects users to book through the airline or an OTA.

Why we love it: Skyscanner's "Everywhere" tool makes it easy to find the best deals over specific travel dates if you're flexible with your destination. Similar to Google Flights, there's also a flexible date calendar if you've already picked your destination, plus a multi-city search function to find the best deals for a given area. Skyscanner also has a great mobile app for searching on the go.

Like many flight search engines, Skyscanner sometimes misses the lowest price because it doesn't search every OTA. Prices sometimes ghost, too, which means that even though a low price is displayed on Skyscanner's results page, when you go to book, that price is no longer available (this also happens occasionally on Google Flights).

Additionally, the monthly calendar does not update in real time. Rather, it's based on users' searches, so while it displays accurate pricing for dates on popular routes, it may not show updated info for less-searched routes.

Momondo

Momondo is a flight search engine that pulls data from numerous OTAs, including lesser-known ones that sometimes offer the best deals, which means it often (though not always) unearths the best prices. As with other flight search engines, you don't book directly through the site but are redirected to an OTA or airline.

Why we love it: Since Momondo searches many smaller OTAs as well as the larger ones, you're often able to find better deals than the ones that show up on Google Flights or major OTAs like Expedia or Priceline.

While Google Flights and Skyscanner return results almost immediately, Momondo is much slower. This is because the site is searching hundreds of OTAs at once. Momondo also lacks extra search features, so while it's great for finding the lowest prices between specific cities on specific dates, there's no way to search multiple dates or multiple locations. For this reason, we often recommend starting with Google Flights or Skyscanner, then double-checking prices on Momondo.

Kayak

Kayak is not only a flight search engine but also a hotel, cruise, and car rental search engine, so it's great if you're looking to book several parts of your trip on one site. You can also search for airfare and hotel packages for bundled deals. Since Kayak is a search engine, bookings are done through booking sites themselves, either through the airlines or with an OTA.

Why we love it: Kayak searches a vast number of OTAs, so you're likely to find great deals from smaller agencies. Plus, you can easily book hotels and car rentals via the same site, making planning a trip quite easy. It also has a flexible date function and "explore" options that help you pick destinations based on price, trip duration, or even theme (like a romantic getaway). And, like the others, you can set fare alerts on Kayak.

Similar to Momondo, Kayak is a slower search engine, which can be frustrating. It also doesn't have the most intuitive interface, and there are advertisements that can muddy the experience. While Kayak searches many OTAs, it does skip a few, so you might ultimately be able to find cheaper tickets via another search engine, such as Momondo.

Priceline

Priceline is a true OTA, meaning that all of the deals offered will be booked directly through the site. It searches flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, and vacation packages for travelers.

Why we love it: Priceline's interface very clearly states pricing and cancellation information, and it offers a Best Price Guarantee, so if you find a better deal elsewhere, even after booking, Priceline will refund you the difference. Its Express Deals can save you quite a bit on flights if you're willing to book without knowing all the details (like exact flight time and airline). Also, Priceline has one of the better cancellation policies, allowing you to cancel or change your flight for free until 11:59pm ET the next business day on many flights.

There are, however, limitations to Priceline's search features: You can't search multiple cities, and flexible dates are restricted to a three-day window (one day before and one day after your search dates). You also can't book directly with airlines, which many travelers prefer.

Skiplagged

Skiplagged is a search engine for hidden city fares, which is when travelers book connecting flights that go one point beyond their final destination and skip the last flight to stay in the layover city. These fares can often be cheaper than booking direct flights between the origin and destination. (e.g., flights from A to B can be more expensive than flights from A to C with a layover in B.)

Why we love it: Skiplagged is a great tool for travelers whose destination is a hub airport that is a common layover point. No other search engine or OTA searches for hidden city fares, which can sometimes be much cheaper, especially at the last minute.

While technically legal, there are many caveats to booking hidden ticket fares. For instance, you typically won't be able to check a bag, as the bag will end up in the final city on the itinerary, not the layover city. Additionally, once you skip a leg, all subsequent flights on your itinerary will be canceled, so you need to book two one-ways or only skip the final leg of your journey. Finally, hidden city ticketing does technically violate the airline’s contract of carriage, so an airline can penalize you by canceling your frequent flyer miles. Just be aware of the potential consequences before booking the ticket. 

ITA Matrix

ITA Matrix is a flight search engine developed by MIT computer scientists and owned by Google. It's the tool that powers many other flight search engines, including Google Flights. It's an ideal product for travelers who have very specific flight demands and are tech savvy.

Why we love it: If you have hyper-specific search parameters (specific airlines, routes, times, price per mile, or layover cities, for instance), this is the search engine for you. You can input any number of codes that narrows down the options to exactly what you're looking for.

ITA Matrix is a complicated tool with a confusing interface, meaning it's not ideal for the average user. It's better for frequent, tech-savvy travelers who need very specific flights and don't want to wade through irrelevant options.

Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity

Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity are all OTAs that belong to the same parent company (Expedia Group). They're all very similar products that offer deals for airfare, hotels, car rentals, and vacation packages that are all bookable directly on the sites. Because they're all part of the same group, they have similar features and typically return the same results.

Why we love them: Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity are great one-stop shops for vacations as they make it easy to bundle flights, hotels, and car rentals into one booking. Orbitz and Expedia also have rewards programs, so loyal users can earn points and save.

All three OTAs are not as robust as the other sites on this list. There's limited ability to search multiple cities and dates, so you might not be able to see all your options at the best prices. But if convenience is key, they might be a good option for you.

How to pair search engines for the best fares

Each flight search engine and OTA has its own pros and cons, so we generally recommend pairing your favorite with one that makes up for the other's shortcomings. For example, we often recommend flexible travelers start on Google Flights to find the cheapest dates for their trip or find the cheapest destination for their dates, then cross-reference that search on Momondo to find the lowest fares.

If you know exactly where and when you want to fly, start with Momondo or Kayak to comb through smaller OTAs that Google Flights misses. If you want to bundle your flight with a hotel or rental car, Kayak or Priceline are your best bets. And if you are flying to a major hub city and need a last-minute deal, check Skiplagged for hidden-city fares.

No metasearch engine or OTA searches every airline and every OTA, so the cheapest fare for your route might live on a site you wouldn’t think to check. That’s why we recommend always cross-referencing at least two search engines before you book.

Why deal alerts find fares search engines miss

The thing about search engines is that they only show you what’s available right now. The cheapest fares, including mistake fares and unadvertised deals, often appear and disappear within hours. If you’re not searching at the exact moment a price drops, you miss it.

Enter Going. We’re a deal alert service. Our flight experts monitor thousands of routes in real time and send you alerts when fares drop to 40–90% below typical prices. Members see international roundtrip fares like JFK to Lisbon for $312 or LAX to Tokyo for $487, prices that often don’t last long enough for a casual search to catch.

If you don't want to spend your evenings refreshing fares, that's what our deal alerts are for. You tell us your home airport and any travel preferences, and we send the deals to your inbox.