1. Best cheap flight search engine: Skiplagged
Skiplagged finds cheap flights through a loophole in traditional airline ticketing. Instead of searching for tickets strictly from City A to City B, Skiplagged also searches for hidden-city tickets — meaning flights from City A to City C with a layover in City B. You can land in City B and skip your second leg since flights with layovers can often be cheaper than direct flights.
2. Best search engine for cheapest flights: Agoda
Agoda is an online ticketing agency (OTA) that provides its users with a simple interface to reserve their travel needs quickly. Not only can you book flights, but you can also check out hotels and vacation homes, monthly homestays and airport transfers. Owned by the same parent company as Priceline, Kayak and Booking.com, you can rest assured your booking is with a legitimate business.
3. Best mobile app flight search engine: Hopper
Hopper is an excellent mobile app for searching for cheap flight deals. It predicts flight prices for up to a year in advance, claiming up to 95% accuracy. To get started, simply search for a flight itinerary, and Hopper will predict the most optimal time to book your flight. Hopper claims that it can help you save up to 40% on flights, monitoring flights even when you’re not actively using the app.
4. Best international flight search engine: Momondo
Compared to the other airfare sites we evaluated, Momondo performed the strongest when searching for international itineraries, particularly for business-class tickets. Momondo works by aggregating the prices for tickets on online ticketing agencies instead of selling tickets on its own website.
5. Best European flight search engine: Skyscanner
Skyscanner has an outstanding platform to search for flights to and within Europe. You can also search for hotels and rental cars on the site using its seamless tab integration for other travel needs. It has decent load times and a clean user interface, and it excels in offering plenty of European airlines in its listings, like Lufthansa and Air France. You can also filter by flight classes, making Skyscanner a great business-class search engine
6. Best search engine for flight packages: Kayak
Kayak is a tried-and-true flight search option with quick load times and solid travel packages for hotels, rental cars and cruises. The website displays many advertisements and can have a disorderly interface, so it’s not our favorite for a minimal experience. If used correctly, however, you can find some excellent deals with Kayak.
7. Best multicity flight search engine: Google Flights
Google Flights is our runner-up for our favorite flight search engines, thanks to its excellent user experience and consistent retrieval of competitively priced tickets on various itineraries. One of the best features is that it allows you to search for flights across multiple airports with one query. For example, if you’re booking a flight to Charlotte, N.C., and you’re unsure whether you want to fly from Boston or New York, Google Flights will let you browse departures from both cities within one search.
8. Best flight search engine for price match guarantee: Priceline
Priceline is owned by the same company as Agoda and Kayak, offering search capability for flights, hotels, rental cars and cruises. It provides a “Bundle + Save” option if you want to mix and match different bookings together. For hotel discounts, Priceline offers its Express Deals, offering up to 60% off on hotels. However, the website design can be confusing and can take much longer to load results than its competitors.
9. Best search engine for Southwest flights: Southwest
For domestic tickets and trips to the Caribbean, the Southwest Airlines website is a must-visit. Southwest offers affordable tickets across its own route map — and it doesn’t allow its tickets to be sold or displayed on third-party websites like Skiplagged, Google Flights and Momondo. As such, you should always check Southwest before booking a domestic economy or Caribbean itinerary on another airline.
10. Best cheap flight subscription service: Scott’s Cheap Flights
Scott’s Cheap Flights isn’t a flight search engine, but users will receive email notifications on deal alerts for low fares out of their preferred airports. While it’s free to subscribe to Scott’s Cheap Flights, Premium users are notified of up to five times more deals than normal readers, including mistake fares and holiday flights. For $49 per year for Premium or $199 per year for Elite, this subscription service can potentially save you hundreds — making this membership well worth it.
This service is best for travelers who have flexible travel plans. Scott’s Cheap Flights will send you an email with the destination, price range and dates. Only displaying nonstop or single-stop flights and on highly rated airlines, you’ll be notified of some phenomenal flight deals. Then, you’ll be able to see the full deal details and book directly on the airline’s website. Most deals only last a couple of days, so you’ll need to be ready to book as soon as possible.
11. Best search engine for booking vacation packages: Expedia
Expedia is one of the largest travel search engines out there, with over $70 billion in gross bookings in 2021. No matter where your travels take you, Expedia can help you get there. Searching for travel with Expedia lets you filter, sort and streamline your search to find the best deal for your unique travel situation.
12. Best loyalty program for a flight search engine: Orbitz
Orbitz is another flight search engine that is a part of the Expedia Group (along with Expedia and Travelocity, among other sites). That gives it access to many of the same deals and pricing. One way that you can get even more value with Orbitz is through its Orbucks rewards program.
15. Best flight search engine for collecting reward points: CheapOair
CheapOair is another flight search engine that allows you to search for flights, hotels, car rentals and a variety of different travel options. In addition to potentially earning airline miles on your flights, you can also get rewards through CheapOair’s ClubMiles program. Just watch out for possible additional fees and hard-to-find cancellation policies.
