Best site to find cheap flights

published: 7/9/23 | July 9, 2023

Finding a cheap flight has never been easier. From deal-finding sites like Going to travel hacking tools like Point.me, travelers have plenty of options for finding cheap tickets.

There are a lot of options for searching for prices. I mean you have Google Flights, Expedia, Orbitz, Momondo, and many other sites promoting that you will find the cheapest fares.

there is nobody better Flight search site. They all have blind spots.

But, of all the search engines I’ve used, Skyscanner is by far my favorite. It always seems to find the best deals more often than other sites and their ability to search globally means they leave no stone unturned. It’s my favourite.

While Skyscanner is very easy to use, given all its features, it helps to have a little primer so that you can be sure you’re taking advantage of all its capabilities.

In this Skyscanner review, I’ll show you how to get the most out of the site so you can always find the best deal!

What is Skyscanner?

Skyscanner is a flight search engine that allows you to search for cheap flights around the world, as well as the best deals for car rentals and hotels.

It started in 2003 when three IT professionals got frustrated with the difficulty of finding cheap flights. Low-cost airlines were just beginning to emerge, but there was no central place to search across all airlines at once for the cheapest fares. So, they took matters into their own hands and created Skyscanner.

In recent years, they’ve added the ability to search for hotels and rental cars, and today, more than 100 million people around the world use the app and site every month, with 80 billion prices searched every day.

How does Skyscanner work?

Since it’s mostly a flight search engine, to use Skyscannery you simply enter your desired travel dates (you can search by specific dates or by month) and destination, and voila – all your flight options appear. You can search by airport, city or even an entire country.

If you’re traveling to or from major cities with multiple airports (like New York and Paris in the example below), you won’t have to search through all the different airport combinations as they will all be sorted automatically.

I recommend using the month calendar view because you can immediately see the cheapest days to travel. Even if you have exact dates, it might be worth taking a quick look at the month view, because if you’re able to shift the dates even by a couple of days, you can save hundreds of dollars:

(NB: If a date doesn’t have a price, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any flights that day. It just means no one has searched for that flight recently, so Skyscanner doesn’t have up-to-date data. These dates are still searchable and the price will be added once searched.)

Once you have selected specific dates, you will get your results and can start to refine your search further until you find your ideal trip. At the top of the results, Skyscanner gives you a handy breakdown so you can instantly see which flights are the best, cheapest, and fastest. It automatically shows the best overall ride first, but you can toggle that to sort by cheapest, fastest, or time.

You can also filter your search in several ways, including:

• number of stations
• Departure times (on the round trip)
• Flight duration
• Airline and airline alliances (Star Alliance, SkyTeam, Oneworld)
• Airports (and for cities with more than one airport, you can switch between the option to travel back and forth using the same airport)
• Carbon emissions (toggle this will show only low-emission flights)

Let’s say you’ve sorted and filtered your results and found a flight that you want to book. Just hit select and you will be taken to a page that shows you all the websites where you can book that ticket. Skyscanner draws attention to the airline itself with a small green box next to that result:

It’s always a good idea to book directly with the airline, even if it’s a little more expensive (in this case, actually cheaper than third-party sites), as if something goes wrong (like a flight delay or cancellation), they’ll also be on the hook to make it right. . If you book with a third party (such as Expedia or MyTrip), this adds another layer of difficulty when it comes to getting a refund or flight change/cancellation.

(But no matter who you book/travel with, you should still get travel insurance because it will protect you from unforeseen expenses that arise when things go wrong on the road, including delays and lost baggage.)

If you are not satisfied with the current search results or are not ready to book yet, you can set up a price alert and receive an email if the price changes.

Skyscanner’s ubiquitous feature

The coolest feature of Skyscanner is the Explore Everywhere option. It allows you to search around the world from any chosen airport to get the cheapest flight. This is a great option if you have a certain time frame in which you want to travel but are open to going wherever the cheapest flight will take you. You can search by a specific date or a whole month for more flexibility:

Once you choose your time frame, results will be shown, sorted by country. Let’s say in November you are looking for cheap flights from New York. You can see that the cheapest flights are elsewhere in the continental United States, with Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Canada, El Salvador, and Colombia all coming next (and very cheaply!).

If you’re open to traveling anywhere, this is an invaluable tool. I use it all the time and can’t recommend it enough!

Multi-city trips

If you’re thinking of a trip with multiple destinations, Skyscanner has a handy ‘multi-city’ feature where you can add up to six stages on a single itinerary. This is ideal for anyone who is planning a trip around the world and wants to pre-book their major excursions and have everything in one place for simplicity.

You can also use the multi-city tool to find and book flights where not all legs connect. For example, say you want to go to New York City – Madrid – Paris – London and then back to NYC – but you want to take the train from Paris to London so you don’t need a flight for that stop. You can skip legs with the multi-city tool, which means you can combine flights and match with other forms of transportation as you travel, giving you plenty of flexibility as you plan and book.

Skyscanner savings generator tool

Skyscanner’s latest new tool is the Savings Generator, which uses past flight data to give travelers insights into how and when to book the cheapest flight for an upcoming flight. You’ve entered your departure airport, month, and desired destination into the tool, and it will tell you the best days to travel as well as the distance to book:

Let’s say you tell Savings Generator that you want to travel from New York to Paris in May next year. Skyscanner will tell you its best money-saving tips based on last year’s flight data:

It’ll also make suggestions for cheaper places to fly from that departure airport during that month, in case you’re open to being flexible with your destination to save money.

While it’s an innovative concept, Savings Generator is currently in beta mode, which means it’s still very limited in its use. This tool can only search for major airports and destinations, and there could be more money-saving tips. But knowing Skyscanner, they will certainly continue to develop and expand this tool to help travelers find the cheapest flights out there, so it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Hotels and car rental

Skyscanner started offering hotel searches in 2014, so if you want to search for accommodation at the same time, it will open a new tab and show all your options on a map. As with searching for their flights, they search various booking sites to find the best deals, and you can filter and sort the results in a number of ways.

You can also search for car rentals at the same time and switch filters until you find a rental that suits your needs.

Skyscanner is a vital tool for finding the best and cheapest flights. It’s where I start all my flight searches, and I recommend you do the same. Whether you need a scheduled flight or are open to going wherever the cheapest flight will take you, Skyscanner has you covered.

You can use the tool below to start planning your next trip: