How to find the best fares with Google Flights (2024)

FAQs

How to search for cheap flights on Google? ›

You can find cheap flight deals to anywhere in the world on Google Flights. Just enter your departure city, choose Anywhere as the destination, and select Explore. You can pick specific dates or leave departure and return dates blank if your plans are flexible. The cheapest fares to popular destinations will appear.

Get insights about price changes

You also get a notification in Google Flights, an email, or a mobile notification when: Prices for a route you're tracking are likely to go up. The current fare for a flight expires soon and the new fare is likely to cost more.

Average prices tend to be lowest 71 days before departure — a big change from our 2022 insights, which found that average prices were lowest just 22 days before departure. And the typical low price range is now 54-78 days before takeoff.

When you click Dates, you can find which travel dates have the best fares. Price graph: If your travel dates are flexible, clicking Price graph lets you explore fare trends by month or week. In this section, you can also opt in to tracking flights and prices.

A: In order to get cheapest air tickets, you should ideally book the tickets 2-3 weeks before the actual date of journey for domestic travel and for international travel, you should book the tickets 4-5 months before the journey to get cheap flight tickets.

Timing plays an important part. Specifically, plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date or if you book too early—more than five months in advance. Instead, flights tend to be the least expensive when you book between 5.5 and 1.5 months (164 and 46 days) in advance of your departure date.

Google Flights is a reliable, legitimate, and trustworthy site for flight searching. In general, its prices are accurate and reflect the same prices as you'll find on the airline websites and other OTAs.

Flight Alert will tell you which Airline has the current lowest price for the flight you are interested in and will notify you if an airline has a drop in price.

The price of airline tickets can change frequently based on various factors like demand, the time of year, and how close the travel date is. While some people believe that buying tickets at night can lead to better deals, there's no strong evidence to support this consistently.

What day and time do flight prices drop? ›

However, the day of the week of the flight does impact the price. Fridays and Sundays, when people travel the most, garner the highest prices. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when people are typically at work, are when fares drop to their cheapest.

Best Time To Book Domestic Flights

The Expedia study found that the sweet spot is 28 to 35 days before departure while the Google study found prices bottomed out 44 days before departure. However, both studies agree that you don't want to wait until the last minute. Book at least 21 days before departure.

However, if you're interested in following a specific trip (with set departure and destination and set dates), setting up alerts on Google Flights is a great way to keep track of the prices.

As previously mentioned, booking airfare on Sunday is cheaper than other days of the week, especially Fridays. Be willing to fly mid-week. Since Thursdays tend to be the cheapest day to fly, see if you can tweak your travel plans so you depart and fly home during the week instead of on weekend days.

Go to Google Flights. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the drop-down menus for language, location, and currency. To choose a language, click Language and make a selection. To choose a currency, click Currency and make a selection.

Momondo – Momondo is outstanding for finding the absolute cheapest fares that you won't see elsewhere. By double checking the price here, you'll find cheaper fares than Google Flights 90% of the time, sometimes by a few hundred dollars.