A few weeks ago I compared Kayak and Hipmunk, two leading search engines for flights and hotel search online. For today’s post I’ve taken a look at Google Flight Search after its recent update to include international fares. (I’m also working on an update for my Hipmunk walkthroughs in the near future.)
Google Flight Search got a lot of badmouthing when it first came out. It’s the offspring of Google’s 2011 purchase of ITA, the creator of the Matrix search engine. I still consider ITA the standard bearer for those who can figure out all its coding tricks, but Google has been trying to create a simplified version that works better: more intuitive, faster, and easier to sort through when it spits out 10,000 results. Although Google releases a lot of products with the “Beta” label that it claims are still under development, they usually work pretty well from the get-go. In the case of Flight Search, it has been very obvious that changes will be made incrementally, and it’s more of an Alpha release–an earlier version of software that still lacks final design features.
For example, the first iteration of Flight Search didn’t search international flights and was somewhat awkward to use despite a few clever tricks. I remember using Flight Search back then but don’t completely remember everything since it was a one-time visit. I’ll base most of my description on Version 0.1 from a review Frequently Flying wrote back in September that called Google Flight Search “a total disappointment.” Significant changes have been made, and I’m not sure how many of them were actually around back then but overlooked. Still, I think Flight Search is only at Version 0.2 today. But what a Version 0.2 it is! I think Google Flight Search (GFS from here on) has a lot of potential, and it could be a game changer for experienced travelers if Google chooses to incorporate some of the advanced routing language options from ITA.
Domestic Search Results
This has been around since the first release, but I’m going to describe it anyway. Google manages to figure out your current location based on your IP address and assumes the nearest airport is your origin. You can change this, but it’s one less step for most people. Just input your destination in the next window along with some dates, and you’ll be ready to go. What I really like about GFS is that the map and results are all on one page, a page that never reloads. Not that it needs to since results are delivered almost instantly. 😀
You’re shown a map of your origin and destination airports along with several alternate destinations and their respective prices. I’ll get back to these later. For now I want to focus on the the calendar feature. I love using this with ITA because I am almost always flexible with my dates. And if you’re not flexible, with GFS it doesn’t really matter–it’s still just as good. Click on the calendar icon to bring it up after entering your information. Ignore the normal-looking calendar that appears on the left and look at the column of fares on the right. If you searched for a 3-day trip to start (April 10-12) then it will show you the lowest price for the same 3-day trip on every other day of the year.
The vertical black line indicates the price for the departure date you originally selected, but you can change it by double-clicking on another blue row to indicate a new baseline for comparison. Scroll through the column of fares with your mouse or the scroll bar to see how prices change with time.
Poor Filtering and Purchasing Features
Unfortunately the fun stops there. You can select specific airlines on the right like with any other flight search engine. However, they don’t work quite right. I was still getting fares that included Alaska Airlines after limiting my search to United Airlines and US Airways. I guess I wasn’t bothered too much since it still narrowed things enough to find the flights I wanted. Sort-of. GFS doesn’t provide any aircraft information, which is important if you want to estimate your chances of an elite upgrade, want to get a newer aircraft with better in-flight entertainment, or are trying to avoid a regional jet. In this case, the only warning I was given is that my original return flight included the dreaded “… dba United Express.” I guess that’s something.
Picking specific flights is simple enough. Scroll through your options for an outbound flight, pick one, and the results below will automatically change to reflect your return options. If you don’t like the outbound or return, click on the X to eliminate it and choose another. It works pretty well with two caveats. First, if you eliminate the outbound flight, it also loses the return flight. At least ITA and Kayak will hold the return option for you and let you change just the outbound. Second, because the page doesn’t reload and the results, in my opinion, don’t have very clear graphical separation, it’s a little hard to tell when the outbound flights are replaced with return flights. It just happens in a flash. I dunno, just slightly bothersome.
More damning is the inability to book anything. GFS has only limited partnerships with a few airlines as well as Orbitz. To make things more complicated, most airlines *cough* American *cough* won’t play ball if Google is going to throw an online travel agency like Orbitz into the mix. They want to be the exclusive purchasing option. Things are crazy enough that you shouldn’t rely on actually being able to book your flight once you find it.
International Search Results
So far GFS has only a limited number of international destinations available. Something like 500, which is nowhere near the thousands of commercial airports in the world with IATA codes. Oh, and you also have to begin your trip in the U.S. Riiight. I’m sure this will be one of the first limitations to go, but my understanding is that Google doesn’t want to provide incomplete results for any given airport. It’s a lot easier to get all the data for Mumbai compared to, say, Nagpur. And if GFS only has a limited number of international destinations to work with, I assume using the same small set for originations may leave some users disappointed. Better not to let them use it at all than give them a bad experience.
It’s still a little finicky. For example, flights from San Francisco to Singapore apparently don’t exist after mid-September. That’s an awfully close-in limit given that schedules are usually loaded 330 days out, but maybe I had a glitch in my Internet connection and they just wouldn’t load.
A Creative Approach to Price and Time Filters
Everything I’ve described so far can be done better with other sites–although I still think the scrolling price calendar is nicely done. We’re now getting into the nitty gritty technical stuff that makes GFS fun for a travel hacker like me.
Underneath the calendar you’ll see two entry fields for Price and Duration. You can override the autofill and put in your own limits, or you can represent these limits graphically by clicking on the icon to the right that looks like a scatterplot (a graph with lots of dots). One of the things that Darren ragged on GFS about back in September is that these sliders for price and duration are too complicated for the average user. I agree. But since I do know how to use and interpret them, I would prefer that they stay the way they are.
Drag the Duration tab up and down the y-axis to exclude excessively long trips, and drag the Price tab left and right along the x-axis to exclude those you can’t afford. This creates a blue shaded area that limits the flight results below. What about all those dots? What do they mean? Hollow dots are flights that are already excluded by other criteria. For example, maybe you told GFS to only show flights operated by United Airlines. Solid dots are those flights that remain, but you will only be shown the flights that are both solid AND within the blue box.
This solid/hollow distinction is important because it also shows up on the map if you pay close attention. This is where it gets cool. If you never set a price limit, all of the dots will appear solid because they all fit your search parameters. We see the actual flight you want to Singapore as well as alternate flights to other cities. Some of them even have prices. Hey, Bangkok is only $1,793! I should go there instead and save some money.
It turns out that once you set some limitations, some of the flights are going to be outside your blue box, and that means they show up as hollow dots on the map. If your limit is $3,000 then every alternate destination on the map below can be reached for $3,000 or less. All the hollow dots cost more than $3,000. I’ve indicated the hollow dots with red arrows.
This graphical representation of prices also works for domestic flights. So if you were to set a limit of $200 and specify only United, or only American, or whatever your preferred airline is, you would be shown a map with solid dots for every city at or under your price point. Ta-da! We have a potential replacement for things like FareCompare’s FlyerTalk tool, which used to do something very similar, showing you in text rather than pictures where you could fly for cheap to work in a mileage run or two. Of course, GFS doesn’t show all the airports in the US or the world if you zoom out really far. I guess you’ll have to go region by region. It also doesn’t quote you a price-per-mile, but most of us already know approximately how many miles you can get out typical city pairs and what a good all-in price would be. Still, it shows promise, and it does it a heck of a lot quicker than a manual search using ITA.
Finally, I just want to point out that you can drag and drop the blue and green icons for origination and destination airports. Like Google Maps, you can play with the map itself to make changes more intuitively. If that fare to Bangkok really appeals to you, just drag the destination icon from Singapore to Bangkok, release, and the individual flight results below will automatically repopulate.
Closing Thoughts
Google Flight Search has a lot of neat features that I never noticed before either because they’re new or because all its other failings kept me from paying attention to the things Google got right. I think GFS deserves some attention as a graphical complement to the ITA search engine we all know and love. Working with maps, scrolling calendars, and instantly updated results makes it so much faster to look for the flight you want. However, it’s still just a search engine. The booking process is so hobbled that I can’t recommend it as a replacement for Kayak, Hipmunk, or one of the OTAs. It is, like ITA, just a place to search for a flight that you will then book elsewhere.
Do you need ITA at all? Yes. GFS is only a suitable replacement for the most popular routes that Google has decided to include. There are also enough bugs when you try to limit your results to specific airlines and such that I don’t complete trust the results. Finally, ITA still has many features that make it great for complicated trips where you already know half of what you want and are trying to nail down the rest. ITA features like time bars and advanced routing language are essential when I want to book an international trip or need to go to a semi-rural airport with the potential for long layovers and inconvenient arrival/departure times. But keep in mind that changes are still coming. I can only imagine how powerful Google Flight Search could be if they decide to incorporate some of the best parts of ITA.
If you want to learn more about using ITA, read my walkthroughs:
Google Flights Today: What the Modern Tool Actually Does
The product described above reflects Google Flights as it existed in its earliest form. The tool has changed dramatically since then. Today it is a mature, free flight metasearch engine built on Google’s 2011 acquisition of ITA Software, searching more than 300 airlines and online travel agencies simultaneously on a single fast page. It does not charge a booking fee, requires no account to search, and has added a substantial set of features that make fare hunting meaningfully easier than it was in 2012. The table below summarizes the current product at a glance.
| Feature | Current Status |
|---|---|
| Cost to use | Free |
| Account required | No to search; Google account needed for price alerts |
| Airlines and OTAs searched | 300-plus |
| Books in-product | Sometimes; otherwise hands off to airline or OTA |
| Price tracking and alerts | Yes (email and push notification) |
| Cheapest-dates tools | Date grid and price graph |
| Explore-by-budget map | Yes |
| Sort by Cheapest vs Best | Yes |
| Screen out basic economy | Yes |
| Carry-on and bag filters | Yes |
| Notable caveats | Budget-carrier base fares can understate the all-in cost once bag and seat add-ons are included; prices shown are estimates, not guaranteed at checkout, and can lag live availability |
How to Track Flight Prices and Set Alerts
One of the most useful features added to Google Flights since the early days is automated price tracking. After running any search, a “Track prices” toggle appears near the top of the results. Switching it on links the route to a Google account and tells Google to send an email or notification whenever the fare moves significantly in either direction. The tracked routes live under “Tracked flight prices” in the Google Flights menu, so it is easy to review everything being watched at once.
Google also adds a price-insight label to most searches, indicating whether the current fare is low, typical, or high relative to historical data for that route and timeframe. On some searches it surfaces a prediction suggesting prices are likely to drop before departure, though these confidence signals are estimates rather than guarantees. The practical use case is straightforward: find the itinerary you want, turn on tracking, and let the alert do the work instead of manually rechecking the fare every few days.
For travelers with fully flexible destinations, the Explore map extends the same logic. Setting an origin and leaving the destination open, then choosing a month and an optional price cap, populates the map with the cheapest fares to dozens of cities at once. It is the direct descendant of the alternate-destination map described above, now considerably more powerful and searchable by budget rather than only by place.
Is Google Flights Accurate? Where the Caveats Are
Google states that prices displayed in search results are estimates and may differ slightly at checkout, though significant mismatches are uncommon in practice. The more meaningful gap is not which carriers appear but how budget fares are presented. Ultra-low-cost airlines such as Frontier and Allegiant do show up in results, but the figure on the page is typically a bare base fare without the carry-on, seat selection, and checked-bag charges that make up a large share of the real ticket price. A traveler comparing a $79 fare on one of those carriers against a $149 fare on a full-service airline through Google Flights may not be seeing the true cost difference once those add-ons are layered in. The other thing to keep in mind is that metasearch can lag live availability, so a fare that looks bookable occasionally disappears or reprices by the time you click through.
The practical workaround is straightforward. Use Google Flights to identify the best itinerary, then run a separate check on Skyscanner or directly on the budget carrier’s site when an ultra-low-cost airline is in the mix, since the carrier’s own site spells out the add-on charges most clearly. Clicking through to confirm the all-in total at checkout before purchasing is a useful final step regardless of carrier, particularly on international routes where checked-bag fees vary widely by fare class.
One other category Google Flights does not address is award availability. It searches cash fares only, so travelers looking to redeem miles or points need a separate tool. The results here are useful for benchmarking the cash price of a route while deciding whether an award redemption is worth pursuing, but they will not show seat availability in airline partner programs or flag sweet spots in loyalty currencies.
How Are Budget Carriers Shown on Google Flights?
Coverage is broad. Ultra-low-cost carriers including Frontier, Allegiant, Ryanair, Wizz Air, and easyJet all appear in Google Flights results, each with its own dedicated booking page, and Southwest Airlines now participates as well after years of keeping its fares off metasearch. The catch is pricing detail rather than presence: budget fares often display as a base price with estimated taxes and fees, while the carry-on, seat selection, and checked-bag charges that round out the real total are added later on the airline’s own site. A handful of smaller regional and charter operators show less consistently, and some European and Asian budget carriers display more completely on Skyscanner. Major network carriers and the large online travel agencies are generally well represented.
Google Flights Pros and Cons
- Free, fast, and comprehensive: searches 300-plus airlines and OTAs on one page that never reloads
- Date grid and price graph make finding the cheapest travel days genuinely fast when dates are flexible
- Price tracking watches a fare automatically and sends an alert when it drops or rises
- Explore map turns a budget into a list of destinations reachable for that price
- Modern filters cover stops, airlines and alliances, times of day, layover length, bags, carry-on inclusion, and basic-economy screen-out
- Budget-carrier base fares can mislead: ultra-low-cost airlines appear, but the price shown often omits the bag, seat, and carry-on add-ons that make up much of the real total
- Prices are estimates, not guaranteed at checkout; the all-in total should be confirmed on the airline’s site before booking
- No award search: cash fares only, so it is not a substitute for dedicated points-and-miles tools
- Member-only fares on some airlines are cheaper on the carrier’s own site than what Google shows
Is Google Flights Worth Using?
For the vast majority of travelers buying a cash ticket, Google Flights is the best free starting point available. It is faster than every legacy travel agency site, the date grid and price graph do real work in finding a cheaper departure window, and price tracking removes the need to manually recheck a fare while waiting for it to move. The honest caveats are narrow: if ultra-low-cost carriers like Frontier or Allegiant are part of the consideration set, a parallel check on the carrier’s own site confirms the all-in price once bag and seat fees are added. And regardless of where a fare is found, confirming the final all-in total at the airline’s checkout before paying is worth the extra click. For award travelers, Google Flights is a useful benchmark for the cash value of a route but not a replacement for a dedicated award search tool. For cash fares on mainstream carriers, it is the single most efficient free search available.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do I Use Google Flights to Find Cheap Flights?
Enter an origin and destination, then open the date grid or price graph to spot the cheapest days to fly. Add filters for stops, airline, and bag inclusion to narrow results, and toggle “Track prices” to receive an alert when the fare drops. For flexible trips, leave the destination open and use the Explore map to find the cheapest places to fly on a set budget.
Is Google Flights Accurate?
Mostly. Google notes that displayed prices are estimates and may differ slightly at checkout, but meaningful mismatches are uncommon. The bigger thing to watch is how budget fares are shown: ultra-low-cost carriers appear in results, but the figure on the page is often a base fare without the mandatory carry-on, seat, and bag add-ons, so the true total can run higher than what Google displays. Metasearch can also lag live availability. Confirming the all-in price on the airline’s site before purchasing is always worth doing.
Does Google Flights Show All Airlines?
It searches more than 300 airlines and online travel agencies, and that includes ultra-low-cost carriers such as Frontier, Ryanair, and Wizz Air. The limitation is detail rather than coverage: budget fares can be incompletely priced because the displayed total often leaves out carry-on, seat, and bag charges. For those carriers, checking directly on the airline’s site, or using a tool like Skyscanner alongside Google Flights, helps confirm the real all-in cost.
Is It Cheaper to Book Directly or Through Google Flights?
Usually the price is identical, since Google hands the booking off to the airline or an OTA rather than processing it directly. In some cases the airline’s own site is cheaper because of member-only or logged-in flash fares not visible in metasearch. A quick check on the airline’s site before committing is a reasonable final step.
How Do I Track Flight Prices on Google Flights?
Run a search, then switch on the “Track prices” toggle near the top of the results. A Google account is required. Google then sends email or push notifications when the fare rises or falls significantly, and all tracked routes are accessible under “Tracked flight prices” in the Google Flights menu.
What Is the Explore Feature on Google Flights?
Explore is a map that surfaces the cheapest destinations reachable from a given origin for a chosen month and optional price cap. Setting an origin, leaving the destination field open, and selecting a timeframe fills the map with fares so a destination can be chosen based on what is affordable rather than the other way around.
