How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere: 17 Tips

There’s no better feeling than finding a great deal on a flight and booking it. A whole world of possibility and exploration opens up all because of a cheap flight. But finding a cheap flight doesn’t sound easy, especially with all the noise about using incognito, sketchy websites, and deals that sound too good to be true. If you’re looking for ways to save money on your next vacation, here’s everything you need to know on how to find cheap flights to anywhere.

Use Google Flights

There are constant recommendations for the best cheap flight websites, from Expedia, Skyscanner, Kayak, etc. Well, throw those out the window because Google Flights is the only service you need to use.

I’ve used the other websites before, and it always feels like the prices that you see aren’t real. Sometimes, there are hidden fees that aren’t calculated, or the booking platforms look like sketchy websites with terrible refund policies.

I use Google Flights to find all the great deals on flights. It has a fare calendar that tells you the prices for each day up to 6 months ahead of the date. Prices in green are the cheaper deals, so it’s easy to see on a calendar. The best thing about the fare calendar is that it tells you the fare for every day of the month, vs. Skyscanner only tells you the cheapest fare for the entire month.

Now, finding cheap flights requires a little more looking, but it’s worth it. It’s like going thrifting versus shopping at retail stores. At thrift stores, you have to look for great deals or finds, but with retail stores, it’s all curated and more expensive.

With Google Flights, you have to hunt a little more for a great deal versus booking a regular flight with an airline or third-party website.

How to Use Google Flights

Google Flights is so easy to use. Just put your home airport, destination, dates of travel, and passengers in the search bar, and then all the available flights will appear. If you have strict travel dates, you won’t have much flexibility in picking flights, so you can try using credit card points or other special offers for a discount.

But if you are flexible when traveling, I like to drop down the fare calendar and browse the dates around the time I want to travel. To see the daily fares on the calendar, select your departure date, and you’ll see how much your roundtrip ticket is for each date.

The fares can jump around depending on the day you leave, so play around with your departure days and find a great fare this way.

Look (Not Book!) Early

Generally, the earlier you look for flights, the more chances you have of finding a cheap flight. It’s a myth that the earlier you book, the cheaper your flight is (although it’d be nice if that was the case).

Flight prices fluctuate unpredictably. You might get lucky and get a discounted flight a month before you go, which might be even cheaper than the same flight booked a couple of months earlier.

I like to start my search 4-5 months ahead of when I want to travel. So, for a trip in January, I’ll start looking in August. This is a great way to see what the travel season is like at the destination. It may or may not be busy, and the prices will reflect demand.

It gives me enough time to pivot my plans if it’s more expensive than I think or keep tabs on prices to search for a good deal.

But it’s also never a good idea to wait until the last minute to book flights because airlines know you’re running out of options and desperate to get a ticket. So, they’ll price gouge the flight fare based on demand. It’s simple economics, really!

Let Cheap Flights Dictate Your Travel Destination

We can’t control which flights will be cheap, so if you can, book cheap flights when you find them! Sometimes, it’s luck or simply getting notified about an airline sale or deal. Flexibility is the name of the game.

For example, let’s say you stumble upon an airline deal for 30% off all flights to Ireland for flights in the next 4-5 months. Well, this is the perfect opportunity to visit Ireland for a steal! As long as you’re interested in Ireland, it’s a great travel destination for your next trip.

It’s also much harder to find cheap flights to one destination versus a cheap flight to multiple destinations. With the latter, you have more opportunities for affordable flights. So, creating flexibility in your travel destination makes it easier to book great deals.

Have Flexible Travel Dates

Again, flexibility is the name of the cheap flight game. The more flexible you are, the better the flight deals.

Nothing is more disappointing than booking a flight on a certain day, only to see that the next day is $100 cheaper and you can’t take it. If you aren’t constrained to a specific travel day, you can work with different days that might have cheaper flights.

However, if you’re working, you don’t have much flexibility for PTO or time off. Same with going to a big event like a wedding, convention, etc., which have specific days you need to be there. In these cases, it pays to be more strategic.

For example, instead of taking off a major holiday, take time off during a random time of the year that’s off-season for many destinations. That way, you’ll get cheaper tickets by default.

Being flexible with dates only gives more opportunities to find and book cheap flights.

Book Flights With Connections

These days, we pay a premium for convenience. But the opposite is true too, that inconvenience saves money. In the flying world, direct flights are ideal, but flights with connections are not.

So, if you want to save some money, look for flights with connections or connecting flights. They’ll often be cheaper than direct flights, sometimes even for hundreds of dollars. For example, a roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Paris with a connection is $140 cheaper than its direct counterpart. Granted, the connection is so short that it’s not a good flight to book, but it serves my point.

Flights with connections are cheaper than direct flights. But before you book a flight with a stop, check that:

• The layover is at least an hour and a half to two hours. You need time to get off the airplane, go through customs if necessary, and get to your gate. It’s also nice to have a buffer in case your flight gets delayed.
• The airport you stop at is the same one you take in. Sometimes, the ticket will say “airport change,” meaning you must go to a different airport for the next flight. You don’t want that.

Take Flights With Long Layovers

If you’re choosing a flight with a connection, try to find one with a long layover! Like, 6+ hours long or overnight. Long layovers give you a chance to visit two places instead of one, especially if the airport is close to the city or has great public transit connections.

In places like Copenhagen, it takes 15 minutes to get from the airport to the city center. And if you have an 8-hour layover in Copenhagen, you can easily drop your bags somewhere, explore the city for a couple of hours, and hop on your connecting flight.

And contrary to popular belief, you can exit the airport on a connecting flight. You just need to double-check the entry and exit requirements to avoid disappointment. For example, if you connect in Saudi Arabia and you’re a U.S. citizen, you need a visa to enter the country.

For even more savings, try getting a long layover in the day so you don’t have to pay for a hotel. For example, if you land in Copenhagen at 8 AM and your layover is 8 hours long, you’ll have the entire day to explore. Versus if you land at 10 PM, you’ll have to pay for a one night stay and have no time to explore, which is the same as staying in the airport.

Some countries will even give you free tours if your layover is over a certain number of hours. For example, Singapore gives free 2.5-hour tours for those transiting between 5.5 and 24 hours in Singapore.

Take Redeye Flights

Again, the most inconvenient options are often the cheapest. And in the airline industry, the earliest and latest flights are the cheapest, which range from times like 6 AM and 1 AM.

Between the two, though, I think the early morning flights are worse than late flights because you’ll have to wake up much earlier than the flight to get to the airport. If you have a flight at 6 AM, you’ll have to be at the airport at 4 AM, which means you need to be up at like 3 or 3:30 AM. At least with late-night (redeye) flights, you’ll already be awake.

However, the tradeoff with redeye flights is that you arrive extremely early in the morning at your destination (a win) and sleep terribly on the airplane (not a win).

I personally love redeye flights, though, because I’ve found a way to fall asleep comfortably on an airplane. So, if you can find a way to sleep, you’ll unlock a flying hack that will let you fly cheaply anywhere.

Fly Into a New Airport

Are you used to flying into a main airport? Then, when you look for flights, you’re limiting your options to that one airport, which may be more expensive than if you try looking at similar flights that fly into a nearby airport. Most large cities will have multiple airports servicing international flights.

For example, San Francisco has SFO, OAK, and SJC. New York has JFK or LGA. If you’re flying into those cities, you can make any of those airports work; you’ll just need to arrange transport.

Instead of looking for a flight to a specific airport, put the city instead.

The website you use will automatically include flights to all the airports in the city, so you’ll have more options. Sometimes, flights to differing airports are cheaper, but you never know if you limit yourself to just one major airport.

Take a Positioning Flight

If you live near a major transportation hub, it may be cheaper to take a positioning flight to that major airport and fly out of there instead of the airport closer to you. Positioning flights are short domestic flights to a larger airport, where airfares are cheaper than those from your hometown airport.

Flights from smaller airports can be more expensive because there’s less demand.

So, let’s say you live in San Jose, California, and want to fly to Seoul. The flights from San Jose airport might cost $1,000 for a round trip. The same flight to Seoul costs $750 from LAX, and the flight from San Jose to LAX costs $50.

So, to save $200, you can take a positioning flight from San Jose to LAX and then fly to Seoul from LAX.

You can also do this at your destination as well, flying from one airport to another for a cheaper fare. It may require some planning, but you’ll save hundreds at the end of the day.

It’s different from buying flights with layovers because it’s cheaper doing it on your own, and flights with connections usually are through airline partnerships, not cheaper fares.

Find and Book Mistake Fares

Mistake fares are exactly what they sound like when—airlines sell fares at a lower cost on accident. These are exciting because you can save hundreds of dollars on a flight, up to 90% or more!

The most infamous is Cathay Pacific’s $675 first-class ticket from New York to Da Nang, which is 95% off its original price.

Obviously, airlines don’t realize they have a mistake fare and don’t advertise it. So, sometimes, finding mistaken fares is a game of luck, opportunity, and plain randomness. You can increase your chances by signing up for airline or blogger newsletters, browsing random flights occasionally, or following travel forums for the latest news.

But even if you find mistake fares, sometimes the airline won’t honor them and cancels the ticket in exchange for a refund. In the U.S., up until 2015, airlines were required to honor them, but now they do not do so anymore as long as they offer a refund.

So, if you book a mistake fare, wait a week or two before booking other things like accommodation, tours, etc. Just in case.

Travel on Cheaper Days

Generally, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are cheaper to fly because there is less demand. Sunday and Monday are the busiest days to fly, and by the same logic, more expensive as well.

There aren’t scientific studies confirming or negating this, but logically people fly less in the middle of the week than on the weekends. So, with less demand, the prices should theoretically be lower.

But even in my own travels, the cheaper fares are usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ve rarely flown on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays because the fares are much higher.

This is assuming you’re flying during a non-busy time of the year. It doesn’t matter what day you fly in peak travel seasons like summer, holidays, or winter break because all the days are busy. The cheaper days really only hold when you fly during a “normal” week during the year when people are working or at school.

Fly During Off-Season

Off-season is any time period where travel sees slow or less traffic. This could be weeks when people are busy with work, an area’s peak specialty is over, seasons ending, etc. Basically, the less demand for tickets, the cheaper they are.

Like any product, the more demand there is for something, the pricier it gets because of scarcity. If everyone wants to visit Japan for cherry blossoms during a week in April, that week will get exponentially more expensive because of demand.

Off-season is the best time to travel because there are fewer crowds and usually cheaper flights and accommodations.

The off-season time varies per destination. For example, winter is the travel offseason for many Asian countries like Japan and Korea because of the cold. At the same time, it is extremely popular for tropical destinations like Singapore or Hawaii.

If you do a quick Google search, you can research the busy travel times for specific destinations and then plan to visit during off season. Generally, the busy seasons are the same annually, and you’ll see this reflected in the prices for the next few months. Note which months are the cheapest for your destination, and plan your trip around it!

Find Airlines With Generous Youth Tickets

Another great way to save money on airfare is to find airlines that have youth tickets. Especially if you’re younger than 25, multiple airlines sell tickets at a discounted rate for youth. Some airlines have youth tickets with a generous age range from 14 to 25.

My favorite (and arguably the best) youth discount is SAS’ youth ticket for people ages 12-25. I’ve used it multiple times to fly to Europe, and you often get checked bags for free. The fare is usually $100 off regular fares, so it’s so worth it.

Other airlines I’ve heard with student or youth tickets include United, Air Canada, and Qatar, but the deals aren’t as high.

Sign Up for Airline Newsletters

One of the best ways to get notified about cheap flights is from the airlines themselves. Sign up for the airline’s newsletters and be the first to get notified of deals or sales. It’s a direct way to get the latest deals; you won’t have to rely on ads or other sources.

It’s also the quickest way to secure cheap deals. Once you see the flight deal in your mailbox, you can immediately book it without worrying about tickets selling out.

You can create a separate email for deals or organize it in your inbox so all the airline news is in one place. You can also subscribe to third-party services or bloggers for news, but I prefer airlines because they are direct.

Constantly Check Prices

The surefire way to see cheap flights is to check prices via Google Flights constantly. With airline newsletters, you’re getting curated deals straight to your email. But what happens if you miss one or simply forget to check?

If you’re eyeing a flight to a travel destination early, check prices periodically. Flight prices change constantly; you’ll never know when a sudden deal or mistake fare comes up.

I’ve snagged great deals to Europe simply by randomly checking flights I’m interested in. For example, I booked a roundtrip flight from SFO to Dublin for under $400 because I happened to catch an airline sale.

You never know what you’ll find, and keeping track of prices is a good way to see how prices change over time.

Use Cancellation Policies to Your Advantage

If you find a good deal but want to keep your options open, double-check the airline’s cancellation policies. Some airlines let you cancel and give 100% of your money back if you cancel within 24 hours.

So, if you book a flight but in the next 20 hours you find a lower price for the same flight, you can book the cheaper deal and cancel the first flight you bought. It feels like you’re cheating the system, but it’s totally fine to do.

Generally, budget airlines don’t have lenient policies, as the tickets are already cheap. Bigger airlines usually let you cancel without any penalties, and some allow you change without fees.

Fly Budget Airlines

It’s no secret that budget airlines are the best way to get cheap tickets. You might not be the most comfortable, nor get the best amenities, but it is affordable. Each country has its own budget airline, like Aer Lingus for Ireland, Zipair for Japan, TAP Air Portugal for Portugal, etc.

You’ll find amazing deals from budget airlines all year round, which makes them a great budget option. However, you should double-check what’s included in your flight before you book. Before you book a budget flight:

• Check if carry-on baggage is included.
• The carry-on bag size and weight limit.
• If food is included (for international flights).
• If in-flight entertainment is available.

You want to ensure that all your needs are included in the flight; if not, you can prepare beforehand. If the flight doesn’t include meals, you can bring or buy your own beforehand. It’s important to remember that buying a flight from a budget airline is just that: the flight.

How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere Tips

Here are some tips to maximize the savings when finding and booking cheap flights:

• Always, always, always, book directly with the airline and not through a third-party agent: If something goes wrong with your flight, the airline can help you. If you book through a third party, getting answers gets 10x more complicated.
• Use credit card points: You can redeem credit card points for travel through your credit card’s travel portal or by transferring to airlines. It’s basically free money to use on travel!
• Be aware of budget airlines’ hidden costs: Baggage fees, food fees, etc.
• Use a travel credit card to book flights: If you travel a lot, open a travel rewards credit card that will earn you points on your purchases, which you can use to book flights and hotels. I use the Chase Sapphire Preferred, and it’s the best.
• The more flexible you are, the more deals you’ll find.
• Don’t book too early: When flights are first released, they’re more expensive. Generally, you’ll find cheap flights 2-4 months before your desired trip date.

Debunking Cheap Flight Myths

There is so much information out there on how to save money when buying flights and other travel booking myths. Even I believed a lot of the ideas out there when booking flights, as I am guilty of booking and looking at flights incognito. But are they helpful or even true? Here are three travel myths that you should not listen to.

1. Do airlines track cookies and increase prices?

No, airlines do not track your searches and then increase fares. If that were true, it’d be a lot easier for experts (and you) to find cheap flights. Plus, from an airline’s perspective, it’s not worth increasing prices on interested customers and losing out on business. Obviously, it could differ for extremely popular travel times, but cookies generally do not matter.

“But so many people have seen increased prices after searching!” Chances are, it’s a coincidence. Flight prices change unpredictably due to factors larger than your search history. If your flight increased in price, ask yourself, is this flight popular? Are more people searching for it than just me? The more demand the algorithm sees, the more expensive flights get.

2. Should I book flights in incognito?

Booking incognito does nothing, even though it feels like it! I have always booked my flights incognito, but it truly is not any different from booking on a regular website. Again, airlines do not track your searches and magically increase prices. But if it makes you more comfortable booking incognito, do it! Just know that it doesn’t stop flights from increasing in price.

3. Is it cheaper to book flights on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Unfortunately, booking on certain days doesn’t give you cheaper flights. But booking flights that leave on certain days might. As mentioned, people travel less during the week than on the weekend. So, maybe a flight you’re eyeing is cheaper during the week than on the weekend. But buying that flight on Tuesday vs. Saturday won’t make a difference.

Find and Book Your Next Holiday for Cheap

Now you know all the tips and secrets on how to find cheap flights to anywhere. Use various methods to find and secure cheap flights, and most importantly, look early. Flights are always fluctuating in price, but now that you’re a little smarter than before you read this article, you can hopefully catch good deals on your next flight. Travel doesn’t have to be expensive, so start looking now for your dream trip to Europe, Africa, Japan, etc. Happy travels!