Best Apps for Cheap Flights, Sorted by Who Sells the Ticket

The first place to look for a cheap flight is not an app at all. Google Flights is a free website that emails you when a fare you are tracking moves, and it will show prices in naira. Then run the same search on Skyscanner or KAYAK, because Google and Skyscanner both say they do not cover every seller. Paying from Nigeria in naira, Wakanow and Travelstart sell the ticket themselves.

The split that matters is between search engines, which find a fare and send you to an airline or a travel agency to buy it, and the agencies themselves. When a flight is cancelled or you need a refund, you deal with whoever took your money, not with the app that found the fare. So when a search engine shows the airline and an agency at the same price, book with the airline. Google’s help page says you must go back to whoever sold the ticket to change or cancel it, and the airline is the one flying you.

Eight flight services side by side

All seven apps are also free in Apple’s App Store for the US, the UK, India and Nigeria.

Google Flights, the one with no app

Search either store for it and you get other companies’ apps, so use it in the browser. Google’s help pages say it shows offers from more than 300 airlines and online travel agencies, and that when you pick a flight you are usually taken to the airline’s or agency’s website to pay. Google also says those partners do not pay to appear and that its ranking is not influenced by them.

Two limits are in the same help pages. Not every airline is included, because an airline has to partner with Google. And the calendar prices are refreshed about once every 24 hours, so the fare can differ when you click through.

To track a price, search a route and switch on Track prices. You can track your exact dates or choose Any dates, and Google emails you when the price changes significantly. It will also flag a fare as lower than usual, or warn that prices are likely to rise, with the caveat that these are predictions from past prices.

Set to Nigeria, Google Flights showed fares in naira, with Air Peace flights among the results and Nigerian Naira in its currency list.

Skyscanner for a second opinion

Skyscanner states plainly on its own site that it is not a travel agent: you are redirected and deal directly with the travel provider. It says providers usually pay it a commission when you book, that it also earns from adverts, and that it does not compare every provider in the market. It belongs to Trip.com Group.

Its useful tools are the Everywhere search, which lists the cheapest places you can fly to from your airport, a calendar view of the cheapest dates in a month, and Price Alerts.

Against Google Flights it has an app, which carries ads, and the Everywhere search. Google Flights needs no app and tracks any dates on a route by email. Both send you elsewhere to pay and their results are not the same, so run both.

KAYAK and momondo, one company

KAYAK calls itself a travel search engine and says it labels each result Book with Airline or Book with Partner. The app tracks a search and notifies you when the price changes, and KAYAK Explore, like Skyscanner’s Everywhere, is for travellers flexible on where to go: it shows where a set budget will take you. Its listing adds a flight tracker and a camera tool that measures your hand luggage.

momondo says on its About page that it is not a travel agency and does not sell tickets. The same page says it is managed by KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings. The two Google Play listings are almost word for word the same, under the same developer. Install one of them, not both.

Hopper, if you can wait

Hopper is built around waiting. Its listing says you watch a trip and it notifies you when it thinks it is the best time to buy, recommending that you book now or hold off. A colour-coded calendar shows the cheapest dates. You book and pay inside the app, and Hopper sells add-on plans to cancel or change for any reason. The listing says it has no ads.

It suits someone in the US or Canada. Hopper’s website gives almost no detail and does not say which countries it serves. Its App Store listing is in English, French and Spanish, and its phone support is a toll-free line for the US and Canada with a second US number for everyone else. We could not confirm where else it sells, so check that it shows your route in your currency before you rely on it.

Kiwi.com and the self-transfer risk

Kiwi.com describes itself as a flight-focused online travel agent. Its speciality is odd routes that join flights from airlines that do not work together, which it calls self-transfer. That can be cheaper. The risk is a late first flight and a missed second one. Kiwi.com sells an add-on for that, the Kiwi.com Guarantee, which it says covers cancellations, major delays and schedule changes and includes automatic check-in.

Google’s help pages make the same point about self-transfer tickets on any site: you may have to collect and re-check your bags, and a delay can make you miss the second flight. Kiwi.com’s site lists rupees, pounds, dollars, euros, rand and dirhams among its currencies, and not the naira.

Paying in naira from Nigeria

Wakanow says it was founded in 2008, has its headquarters in Lagos, and lets you book and pay in naira. It sells domestic flights on Arik Air, Air Peace and Ibom Air as well as international ones, and says it has 32 physical travel centres if you would rather talk to a person. We found no route-by-route price alert on its pages. It sends deals by email or WhatsApp.

Travelstart calls itself Africa’s leading travel agency. Its Nigerian address, travelstart.com.ng, now forwards to travelstart.com, and the site’s country list still includes Nigeria with the naira as its currency. The app is on both stores.

Travelbeta, which calls itself Nigeria’s leading online travel company, also has a working site and apps on both stores. Its home page showed no fares without a search, so we could not confirm the currency from the page.

For flights inside Nigeria, compare an agency’s price with the airline’s own website before you pay. The carriers are listed under domestic airlines in Nigeria. If you are booking around a public holiday, the dates are on the public holidays in Nigeria page.

Cheapest days to book and to fly

No day is reliably cheapest to book. Google published figures from Google Flights for trips from the US on its own blog, and Tuesday came out cheapest, but only 1.3% below Sunday. The day you fly mattered more, with Monday to Wednesday about 13% cheaper than the weekend, and a layover saved about 22% on average. Google put the lowest prices at 39 days before departure for US domestic flights and 49 days or more for international ones. Those numbers are for US travellers and say nothing about Lagos to London.

The others offer tools more than figures, each drawn from the company’s own data and none a rule. KAYAK has a Best Time to Travel tool that estimates when to book a given route from a year of its search data, and calls the result a rough directional guide. Hopper makes the call trip by trip with its book-or-wait notification, and Skyscanner’s calendar view shows the cheapest dates in a chosen month.

The sensible use of all this is to track the route you want on one or two services and buy when the alert shows a price you are content with.

Hipmunk, Travelzoo and Priceline

Hipmunk is gone: its website no longer loads and no Hipmunk app turns up on Google Play or the App Store. Travelzoo still exists, but its home page now sells exclusive travel deals for club members, which makes it a deals club and not a flight search. Priceline’s app is still in the App Store. Its website showed a human-verification page, so we could not check its current claims and left it out.