![]() It will then search flights for 4 weeks from the start date and give you the results in a calendar view. For example, you can choose a trip length of 7 nights, 6-8 nights, 4-11 nights, or 26-33 nights, but not 10-20 nights. You can make this a set number or a range of up to 7 nights. The month search allows you to choose a start date for the search and your desired trip duration. The weekend search allows you search for cheap flights departing Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, returning Sunday or Monday, over a 4-week period. When choosing your dates, you’ll see color-coded approximate pricing on the calendar, but for a better flex search choose either “Weekend” or “Month” from the left-hand column. To start a flexible date search, enter your departure and arrival cities (you can insert up to 3 in each). You may be willing to stay an extra day or two or leave a day earlier in order to find the best deal. Kayak is a good search tool for those who want to search for a cheap flight with a range of trip lengths. Pros: Combines airlines, a thorough search of OTAs, holiday travel search.Ĭons: Slow, filters don’t always adjust results, lag on updating prices. Related: The 8 Cheapest Places to Fly This Fall But don’t forget about the others or you may miss out on a cheaper flight. ![]() If you want to get into an even more detailed search, you can try ITA’s matrix, but for a simpler and faster search tool with most of the same filters, I would recommend starting any flexible date search with Google Flights. Sometimes you can find lower prices on other search engines that link to smaller online travel agencies (OTAs) or airline sites that save the best fares for direct bookings. Occasionally, the pricing is off and will jump during the final step. ![]() It does not show pricing on all airlines-most notably Southwest and often misses other airlines such as Aeromexico and Turkish Airlines. The map will then show the best pricing from your city to destinations all over the world with those parameters.Īlthough I consider Google the best overall flexible date search tool, it’s not perfect. And you can choose to search for a weekend, 1 week, or 2-week trip. It will give you the option to choose any month in the next six months or all months. You can zoom in/out and scroll around the world to find where it is cheap to fly on those dates.Īnd for the holy grail of flexibility, just enter a departure city and choose the “flexible dates” radio button when choosing dates. It will then give you a map view with prices all over the globe. Just enter your departure city and travel dates-leave the arrival city blank or just type in a general region such as “Europe” or “South America”. If your dates are set in stone, but you’re flexible on where you want to travel, Google’s explore feature is an excellent tool to just browse where there are cheap flights on the map. It may help to search one-way flights in each direction first and then combine cheap dates in a roundtrip search since not all airlines sell one-way tickets for half the roundtrip price. Unfortunately, you can’t choose a range for the trip length and Google will only search for a specific trip length at one time. Adjust the trip length it searches for at the bottom left of the calendar box. You can easily scroll through the months to find the cheapest flights by clicking on the arrows on either side of the calendar. Just use the plus icon to the right of the "Where from?" field.Īdjust the filters as you wish and then click on the calendar icon in the “departure date” field to see two months of pricing at once. Pro Tip: You can enter up to 7 airports in both the departure or arrival fields to search for flights from or to multiple different cities at once. It will then show you a list of flights for those travel dates along with many other search filters where you can fine-tune your search by the number of stops, airlines, price range, flight times, connecting airports, flight duration, and even add any potential bag fees. To initiate a flexible date search with a calendar view, just enter a departure city, arrival city, and any desired travel dates. Pros: Fast, comprehensive filters integrated into the flex search, explore map.Ĭons: Occasional price lag, limited OTA pricing, missing prices on some airlines.Įver since Google acquired ITA Software, it has added more search features that make it the best overall flexible date search tool. How to Use Google Flights to Find Cheap Flights Here are some of our favorite tools for finding the cheapest flights. Luckily, there are some excellent tools out there that will search multiple travel dates at once so you can always find out when (and where) it’s cheapest to fly. However, this is not an exact science and cheap flights can pop-up at any time. Flight Search Engines with the Best Flexible Date Tools
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