The Best Tools for Finding Cheap Flights, Upgrades, and Award Travel

Imagine you're cooking dinner.

You wouldn't use a chef's knife to stir a pot of soup. Could it work? Maybe. But it's the wrong tool for the job.

Travel tools are no different.

Google Flights, Seats.aero, Roame, and airline websites all solve different problems. Yet many travelers use them interchangeably and end up frustrated when they don't get the results they expected.

The question isn't which tool is best.

The question is which tool is best for the task you're trying to accomplish.

This article breaks down which tools we use most frequently and how to leverage each one to get the most out of your searches.

If you're paying cash for a flight, Google Flights should usually be your first stop.Its greatest strength isn't finding the absolute lowest fare (although sometimes you can). But more broadly, it's about understanding the market.

Google Flights has a pretty expansive offering of things you can do such as:

Before you worry about points, upgrades, or elite status, it's important to understand the baseline cash price.

One of the strongest features is the explore section where you can search open-ended trips by inputting your departure airport and Google Flights will show you a list and map of destinations. You can then even filter down by price, airlines and stops to find the right flight.

The general idea is that every travel decision should start with value. For example, a flight that's $300 in cash creates a very different redemption opportunity than a flight that's $1,500.

Google Flights helps establish that baseline.

Award travel enthusiasts often spend hours searching airline websites. This usually entails trying to maximize the cent-per-point, finding the most seamless trips and premium cabins.

For The Fare Theory, Seats.aero can reduce that process to minutes. Instead of searching route by route, Seats.aero scans airline award inventory and displays opportunities across multiple programs.

Its greatest advantage is speed.

You can quickly identify:

For travelers who value efficiency, Seats.aero is one of the most useful tools available. It's often the first place I look when searching for premium-cabin redemptions. The platform is very intuitive to use and with the comprehensiveness of its results, it's often the first place I look when searching for premium-cabin redemptions.

Another really awesome feature is the ability to explore deals from specific regions. For someone that might have more flexibility, there are always a ton of options when it comes to different deal and offerings.

To be honest, the free version of this tool is great, but can be a bit limited. The searches are capped at 3 months from departure, which can be more last-minute but the paid version is $9.99 a month and the value you receive by being able to search further in advance is 100% worth it in our opinion.

Sometimes the problem isn't finding award space. It's figuring out how to get somewhere in the first place. FlightConnections visualizes airline route networks and can quickly show:

Before searching for points, it's often useful to understand how airlines actually connect two cities.

As powerful as third-party tools have become, airline websites still matter. Think of the many different variables such as:

Before transferring points or purchasing miles, always verify availability directly with the airline. Third-party tools are excellent discovery engines. The airline website remains the final source of truth.

Most casual travelers won't need ExpertFlyer, frequent travelers might.

ExpertFlyer provides access to:

If you're actively managing elite status, monitoring upgrade opportunities, or tracking specific fare buckets, it can be incredibly valuable.

For most travelers, however, Google Flights and award search tools will provide significantly more value.

Travelers often become obsessed with finding hidden deals. The truth is that tools only help you find opportunities. They don't tell you whether those opportunities are worth pursuing.

That's where judgment matters.

A 150,000-mile business class ticket isn't automatically a great redemption, and a $200 flight isn't automatically a good deal. A cheap upgrade isn't automatically worth purchasing.

The best travelers combine good tools with good decision-making.

The goal isn't to find the most deals….the goal is to find the deals that create the most value. Thinking back to the analogy before, each tool serves its own purpose.

Together, these tools can save time, money, and points…But no tool can answer the most important question:

"Is this actually worth it?"

That's still your job.