Get the best sites for cheap flights to help you save on your next trip! These are the top 6 best flight search sites travel experts use, as rated by a travel content creator who’s been to 45+ countries! Bonus: tips on how to book cheap international flights.

As a travel expert & travel content creator who’s been to 45+ countries, I often get asked how to book cheap international flights. I usually like to start with flight aggregator sites to see what’s available and from there start to plan & book my trip. As I’ll mention below, staying flexible is KEY, but even if you have a specific destination in mind, there are a few different sites for cheap flights you can use to help plan a budget trip.

In this guide, I’m sharing the 6 best sites for cheap flights and finishing up with my top tips on how to book cheap international flights to help you take your bucket list trip! Ready to get into it? Let’s go!

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Google Flights  is a good place for beginners to start their journey on learning how to book cheap international flights. Unfortunately, while Google itself is a powerful search engine, it often misses flight paths and flight deals. That being said, I’m a huge fan of the Google Explore tool; you can input your local airport, and from there choose a weekend, week, or two week trip, and a month, and you can see deals from around the world – it’s such a fun way to do a trip to somewhere you never thought you’d go!

Hopper  is a great site for finding cheap flights; but I usually search in their app instead of using a web browser. My favorite features are the color-coded calendar, price trends, and ability to set flight alerts. I do find that it doesn’t quite pull in every single flight deal, but it is consistent in pulling in deals in general for in-advance searches. If you are a visual person, I’d definitely recommend trying it out for the unique calendar view.

To me, Momondo  feels like a bit of a hidden gem. It recently merged with Kayak, which has only improved it, as it used to have annoying Kayak popups but now it’s all streamlined. You’ve got all the usual great tools; explore, price alerts, color-coordinated calendar showing cheaper times to fly, and even which cabin class to search! My favorite feature is that the price calendar is always shown up top as a graph, so you can easily switch through days. The downside of Momondo is you need to make sure you select the direct booking option – as it’s gone from true aggregator site to all-in-one booking platform (but I NEVER recommend booking flights with third-party sites, see my tips below). There are a ton of filters as well, but Momondo does run quite a bit slower than some of the other sites; possibly due to all the extra tools and features.

• Compare airfare on different sites: just use one (or all) of the sites I mentioned in this blog post!

• Book direct: once you’ve found the flights you want to book, make sure to LEAVE the flight aggregator sites and book DIRECTLY with the airline; this is extremely important because if you have any sort of flight change or cancelation, the airline will rebook you for free but if you purchased through a third-party, you’ll be COMPLETELY out of luck!

• Stay flexible: if you can stay flexible with not just your flight dates, the time of day you fly, and also your flight DESTINATION, this is truly the BEST way to find cheap flights.

• Sign up for a flight deals email service: one of my favorite email services is Going (Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights). There’s a free plan that will send continental US deals. I’d HIGHLY recommend upgrading to Going Premium to get access to domestic AND international economy deals, as well as custom destination alerts. My other recent favorite is Thrifty Traveler – they send EVEN MORE DEALS, especially if you upgrade from the free plan to the premium plan – use code ROAMFREE to save on a premium membership!

• Sign up for a business class email service (optional): if you want to travel in comfort, I’d recommend Ashley Gets Around’s email service for specifically BUSINESS class deals.

• Consider budget airlines: as long as you make sure you skirt all of the fees (e.g. bag fees, picking your seat, getting in-flight refreshments, early boarding etc) you can save on flights by picking budget carriers.

• Avoid checking a bag: don’t get dinged on baggage fees! Make sure to check the airline’s carry-on bag policy, and try to stay within that and pack light.

• Embrace long layovers: cheap flights usually are ones that are less desirable to others – such as early in the morning, red-eyes, and flights with long layovers. But you can use this to your advantage and lean into the long layover – take a day to explore your layover city!

• Build up points & miles: another great tip on how to book cheap flights is by getting a travel credit card (see the ones I use here!) and using your daily spending to start building up points and/or miles. For this you can either get an airline-specific card, or a card that can transfer points to multiple airline partners.

• Insure your trips (and/or flights): in case anything goes wrong (unfortunately common these days), I’d definitely recommend getting travel insurance, or at least booking your flights with a credit card whose benefits include trip cancellation and/or lost baggage coverage.

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