How to use Google Flights to find cheaper flights
Its free, takes minutes and you could be saving hundreds. If you're not using Google Flights already, you should.
When travelling, no matter where you are in the world, sometimes you just need a flight to get to where you’re going.
Some people might be loyal to a carrier and that’s fine, but in terms of price, that is usually never the best option. There are websites like Skyscanner which I use but occasionally they don’t show everything and you just want a second opinion. Sometimes you just want to see, at a glance, when the cheapest flight is.
Enter Google flights.
Step 1: Go to Google Flights
www.google.com/flights
Step 2: Select your flight details
(1) departure location
(2) destination location
(3) ideal date of travel (or thereabouts)
(4) change “round trip” to “one way” if desired
(5) change number of people if required
Click Search – you will see something like the below:
Step 3 – filter the results
We’re not done yet.
If you simply must travel on the date you selected then your choices will be far more limited and what you see is probably what you’re gonna get. However, if you are flexible on your travel dates, continue as this is where you can see huge price differences.
Apply all the filters you want. Typically this will be the time of day (e.g. no 6am flights), removing certain airlines, removing stopovers, adding cabin baggage (not all flights provide which are denoted by the luggage with a line through it symbol), etc
After doing that click on the “date selector” where you can change the date. You will get a view like below.
Note, not “date grid” which gives a view of the week only.
Step 4
This is the money shot. The numbers listed below each date is the cheapest flight cost for that day taking into account all your flight filters and requirements. Now you can see at a glance, what the cheapest flights are across multiple airlines for weeks at a time.
Firstly, before you get too excited, let’s decipher what we’re actually looking at.
Greyed out dates are days already past. Let’s set our test day as today, 20th March. (I’ve selected 4th April in the search which is why that’s blue)
If you look forward to April you’ll find that the typical lowest price is $105. Skipping forward to May flights are down to $90 (not pictured).
If we simply must fly today on 20th March, we would be paying $144, 37% more than flying on a day costing $105 (let’s call that the “normal” price).
If we must fly on Sunday 21st, we are paying a whopping $509, 385% more than flying on 11th April, three Sundays from today, which has a normal price.
What this tells you is that the closer your travel dates are, the higher the price will be. This will typically hold true for almost any flight. The flight will be very expensive up to 2 weeks out, to insanely expensive 2-3 days out. The reason for this is last minute travellers. Not necessarily tourists either, they are business travellers. They must get to their destination regardless of cost and their company will pay for it. Hence you will never see last minute sales for flights as you do for accommodation. If the route isn’t popular or busy then you may never see this 2 week price hike but that is the exception, not the norm. In any case you can usually use Google Flights to check in advance.
So the first tip is to book as early as possible. How early, you can gauge through Google Flights. With the above example, booking 1 to 2 months ahead yields the best savings but prices are reasonable just over 2 weeks out. This will normally be true especially for a point-to-point flight in another country.
If you’re confused, here is the same screenshot but colour coded. Just take a good look at the prices and how they generally decrease the further away the date is, eventually dropping off to normal ranges just after 2 weeks.
Further insights
After that, take note of outliers like the cheap 29th March and patterns like the next 3 Sundays being pretty expensive. Without knowing more, you could make a fairly good guess that the cheap 29th March flight is probably not going to be around for long. You can also gather that Sundays are prime travel days and either best avoided or booked 4 weeks in advanced. Similarly, if you wanted to travel in the second week of April, you had best start booking now before prices increase.
More practical usage of this information
So booking at least 2 weeks out should be a rule of thumb that you should just automatically go by. What if I don’t want to book that early?
Well, I’d say you’re throwing money away.
Two, I’d ask how long you want to stay in this town for? Do you have 2-3 days worth of activities that you still want to do? Then flying on Monday 22nd for $203 might be a good choice so you don’t have to pay $509. Maybe spending that much more is worth it to not “lose a day”. How crucial is it that you get to your next destination in a timely manner? The $89 deal on Monday 29th looks like a steal but is it worth hanging around until then? Time is money, especially when you have a limited travel duration. Perhaps you can rejig your itinerary so that you do fly for $89 without wasting any time? For example, this is a flight from Lima to Santiago. From Lima you can visit Huaraz , do a 5-6 day trek and get back to Lima in time for your flight. Of course, how you shift your itinerary is up to you and this is just one example.
Step 5 – Booking
So as you can see, Google Flights can open up a whole lot of options and it’s free. Where you go from here is up to you. You can book through Google Flights by clicking through on one of the flights (for which I believe they are compensated). That may be annoying depending on the airline since you can’t always add carry-on baggage there and I typically like to book that all in 1 go. I do book through Google Flights, but if I can’t get what I want using it, I often use Google Flights to check the flights and book directly with the airline or an app like Skyscanner if the price matches up.
Exceptions
Seasonal discounts. If you are familiar with flights, you will know that some offer early bird discounts at certain periods of the year. Google Flights can’t predict these and you must simply know if a sale is coming up or not. if that’s the case then it can be better waiting for a sale than prebooking and missing out on the sale. Of course, in countries where you have no idea if there are sales, Google Flights is the way to go.
Cautions
It’s worth mentioning that Google Flights, at least back in 2018/2019 (may have changed now), was not able to properly differentiate between the price for locals and the price for tourists in countries where applicable. So you may see a price that you simply may not be able to purchase. Argentina is one such country that charges a different amount for flights depending on whether you hold an Argentinian passport.