Which Site is Best for Booking Flights?

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When booking flights the top things to look for are price, convenience and comfort.  Unfortunately, those three things often contradict each other.  Convenience and comfort make the price go up.  The best prices typically come with the longest layovers and in those dreaded middle seats.  Therefore, the first step is deciding what your priority actually is.  A quick search can give you the best prices, the convenient options and the comfortable ones.  Most people don't usually choose just one though, it's a compromise between the three that ends up working.  

When it comes to searching and booking your flight, there are a lot of booking sites and scanners out there to choose from.  The difference between the two is a booking site will actually book the flight for you, where a scanner just compares all of the other sites and transfers you to one of them to book the flight.  The thing you should know is that most of them are owned by just a couple companies.  Expedia owns Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire and so many more.  Booking.com owns Priceline, Kayak and quite a few smaller ones.  Most of the other sites have a backend that is powered by one of those two.  The point of this is to let you know that the options and prices you get with one are going to be similar from site to site and all of our tests proved the same.  

My preference and what we always recommend to our clients is to book directly with the airlines whenever possible and it almost always is.  That doesn't mean you can't use the booking sites and scanners to your benefit.  You can choose any of the booking sites to explore your options but jump over to the airlines site before actually booking it to avoid any types of fees or extra charges.  

We use two of the scanners religiously; Google Flights and Kayak.  It comes down to your preference between the two.  Google flights allows you to choose each flight independently and has a nice calendar view of prices before and after your chosen days.  Price alerts allow you keep tabs on your favorite flights and they offer a sliding scale for the typical price of this flight letting you know if its a good deal or not.  Kayak on the other hand was one of the first scanners out there and just keeps getting better.  They show you departing and returning flights combined and offer a ton of filtering options that allow you to narrow down your search quickly.  

What most people don't realize is that it isn't as much about the site you use, but how you use it.  The trick is to search.  And search again and search again.  You can do it on the same site or different sites but search all of the options.  Try different layovers, different seat categories, different airports, different times and airlines and everything else you can think of.  Then choose the most convenient and most comfortable flight you can for a price you feel is fair.  

Once you find a flight, both of those sites will direct you to the airlines directly.  If you are using one of the other sites, try booking it directly with the airlines first.  It will make changes or cancellations easier and in a lot of cases will let you choose better seats or get better access for checkin.  

And if all else fails... take a break and then search again.