Sharp-eyed members of Going are familiar with one of our favorite flight search engines: Google Flights. Nearly every cheap flight alert we send to members includes a Google Flights sample search so you can easily find and book the amazing deals we send to our 2 million+ members.
Google Flights is one of the most powerful flight search engines on the internet, both easy to use and with a multitude of features to make airfare hunting easier. It's easily the most comprehensive search tool out there for airfare, and while it's not 100% perfect, it's pretty close, especially if you know the inside tips for using it to find the cheapest tickets for your trip.
This guide will help you get the most out of Google Flights, and, hopefully, find even more cheap flights.
Pros of Google Flights
There are pros and cons of Google Flights but overall the good outweighs the bad. Here are the advantages of Google Flights:
- Lightning fast: Google Flights is faster than any other flight search engine, displaying months' worth of fares in fractions of a second.
- Calendar-based fare view: Google Flights has a simple, intuitive calendar view that shows you the cheapest fare over the next 12 months.
- Multiple airport search: Google Flights lets you search for the cheapest fare between up to 7 origin and 7 destination airports, without slowing the search down.
- Map-based search: The Google Flights Explore map lets you see the cheapest place to fly from your airport during your selected dates/date range.
- Tools to help you choose: Google Flights will tell you if the fare you're seeing is high, low, or average for the trip, and it shows you the carbon footprint of each flight
Cons of Google Flights
Google Flights isn’t perfect. Here’s where it lags a bit behind:
- Doesn't always have the lowest fares: Google Flights works by searching fares sold directly from the airlines and a handful of the top online travel agencies (OTAs), such as Expedia or Orbitz. Many times the best fares are found on smaller online travel agencies that Google Flights doesn’t look at.
- Doesn't show all airlines: Google Flights doesn't display results from Southwest Airlines, so you'll also need to check those directly with the airline (thankfully Southwest's Low Fare Calendar is pretty user friendly).
- Doesn't find many mistake fares: Similarly, many Mistake Fares only show up on smaller online travel agency websites. Google Flights won’t be able to find those.
- Displays unavailable deals: Every once in a while, Google Flights will tell you a fare is available at a certain rate, but when you click to proceed with a booking either (a) the fare jumps in price, or (b) there is no way to book online and instructs you instead to call the airline. (Don’t bother calling, it won’t work.) This phenomenon is called "ghosting", and happens occasionally on Google Flights when a fare was recently available but no longer is.
How to use Google Flights: Google Flights tutorial
Google Flights searches fares on nearly every airline’s website, as well as the largest online travel agencies like Orbitz and Priceline. Watch our tutorial video on using Google Flights to find the cheapest flights.
Want to save money on flights? Join Going and get amazing flight deals—like $202 roundtrip to Japan or $164 roundtrip to Hawaii—delivered right to your inbox.
The basics of Google Flights
How to set departure and arrival locations on Google Flights to get the most options
When you get to the homepage, type in where you want to fly from and where you want to travel to, along with your preferred travel dates. Here’s an example:
Remember that you can put up to seven airports in each box, separated by commas. If you’re looking for a cheap trip to anywhere Europe, for example, you might put as your destination “LHR, CDG, AMS, CPH, BCN, FCO, MXP” to see where the cheapest flight is from Chicago to either London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Rome, or Milan.
Remember that some cities with multiple airports have city codes. These include NYC (New York City) or WAS (Washington DC), which count for 3 each because NYC = JFK, LGA, EWR and WAS = DCA, IAD, BWI.
How to select dates on Google Flights to see the cheapest day to fly
In order to find the cheapest travel dates, click the departure date box. When you do that, prices for 2 months will pop up, with the cheapest dates in green, like so:
Important: Google Flights only takes into account prices in the months you’ve told it to look at. So in the above example, the green dates are the lowest in September and October. However, there could be cheaper dates in future months that Google Flights will only find if you click the right arrow to scroll to later months.
Once you’ve looked at the Google Flights calendar of lowest fares, click on the date you want for your departure, after which you’ll click on the date you’d like to return.
At this point, Google Flights then gives you a big list of possible flights, like so:
Notice that Google Flights lists a few up top that they consider to be the “Best departing flights” taking into account factors like price and routing. It can still be worth taking a look at the “Other departing flights” to see if any of those work better for your schedule.
All flight times on Google Flights are shown in local time. If you notice a +1 next to the arrival time listed, on a Google Flights itinerary, it means your flight arrives the next day (or 2 days later if it says +2).
How to book flights on Google Flights
Once you’ve decided on a good departure flight, click on it. You’ll then be prompted to choose a corresponding return flight (assuming you’re booking a roundtrip fare) and your screen will look like this:
If you want to go back and change the departure flight, all you do in the above example is click where it says “ORD-VCE Tue, Sep 18” towards the upper left.
Note: The price Google Flights shows includes taxes. If you've searched for a roundtrip itinerary, the price displayed by Google Flights will be the cost for the entire roundtrip.
Google Flights isn't an online travel agency (OTA); it's a flight search engine. That means you can't actually book a flight on Google Flights as Google Flights doesn't sell flights to the consumer. Instead, Google Flights will either pass you on to the airline or another OTA to book directly, or if you select "book with google" it will pass your information to the airline.
Once you click your preferred return flight, you’ll be taken to your booking options, like so:
Click to book either through KLM or Delta and you’ll be taken to their checkout page where you’ll enter passenger and payment information.
What to do when cheap flights can't be booked through Google Flights ("Ghosting")
On occasion, Google Flights will initially tell you a cheap fare is available, but when you try to book the ticket, the fare either jumps in price or is unable to be booked altogether.
We refer to this as “ghosting.”
- At some point in the Google Flights search process, the price drastically increases
- When Google Flights gives you booking options, the only available way to get the promised low price is to call the airline
- When Google Flights takes you to the last step and promises you can book a low fare either with the airline or an online travel agency, but when you click to do so, the price jumps on the booking page
In each of these cases, there’s no way to book those specific flights on those specific dates at the original cheap price.
Here are some ways to see if a ghosting fare can still be booked:
- Try other dates in Google Flights
- Take the dates of a ghosting fare and see if it can be booked in Priceline
- Take the dates of a ghosting fare and see if it can be booked in Momondo
None of these routes are guaranteed; sometimes a ghosting fare is unable to be booked anywhere.
How use Google Flights Explore map view
One of the handy, hidden features of Google Flights is the ability to pull up a map and see cheap flights across an entire country or region, though note that to get full use of the Google Flights map view feature, called Google Explore, you need to be on a desktop, not mobile.
To pull up the Google Flights map, start your search as you usually would, by inputting your departure city and dates, but leave the destination blank. Then click the blue "Search" button. This is a great way to find the cheapest place to go when you don't have a destination.
When you do so, Google Flights will switch to a map view like so (You can zoom in anywhere on the map, like Europe, to see more fares):
You can even enter entire continents like Europe or Asia rather than specific countries.
One important factor to keep in mind is the initial Google Flights map view only shows you the fares on the specific dates you entered.
If you have flexibility and just want to find the cheapest fare anytime, you can click the dates and switch to the “Flexible dates” option like so:
How to filter results in Google Flights to find your perfect flight
One of Google Flights’ most powerful features is the ability to set an array of filters to ensure you only get search results you’re interested in.
These include:
- Number of stops
- Layover duration
- Which (if any) connecting airports
- Price ceiling
- Flight times
- Which airline(s) and/or airline alliance(s)
- Total length of flight
You can find those filters just underneath the date boxes:
How to identify basic economy fares on Google Flights
Once you have selected your flights, you'll see a page with the final price and links to book with the airlines. At the top, underneath the departure and destination cities, you'll see a suitcase icon on the class of travel: economy or basic economy.
If you click that button, a box will open with an explanation of what's included in each fare. You can then select your preferred class.
How to track flight prices on Google Flights
You can set fare alerts on Google Flights to that you don't miss a deal. To start, set your departure and destination cities and your dates.
On the results page, look for the "Track prices" button and click it so it toggles on and turns blue. If you're not signed in to Google, you'll be prompted to do so.
Once you've clicked the button to track flights, you'll see a small box at the bottom on the page where you can "View all" to see all the flights you're tracking. You'll get an email whenever the price changes.
One caveat of tracking flights with Google Flights is that you may end up getting a lot of email notifications, as flight prices can change quite a bit day to day. Unfortunately, you cannot set the alert to only notify you if the cost reaches a particular threshold. And you can't set an alert for a general date range or a general region; you have to choose a destination and set specific dates.
How to book multi-city tickets on Google Flights
Booking multi-city or open-jaw tickets on Google Flights is easy. On the home screen look to the far left where it says "round trip" and click the drop down menu. Select "multi-city."
Now input your dates and travel cities as you usually would. You can add up to five flights.
Note, though, that it can sometimes be cheaper to piece your trip together with separate one-ways. For example, if you want to fly into Paris and out of Rome, instead of buying a ticket from home to Paris, Paris to Rome, and Rome back home, simply book an open-jaw flight from home to Paris, and then Rome back to your home airport. Then book a separate flight on a regional airline from Paris to Rome. This can save you hundreds.
How to tell if you've found a good deal on Google Flights
Google Flights recently rolled out a new feature that will help you figure out if the flight you've found is a good deal. It's currently only available on some routes, and we've seen it show up inconsistently for now, but once it's fully rolled out, it'll be a helpful way to figure out, at a glance, whether the price you're seeing is a good deal based on average prices for your specific dates.
The data shows up underneath the flight options on the search results page. Take, for example, the deal we shared for $280 roundtrip flights from San Francisco to Mexico City. Google Flights says these tickets are usually $30-70 more expensive at $308-$353 for these dates, so it classifies this as a good deal. In this case, the lowest price is a great nonstop flight, but be aware that sometimes the lowest price might involve multiple layovers or bad routing, so while Google Flights may call it a deal based purely on price, it might not be a flight you want to take.
Also, Google's perception of a good deal can be a little skewed as it only looks at the last year of data. So for example, in 2021, Google often said a price was average when it was actually a pretty good deal because it was comparing it to 2020 prices, which were lower than previous year's. So compared to the 2020 price, the price appeared average, but compared to 2019 prices, it may have been a steal.
The color-coded bar tells you if prices are lower than usual (green), average (yellow), or higher than usual (red). It also tells you how much more or less you'll pay than average price.
You can expand the section by hitting the blue "Details" hyperlink. Here you'll get more specifics on the range of average prices for your dates.
Advanced tips for using Google Flights
Tip #1: Search multiple airports to find the cheapest route between two regions on specific dates
With Google Flights you can search multiple airports by inputting up to seven departure and destination airport codes.
Why would you want to do that? Well, let’s say you want to fly from New York to an unspecified destination in Germany for specific dates in August. All you really know is that you want to spend some time exploring Deutschland. You can input the departure airport codes for both JFK and LaGuardia and then add the destination codes for multiple airports in Germany to easily find which one is the cheapest for your trip.
The results will automatically list the best deal at the top. In this case, it’s JFK to Frankfurt.
If you’re flexible with your travel destination, this is a great feature to experiment with to see which destination cities are the cheapest. It also works if your departure city is flexible. For example, if you live south of Orlando, you could put Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami into the departure fields to find out which airport you should depart from to get the best price.
Tip #2: Use the Explore Map to find the cheapest places for flexible dates
Say you have a slightly different situation than the one outlined above. You just want to go somewhere, and your dates are pretty open. On the main search page, input your departure airport(s) put leave the destination field empty. Pick some random dates and then click the blue “Search” button.
From there you’ll be shown a map that highlights the cheapest destinations for those dates. But if your dates are wide open, click into the date field and select the button for “Flexible dates.” From there, you can choose a weekend, one week, or two week trip in a specific month or anytime in the next six months.
This is for the flexible traveler who wants to explore all of his/her options. You can see that Google Flights helpfully pulls the best deals and lists them on the left-hand side, and highlights them in green on the map.
Let’s say you have some time off in August to go wherever you please. You want to fly from Atlanta but you’re really not fussy about where you end up, as long as it’s within budget. Under Flexible Dates you can search for a two-week trip in August.
Google automatically pulls these results, starting within the US.
However, if you want to see results beyond the United States, just zoom out on the map.
If there’s a particular area you want to go to, you can move the map to that area, or search per region (or country). In this example, let’s use “Asia.”
Once the results are loaded, you can use the map to zoom in on a particular area you’re most interested in, like Southeast Asia. Finally, you can adjust the price so that your results fit within your budget. Just slide the blue button left or right and you’ll be able to filter out all the extra noise.
Tip #3: Use the calendar, date grid, and price graph to find the cheapest dates for a specific destination
Once you have a destination, Google Flights gives you a lot of options for playing around with dates to find the cheapest airfare possible.
As soon as you input your dates, the calendar feature will pop up and show you two months of prices. You can see the cheapest round-trip flight options immediately, and the best deals are highlighted in green. If you click the arrows to the right of the calendar view, you’ll see what’s available in the coming months.
The calendar defaults to 7-day trips, at the bottom left corner of the calendar you can use the arrows to increase or decrease the duration of your trip. When you select DONE, you’ll be taken to your results. At the top of the results, you’ll see the options listed for Date Grid, Price Graph, and Nearby Airports.
The Date Grid takes you to a grid of the cheapest flight combinations. Anything cheaper than your selected flight is highlighted in green. If you click the arrows at the top of the grid, you’ll see more dates.
The Price Graph works in the same way but shows two months of fares in one easy visual. When you select the shortest bar, you’ll see that if you travel between September 4th-19th, your round-trip flight drops to $674. Again, you can change the dates by clicking the arrows on both sides of the graph.
The Airports feature lets you explore other airports near the one you’ve selected. It’ll show you if there is an airport with a different price, as well as information on how to get to your destination from the airport. (It may not be worth the cheaper price if the airport is much further than your other options.)
Play around with these features, and you’ll get plenty of flight options.
Tip #4: Check the price info box to make sure you’re getting a good deal
Google Flights has a new info box that will pop up in most search results to let you know whether or not you’re getting a good deal. It looks like this:
These insights are based on fares that Google Flights has tracked in the last 12 months for trips in the same season, of similar length, with the same departure and destination points, class, and airline. Maybe it won’t influence your purchase, but at least you’ll know if you’re overspending, like so:
It doesn’t, however, offer insight into when might be a better time to book. You can use the Date Grid or Price Graph for that. And, if you know you have a specific trip to take in the next several months, don't forget to track your flight so you get a price alert if the fare changes.
Google Flights is one of our most recommended flight search sites; it’s easy to use but boasts enough advanced features that you can unearth flights that some other search sites and OTAs (online travel agencies) such and Orbitz and Expedia can’t. And with these advanced tips, it’s even easier to find the best flight—at the best price—for your needs.
Getting a refund on flights booked through Google Flights
Because Google Flights is a search engine and the flights are actually booked directly with the airline, refunds are up to each airline's policy.
In the United States, the Department of Transportation's "24-hour rule" ensures that you can cancel your flight within 24 hours of ticket purchase and get a full refund. The rule applies to any flight departing from the US, so long as the ticket was booked direct with the airline, and it was booked at least 7 days before departure.
Which airlines are listed on Google Flight?
The vast majority of airlines are listed on Google Flights, including:
- Aer Lingus
- Aeromexico
- Aeroflot
- Air Canada
- Air Serbia
- Alaska
- ANA
- American
- British Airways
- China Southern
- Copa
- Delta
- Ethiopian
- Etihad
- Emirates
- Hawaiian
- Iberia
- Icelandair
- JetBlue
- KLM
- LOT
- Lufthansa
- Qatar Airways
- SAS
- Singapore Airlines
- Swiss
- TAP
- Turkish Airlines
- United
- Westjet
- and many, many more.
Which airlines are not listed on Google Flights?
Several large Asian carriers, including Thai Airways and Philippine Airlines are notably absent from Google Flights. Additionally, in the US the most glaring omission is Southwest.
How to change your currency or language on Google Flights
In the top left-hand corner of Google Flights, look for the "hamburger"—the three horizontal lines to the left of the words "Google Flights."
This opens up a vertical menu on the left-hand side. At the bottom of this, there are options to change the language, currency, or country you use for Google Flights. From here you can also access the Explore map, or view any prices you're tracking (more on that below).
You can also adjust your country, currency, and language at the bottom on the page.
How to find flights with lower carbon emissions on Google Flights
Google Flights now shows the approximate carbon footprint of most flights. Generally, nonstop flights have lower carbon emissions than itineraries with connections, but even within nonstop routes, emissions rates can vary by aircraft type.
In addition to giving the emission rate for your flight, Google Flights also tells you what the average rate is for that route, and if your rate is higher or lower. Note that the rate also takes into account your fare class; a higher rate of emissions is generally attributed to business class tickets because the larger seats mean fewer people on the plane, so eat seat has a larger share of responsibility.
Five starter pro tips from Scott on Google Flights
- Don't put all your eggs in Google's basket. Google Flights is the best place. to start your search because of all the flexibility it allows, but you should always check to see if prices are substantially lower on other OTAs like Momondo or Kayak.
- Always check alternate airports. You can easily do this by inputting up to 7 departure and arrival airport codes into the search box. It may be significantly cheaper to fly out of Chicago instead of Milwaukee, for example, or to land in Paris instead of Bordeaux.
- Always use the calendar function to find the cheapest days to fly. Ticket prices can be drastically different even if you change your travel dates by one day.
- If you aren't sure if you can take a flight, lock in the price by using the 24-hour rule to your advantage. Book the deal and you can cancel within 24 hours and get a full refund.
- Don't bother clearing your cookies or searching incognito. It won't affect the price (and no, there's no secret best day or time to book flights either).
How to use Going and Google Flights together
Every time we send our members a deal, we include a link to sample search, and 99% of the time, it's on Google Flights.
The sample search will be pre-filled out with the departure and arrival airports, plus filters like specific airlines, number of stops, and layover times. This makes it easy for you to narrow in on the flights included in the deal. Often, the deal is available from several cities and hundreds of date combinations, so you can update the departure airport and play around with various dates to see what works for you.
Alternatives to Google Flights
While we think Google Flights is the best option, there are some others that also do a great job. We have guides for using them all.
- How to Use Momondo
- How to Use Kayak
- How to Use the ITA Matrix
- How to Use Skyscanner
