AwardTool is a powerful new flight award search tool with both a free and paid (Pro) version. This tool is very similar to PointsYeah. Both offer powerful search features for free; both allow searching for flight awards across a range of dates; both return results quickly; and both offer alerts. AwardTool, though, offers greater flexibility in searching multiple airports and multiple dates at once.
Update 2/29/24: AwardTool has added support for British Airways Avios. Theoretically, this is a terrific enhancement that adds excellent support for OneWorld awards and for those instances when Qatar releases Qsuites availability, but it’s only available via their own search engine or through BA.
However, we found the tool to be extremely buggy after trying out some initial searches. Availability, and sometimes entire days, seems to disappear completely on one search and then come back on another. Hopefully, whatever kinks are currently present get worked out in short order, as this should be a great addition.
Flight Search
Search Multiple Airports & Dates at Once
Like other general purpose award search tools, AwardTool lets you pick your origin, destination, one-way vs round-trip, number of passengers, class of service, and date of travel. AwardTool, though, is very special in how it offers the freedom to select multiple airports and/or multiple dates at once.
Both the free and Pro versions offer 32 simultaneous searches. The difference between the two is that the free version only gives you that ability for a 15-day period, while the Pro version allows for a 365-day period. You can use this to search any of the following combinations (I won’t list them all):
- 4 origin airport, 2 destination airports, a 4 day date range
- 2 origin airports, 2 destination airports, an 8 day date range
- 4 origin airports, 8 destination airports, a single date
- 16 origin airports, 2 destination airports, a single date
This flexibility is awesome. When looking for international flights from Detroit, I often approach the search in two ways: first, I look for international flights departing Detroit and which will get me to the general area of my intended destination; and second I search from airports that I can easily get to: Chicago, DC, NYC, Toronto, etc. With other tools, this two-part approach can easily mean doing dozens of separate searches. With the Pro version of AwardTool, I can often achieve most of what I want with just a handful of searches. For example, when looking to fly to Europe, I can use AwardTool to search from Detroit to the destination I want, plus all of the destinations where I know there are nonstop flights to Europe: Paris (for flying Air France or Delta), Frankfurt (for Lufthansa or Delta), Istanbul (for Turkish), and Amsterdam, London, Munich, and Rome (for Delta). Iceland is another option but not if I’m looking for lie-flat seats. With AwardTool Pro, I can search Detroit to all of those destinations at once across a 2 day date range. Next, I can use AwardTool Pro to search to my specific intended destination from Chicago, DC, NYC, Boston to my intended destination across a 4 day date range.
Compared to PointsYeah:
- Free Version: PointsYeah allows selecting only 1 origin and 1 destination airport and up to a 4 day date range. AwardTool has the same limit of 4, but it allows much more flexibility in that you can choose whether to use your 4 searches through a 4 day date range or with multiple airports.
- Pro Version: PointsYeah allows selecting up to 2 origin and 2 destination airports and up to a 8 day date range. If you max out all of that, then that exceeds what AwardTool allows. With AwardTool, if you select 2 origin and 2 destination airports, you can then only pick a 4 day date range. That said, AwardTool is much more flexible since it allows picking more than 2 origin or destination airports.
Filters
After running a search, AwardTool lets you filter to specific points programs, number of stops, airlines, max number of points, max taxes, % premium cabin (it’s very important to set this when searching for business or first class), travel times, airports, specific aircraft types, and more.
Mega Search
AwardTool’s Mega search tool is like their regular search on steroids. Where the regular search lets you conduct up to 4 (free version) to 16 (Pro version) simultaneous searches, the Mega search will do up to 24 searches at once. This means that you can do a 24 day time window; or 24 different destination airports; or 3 origin airports + 2 destination airports + a 4 day time window; etc. And, amazingly, this option is available to the free version, but with a catch: free users only get three Mega searches per day.
Compared to PointsYeah: PointsYeah doesn’t have anything like this.
Alerts
AwardTool’s alert feature is similar to their search in that it allows a set number of degrees of freedom with which you can specify multiple airports and/or multiple dates. The free version only gets 3 degrees of freedom so you can create 3 separate single departure, single destination, single date alerts; or you can create 1 alert with a 3-date range; or 1 alert with 3 departure airports, 1 arrival airport, and 1 date; etc. The Pro version bumps the degrees of freedom up to 25.
Importantly, only Pro users can select “infinite mode”. When checked, AwardTool will keep the alert active even after emailing you with results. With the free mode, you’ll have to re-create the alert if the first one didn’t meet your needs.
Compared to PointsYeah: PointsYeah’s free version allows only 1 departure and destination airport and up to a 4 day date range. So, if you value date ranges over multiple airports, PointsYeah beats AwardTool with a 4 day range vs AwardTool’s 3. For the pro versions, PointsYeah offers up to 24 active alerts vs AwardTool’s 25. The main difference here is that AwardTool offers more flexibility by allowing more than 2 airport selections for both the departure and arrival.
Supported Miles
AwardTool searches across 24 different airline mileage programs. This is the exact same list that is supported by PointsYeah, except that PointsYeah also supports Frontier (for the three of you that have Frontier points). Here are AwardTool’s supported programs:
- AeroMexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
(excellent for finding awards with Star Alliance and other select partners) - Air France / KLM Flying Blue
(excellent for Air France, KLM, and SkyTeam awards) - Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
(Good for OneWorld awards) - American Airlines AAdvantage
(Good for OneWorld awards and occasional great deals on AA itself) - Avianca Lifemiles
(Another good option for finding Star Alliance awards — sometimes with better pricing than Air Canada or United) - Azul TodoAzul
- British Airways Avios (Good for finding OneWorld awards and Qatar Qsuites availability that only appears on BA and Qatar)
- Copa ConnectMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- GOL Smiles
- Iberia Plus Avios
(Good for finding OneWorld awards. It’s worth checking whether British Airways Avios or Qatar Avios offers same or better pricing since they have better change and cancellation policies) - Jetblue TrueBlue
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- SAS EuroBonus
- Singapore KrisFlyer
- Spirit Airlines Miles
- Tap Miles & Go
- Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
- United Airlines MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Virgin Australia Velocity
Extras
AwardTool offers additional features like Panorama and Deals (I think both of these use cached search results to show you options that might or might not still exist by the time you search for them), and Hotels (which lets you see award availability for popular chain hotels). AwardTool also displays cancellation fees and rules for each award currency listed. I haven’t played around with these extra features enough yet to comment on them.
Pricing (Get $20 Off)
AwardTool’s basic version is free. Their Pro version is available as follows:
- $10.99 per month; or
- $84.99 per year (for comparison, PointsYeah Premium costs $89.99 per year)
Frequent Miler readers get $20 off their first year by using code FREQUENTMILER20:
- First sign up for the free version using our affiliate link: frequentmiler.com/go/awardtool/ (thank you!)
- Click the “Pro” button at the top of the AwardTool page and select the AwardTool Pro annual plan
- On the check-out screen, you’ll see an option to “Add promotion code”. Click that and enter: FREQUENTMILER20
My Take
We seem to be in an arms race with award search tools one-upping each other left and right. For the past several months I’ve happily used a combination of PointsYeah and Seats.Aero for most of my flight search needs. Now AwardTool has come along and made me reconsider. Due to AwardTool’s greater flexibility compared to PointsYeah, I think I’ll turn to AwardTool first. But, keep in mind that both tools gave me free Pro memberships because they want me to write stuff like this. If I had paid for PointsYeah, I wouldn’t abandon it to go to AwardTool. They’re extremely similar and they both get the job done. And if I was a betting guy, I’d bet that the brains behind PointsYeah will read this post and make some changes to one-up their new competition. As I said, it’s an arms race, but one in which the consumer is the winner.
One other thing… AwardTool has a quirk or a feature that is worth mentioning. I found some FlyingBlue awards on AwardTool that weren’t available on other platforms, and they weren’t available on KLM.com or Airfrance.US. But the AwardTool folks tell me that they use FlyingBlue’s UK site for their searches because it seems to offer better award availability and that these awards can be booked over the phone. Unfortunately those results were gone by the time I learned that and so I didn’t get a chance to check whether that was true. Additionally, they say that they get better results via Aeroplan’s app than the website, so they use the app. I didn’t feature any of this in the main body of this post because I don’t really know what to make of it. If the tool really can find award space that other tools can’t, and if those awards are truly bookable, then that’s great. The downside is the frustration: I had found a great award flight, but couldn’t book it because I didn’t know that the secret was to check the UK site or to call in. And, of course, if the tool is finding award space that isn’t really there at all, that’s worst of all.
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The NoScript extension for Firefox reveals a script that attempts to link to “testdaily(.)cn” from the AwardTool site. Anybody know why it wants to connect to the People’s Republic of China?
I have a question. It says you can only have 35 searches. Does anyone know if it limits you to 35 in a lifetime? I only have about five current ones but when I try to create a new one that says I have already reached my limit. The customer support is very poor so I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from them.
Awardtool has not been working well recently. I haven’t been able to see Flying Blue awards at all, and other TATL airlines (e.g. Virgin) have been very spotty. What happened? It was initially very helpful.
Is it possible that there simply weren’t any awards available for the dates you were searching? I just ran a search and found both Flying Blue and Virgin awards
It seems that it was a short-term glitch that lasted for a few days, as I can now find both FB and Virgin award seats listed again. They were available directly through the individual program websites during that time too, so it was not lack of availability. That said, I have found a number of instances where the results are not accurate. For example, AwardTool was showing Biz class seats on BA available for dates next summer, but they were not there when I tried to book them through BA’s site. It is still a useful tool again, though, with FB and Virgin back online. Thanks for the follow up.
I am an idiot. I cannot get any flights to display. lol. I need a users guide.
[…] one! AwardTool: a powerful new award search too. Don’t get me wrong, the competition in this space is great for the consumer. When PointsYeah […]
Can you use awardtool to book systemwide upgrades on American?
I’m not seeing the Mega tool mentioned..?
Yeah, its kind of hidden. Go to “Flights” and look for the oval in the middle of the screen that lists Flights | Panorama | Mega
Thanks!
I always wonder whether tools like this just make it tougher on people since tickets are too easy to find and will disappear sooner?
On my own I was able to snag a couple of one way business class tickets to/from Europe on Austrian and Air France for reasonable prices (63K and 50K per ticket).
Fortunately my schedule right now is very flexible.
I can see from the airlines perspective why they don’t like people doing this since 3rd parties are logging in and running a ton of searches without providing any money in return. And not only paying anything to the airlines, they are taking this data and selling it which I would fight against via legal and technical means.
Rememmber Rich, knowledge is power
Hi wanted to correct you here, I don’t think you have truthful information… AwardTool is not the first major tool to have BA… I’ve seen BA results on AwardLogic for months
Thanks for the correction. I think Tim meant that it was the first that allowed a range of many dates but that’s confusing so I took that out.
Hi Greg, FYI (although you may know this already!) SeatSpy allows you to see a whole year’s worth of award availability for select airlines (including BA), but only on a route by route basis. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to filter out codeshares (as far as I can tell) so you can’t, for example, filter out BA flights when searching for AA saver awards.
Hi Ziggy, with recent update, we also allow our users to have a calendar view for over a hundred BA routes. Check out at awardtool.com/routes.
I have grown to love AwardTool!
I’ve been playing around the tool for the past few days. And I’m absolutely loving it. I feel the Panorama and Route parts are the best for me.
Agree, their routes support more programs than seats.aero
To whom it may concern,
There was a misunderstanding between Carl and us, but we’ve since cleared it up. As some of our very first subscribers, we gained invaluable insights from Carl’s honest feedback, and our conversation was thoroughly enjoyable.
As we assured Carl, all the work on AwardTool is 100% built by our talented engineering team and product team with deep love for the community.
We appreciate the opportunity to respond to this incident as it gave us a chance to reinforce our commitment to integrity. Together, we can build a warm and passionate community for all award travelers and help make their award travel planning effortless and save people thousands and hours.
Rest assured, people can trust in our service. We’re committed to people’s privacy and data security. Every single byte of our data is securely located within the US, and we are committed to deleting every user’s data after one year of inactivity or upon their request.
Furthermore, we are devoted to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and quality for our data, and building the most powerful award search tool, enabling people to save thousands of hours while enjoying our services. Happy planning your award travel adventures!
Sincerely,
AwardTool Team
I have talked with AwardTool and they have assured me that their code is 100% their own and none was taken from any other search tool.
Hey drama boy, you caused quite a stir from your unfounded comments. Way to make an a$$ of yourself
Acronym time:
To be fair, we’re both victims of this unfounded and obviously intentional misrepresentation.
Carl has been fantastic all the time!
Love the tool! Keep up the good and positive work.
To clarify, is Carl S a represtentative for PointsYeah? He seems to be a third party, based on his viewpoint and PointsYeah had their own comments entered separately, if I am reading the thread correctly. Therefore I would be more assured if this conversation and reconciliation was with PointsYeah directly. PointsYeah, what say you?
It doesn’t matter what they see; let’s focus on their actions. As Greg rightly mentioned, if they’ve truly been wronged, legal action would be more appropriate. Better than propagating baseless accusations against other companies in this industry like Roame, Point.me, and the list goes on, and damage the industry. Unfortunately, once again, we find ourselves targeted with the same intentionally unfounded claims. Both Carl and us are victim of such malicious malformation.
I guess we have already heard that from you…and this statement is equally one sided… And it’s your actions that were the basis for the original question(s)… this does not provide additional information. Reasonable suspicions given how the UI of your site has such a similar look/feel (down to the font and drop downs). Just sayin
To whom it may concern,
There was a misunderstanding between Carl and us, but we’ve since cleared it up. As some of our very first subscribers, we gained invaluable insights from Carl’s honest feedback, and our conversation was thoroughly enjoyable.
As we assured Carl, all the work on AwardTool is 100% built by our talented engineering team and product team with deep love for the community. ❤️
We appreciate the opportunity to respond to this incident as it gave us a chance to reinforce our commitment to integrity. Together, we can build a warm and passionate community for all award travelers and help make people’s award travel planning effortless and save them thousands and hour.
Rest assured, people can trust in our service. We’re committed to people’s privacy and data security. Every single byte of the data is securely located within the US, and we are committed to deleting every user’s data after one year of inactivity or upon their request.
Furthermore, we are devoted to maintaining the highest standards of quality for our data, and building the most powerful award search tool, enabling people to save thousands of hours while enjoying our services. Happy planning your award travel adventures! ✈️
Sincerely,
AwardTool Team
On Panorama, is there a way to filter by >x% of business? It’s showing so many low cost redemptions but only like 10% of the itinerary is business.
Yeah, we’ve added this to our roadmap. Thanks for bringing this up!
Nice tool! Subscribed, thanks for the code
I don’t know if I can trust these tools yet. I just ran a simple search for 2Pax YYZ-BOM for late June (26-29 specifically) and the cheapest option it would show me was AA award on BA Premium Economy for 62.5k plus taxes. However, a quick search on aeroplan shows YYZ – NYC – BOM for same dates for 55k or united showing YYZ- CAI-BOM for same dates for 49.5k. Neither of these results showed up during my search.
Aeroplan has been threatening action on tools that scrape their content. It might have been intentionally missing from the results.