To-date, my post “Which award search tool is best?” has focused mostly on features. I prefer tools that let us search across award programs, across dates, and across multiple airports all at once. Plus, I think it’s critical for tools to offer robust alerts. The best awards are rarely there at the time you run your search and so your best bet is to be alerted when the award opens up. In that post I’ve also listed the loyalty programs that each tool supposedly supports. The problem is that, in general, the tools aren’t reliable: they may list a program as supported even if it no longer is. Or, they may only offer indirect support. The important thing here is that every tool misses out on great awards that at least some other tools can find. For this post, I set out to find which tool most often finds great awards…
Overview
Through a number of experiments, I compared a bunch of award search tools. In each case where both a free and subscription option is available, I used the paid version. Here are the tools I compared:
Experiment 1: Aer Lingus business class from Hartford to Dublin
When award space is available on Aer Lingus business class, there are a few good ways to book it (45K Alaska miles, 50K British Airways Avios, or 50K Aer Lingus Avios) and one sub-optimal way (93K United miles). Here are the awards that each tool found:
- AwardTool: Alaska 45K, United 93K
- point.me: Alaska 45K, British Airways Avios 50K, Aer Lingus Avios 50K, United 93K
- pointhound: Alaska 45K, United 93K
- PointsYeah: Alaska 45K, United 93K
- Roame: Alaska 45K, British Airways Avios 50K, Aer Lingus Avios 50K, United 93K
- Seats.Aero: Alaska 45K, United 93K
point.me and Roame were the winners here as they were the only tools that identified the ability to book this flight with Avios.
Experiment 2: Virgin Upper Class DC to London
When looking for business class flights from DC (IAD) to London (LHR), I found Virgin Atlantic Upper Class (business class) bookable with either 29,000 Virgin points plus high fees, or 71,500 Flying Blue miles and low fees. Ideally, each award search tool would show both options, but only a few did:
- AwardTool: Displayed both options
- point.me: Displayed both options
- pointhound: Only displayed Virgin point option
- PointsYeah: Displayed both options
- Roame: Only displayed Virgin point option
- Seats.Aero: Only displayed Virgin point option
AwardTool, point.me, and PointsYeah were the winners in this round since each showed that the flight could be booked with Flying Blue miles.
Experiment 3: Air France business class Denver to Paris
Given that only half of the tools found that the Virgin flight (above) was bookable with Air France KLM Flying Blue miles, I wanted to see whether they would find Air France flights that were bookable with 60,000 Flying Blue miles. Fortunately, all six tools found the correct answer here.
- AwardTool: Yes
- point.me: Yes
- pointhound: Yes
- PointsYeah: Yes
- Roame: Yes
- Seats.Aero: Yes
Experiment 4: British Airways business class DC to London
I found a British Airways flight that was available to book with 80,000 British Airways Avios, but not with other partner miles.
- AwardTool: Nope
- point.me: Yes
- pointhound: Nope
- PointsYeah: Nope
- Roame: Yes
- Seats.Aero: Nope
Only point.me and Roame correctly found this award flight.
Experiment 5: British Airways business class DC to London with partner awards
I found a British Airways flight that was available to book with with Avios or with just about any British Airways partner. I was curious to see which partner awards each tool could find. Here were the options that were found across all of the tools:
- 55K Alaska miles
- 57.5K AA miles
- 63K Cathay Asia miles
- 75K Qantas miles
- 80K British Airways Avios
- 80K Qatar Avios
And here are the results by tool:
- AwardTool: Alaska, AA, Qantas
- point.me: Alaska, AA, Cathay (but with wildly incorrect taxes & fees), Qantas, British Airways, Qatar
- pointhound: Alaska, AA, Qantas, Qatar
- PointsYeah: Alaska, AA
- Roame: Alaska, AA, Cathay, Qantas, British Airways
- Seats.Aero: Alaska, AA, Qantas, Qatar
All six tools found this flight bookable through Alaska and AA. The next most important find was that it was bookable with Asia miles because the taxes and fees on this booking are way, way less than through the other programs. Only point.me and Roame found the Cathay option and only Roame correctly showed the low fees (around $220) for that booking. Most of the tools found that the flight could be booked with 80K Avios (either through British Airways or Qatar). PointsYeah was the biggest loser here since it didn’t identify either Avios option.
Experiment 6: Cathay Pacific business class Vancouver to Hong Kong
I found a Cathay Pacific award flight that was bookable with Cathay Asia Miles but not through partner programs. Both point.me and Roame claim to support Asia Miles, so I wanted to test that out…
- AwardTool: Nope
- point.me: Nope
- pointhound: Nope
- PointsYeah: Nope
- Roame: Yes
- Seats.Aero: Nope
Even though point.me claims to support Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, I don’t think it really does. In the few cases where I found Asia Miles in point.me’s search results, the stated taxes and fees were way off. So, my bet is that point.me only guesses that Asia Miles can be used to book awards based on finding multiple oneworld programs that can book the award. Meanwhile, Roame correctly found the right award and displayed the correct fees.
Experiment 7: Johannesburg to London in business class
I handled this final experiment differently. I had each tool look across a specific week (for those that have that capability) for business class flights from Johannesburg to London. Unlike the previous experiments, I didn’t look for a single flight result, but rather looked to see which tools presented the best options in terms of the lowest point prices. I had each tool search for flights to “LON” so that it would include multiple London area options.
The best results, across all tools were:
- AA: 55K
- LifeMiles: 55K
- Aeroplan: 80K (there were many flight options at this price)
- Flying Blue: 88K, 90K
- Qantas: 90K
- United: 110K
- Virgin Atlantic: 110K
And here are the results by tool:
- AwardTool: LifeMiles 55K, United 110K, Virgin Atlantic 110K
- point.me: Flying Blue 88K, United 110K, Virgin Atlantic 110K
- pointhound: AA 55K
- PointsYeah: Aeroplan 80K, Flying Blue 88K, United 110K, Virgin Atlantic 110K
- Roame: Flying Blue 90K, United 110K
- Seats.Aero: AA 55K, Qantas 90K, United 110K, Virgin Atlantic 110K
It was startling how different each tool’s results were! Let’s look at some discrepancies…
AA 55K: Why did only two tools find AA awards for 55K? They found a flight to London Stansted airport. I couldn’t replicate this finding at AA.com by putting “LON” as the destination. I had to specifically look for flights to London Stansted to find this flight. It’s amazing to me that two tools, pointhound and Seats.Aero found it at all.
LifeMiles 55K: Only one tool found this! Hats off to AwardTool for finding the single best deal here (the AA flight required something like 3 stops, so I didn’t consider it a best find).
Flying Blue 88K/90K: Only three of the six tools found flights bookable with around 90K Flying Blue miles: point.me, PointsYeah, and Roame.
Aeroplan 80K: The best selection of flights was undoubtedly through Aeroplan for 80,000 miles. But only a single tool found these options! PointsYeah was the winner here.
In this experiment, no single tool found all of the best options. In fact, in this example, it would require three tools to find all of the best options! You need AwardTool to find the LifeMiles option, PointsYeah to find the Aeroplan options, and Seats.Aero or pointhound to find the AA option.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, no single tool does it all. In my experiments, point.me and Roame stood out for their support for Avios programs and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (Roame, especially), but both fell short in other significant ways. AwardTool proved itself capable of searching LifeMiles, but not Aeroplan. And PointsYeah was the opposite: it capably searched Aeroplan, but not LifeMiles.
I had hoped that these experiments would identify a single tool that can be relied on for most award searches. Alas, we’re not there yet — not even close. Fortunately, most of these tools have decent free versions (see this post for details), so it’s not unreasonable to run searches across many tools when looking for award flights that are particularly important to you.
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Seat.aero has deteriorated in the last few months, unfortunately. It does not display almost any premium economy seats and misses flights that other tools find.
What a great test. PointYeah was my go to over the last couple of years, but we kept finding flights it wasn’t catching by using other tools; however I like its interface. I find myself using AT and Roame more recently. Still no one ring to rule them all.
PointsYeah is my first stop because it is pretty fast and we are usually looking at a week or so. But it has been very hit and miss lately. It isn’t just Lifemiles. Flying Blue is really hard to search. I’ve caught it missing whole days of JetBlue availability. It is fine as a quick way to measure up what is possible, but then you have to dig. Roame is pretty good for this.
@Greg This is the kind of valuable content that makes your site so great. Thank You!
I’ve tried the American Express version of Point.me (free with MR) and it was useless only returning Delta flights for 410K-450K for flights to Asia. Is the Amex version of the tool just totally useless?
If you are using the free version of the amex.point.me tool, I believe it only looks at airlines that are transfer partners of American Express Membership Rewards points. So not totally useless, but you’re missing quite a few airlines that way.
Great experiment — I subscribe to the paid version of all of these tools and have noticed very similar results. I’ve found that Roam occasionally shows phantom space more often than others, but it also does the best job of consistently surfacing real award availability for me. When I’m casting a broader net, Seats.aero has the best functionality in my opinion, but for zeroing in on specific dates and routes, I tend to rely on Points.yeah, AwardTool and Roame. Honestly, I have to check all of them to find the best results. The paid versions definitely adds up, but they’ve been worth it for the time and value saved. I was surprised how poorly Points.yeah performed but I really appreciate this experiment as it really help remind me to keep digging and not give up too easy or rely on one tool. Awesome post Greg!
Hi Greg, great analysis of the award search tools. I have the most experience with Point.me and PointsYeah. Sometimes I would run the same search on both tools and see what options each tool found.
I would love to see you repeat this experiment every 2-3 months to see if any tools are getting better or worse over time.
The tools today seem mostly useless. None of the available tools can beat my own manual searches, particularly on itineraries between the United States and southeast Asia. I’m happy about it because award availability remains better when the award-finding tools don’t deliver.
If you know the specific programs that work for specific routes that you want and you have a more narrow range of dates, yes, manual searches are definitely better at this time. Search tools are more for discovering alternate award routes that you haven’t thought of, searching wide swaths of dates and departure/arrival locations, and setting alerts for award availability.
A prime example is that I needed to get my GF and her mother to Europe last summer. Didn’t really matter the program, the date, or departure / arrival city, as long as the parameters were transfers from AmEx points, fall shoulder season, and departing central or east US to arrive somewhere in Europe.
If I had tried to search all those options myself, I would have spent hours and even days sifting through searches. An award tool allowed me to look at a list of all options, laid out in an orderly fashion, and I was able to pick out award options in an afternoon.
Award tools are just that, tools, and they have a purpose depending on what you want to achieve. Just like any tool, you have to have a base knowledge of how to use the tool or you are not going to get great result, but if you have a little experience with awards, a search tool can speed things up dramatically, especially as you get more flexible with award requirements.
Don’t understand how people love seats.aero so much, when it clearly isn’t that great. Any criticism on Reddit about it leads to downvotes.
Seems like an AI tool should soon be able to search them all and return the ‘best of’ combined results.
Interesting results. I do wish Pointsyeah would hurry up and support Avios currencies.
I’ve tried to use the AMEX point.me but have had hilariously bad results with slow or never completed searches, which is kind of shocking to me. Do paid users get better prioritization?
Finally, I wish someone would add the ability to search for things like U space on Alaska. I would love to get rid of ExpertFlyer once and for all.
Very surprised that PointsYeah didn’t beat out AwardTool. I had a subscription to AwardTool but found that it didn’t find a lot of award flights that were out there and which PointsYeah got. So I ended that subscription and switched to PY in May. Haven’t compared them since so maybe its changed or maybe I was looking for different awards. I was focusing mostly on Oceania (esp NZ) and East Asia, I think, through much of the time I compared the two (and got award alerts from PY that didn’t appear on AT).