Which award search tool is best?

This post has been updated since its original publication with the addition of a new tool: PointsYeah. We’ve also updated the seats.aero entry to show that it now supports Air France/KLM Flying Blue.

Airline miles offer us flying experiences we would never dream of paying cash for.  Pictured above is Etihad’s First Class Apartment which I flew in 2019.  While other passengers probably paid around $7,000 for the same flight from Abu Dhabi to London, I paid only 80,000 American Airlines miles (and that also included a business class flight from the Seychelles to Abu Dhabi).

At Frequent Miler, we often write about sweet spot awards like the one above.  It’s easy to dream about enjoying flights like these, but it’s often very difficult to find saver award availability.  Most airlines have multiple award pricing tiers and only the cheapest awards (often referred to as “saver awards”) are available to book with partner miles.  And that’s key.  The best deals with airline miles usually involve using one airline’s miles to book awards on a partner airline.  To take advantage of those opportunities, you have to find saver award availability on the partner airline’s flight.  Often, that’s very hard to do.  Enter award search tools…

Award Search Tools: Quick Compare

Several online tools have been developed over the years to try to make award searches easier.  Among these, there are at least two distinct types of tools: general purpose, and specialty award search tools.  With the general purpose award search tools, just like paid flight searches via Kayak or Google Flights, you enter your desired origin airport, destination airport, dates of travel, number of travelers, and class of service; press “search,” and the tool will find available awards across multiple loyalty programs and airlines.  The specialty award search tools, meanwhile, are designed to help find awards for specific carriers or routes.  For example, if your heart is set on flying a specific United Airlines route, one of the specialty award search tools may be the best option for you.

Comparison of general purpose award search tools

The following tools are designed to help you find award flights across multiple loyalty programs and airlines after you select your desired origin, destination, date of travel, number of travelers, and class of service…

Comparison of specialty award search tools

Each of the tools in this round-up have pros and cons…

General purpose award search tools

All of the tools in this section search for awards across multiple loyalty programs based on simple search criteria such as origin, destination, number of passengers, class of service, and date of travel.

AwardLogic

AwardLogic is one of the most well-rounded tools in this lineup, but it’s also the most expensive.  See: Point.me vs AwardLogic. Which award search tool is best?

Pros

• Supports most relevant points & miles currencies
• Searches up to 3 days at once
• Includes up to 25 Flight Alerts so that you’ll get emailed when award space opens up.
• Displays number of miles required for each award
• Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
• Supports transferable points programs

Cons

• Can only search a single class of service at a time
• Most expensive tool in this round up

point.me 

point.me is probably the single most thorough award search tool available.  It searches across a huge selection of loyalty programs and it provides step-by-step instructions for how to book the awards once found.

See:

• Point.me, a Kayak-like tool for flight awards, has launched.
• Point.me vs AwardLogic. Which award search tool is best?

Pros

• Supports most relevant points & miles currencies
• Searches for business and first class award space at once
• Displays number of miles required for each award
• Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
• Supports transferable points programs
• Offers step-by-step instructions for transferring points and booking awards.

Cons

• Can only search a single date at a time
• Results populate very slowly

point.me via Bilt

Bilt Rewards is a rewards program intended for people who pay rent, but anyone can join for free.  Once you’ve joined and installed the Bilt app on your phone, you can use the free embedded version of point.me to search for flight awards.  This version of point.me is limited to Bilt’s transfer partners (found here).  See also: Bilt adds free Point.me integration for award searches with partners!

If you’d prefer to use this version of point.me on the web, you can log into your Bilt account here: www.biltrewards.com/rewards/travel.

Pros

• It’s free!
• Supports most of the most relevant points & miles currencies
• Searches for business and first class award space at once
• Displays number of miles required for each award
• Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
• Supports transferable points programs
• Offers step-by-step instructions for transferring points and booking awards.

Cons

• This free version does not search all popular programs (only those that are transfer partners with Bilt). Noticeably absent: Delta and Avianca LifeMiles
• Can only search a single date at a time
• Results populate very slowly

PointsYeah

PointsYeah has a great free version which includes 3 day search windows and 3 free alerts.  It also offers a paid version with 7 day search windows and 21 active alerts.

At the time of this writing, PointsYeah supports the following programs:

1. AeroMexico Club Premier
2. Air Canada Aeroplan
3. Air France / KLM Flying Blue
4. Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
5. American Airlines AAdvantage
6. Avianca Lifemiles
7. Delta SkyMiles
8. Emirates Skywards
9. Etihad Guest
10. Frontier Airlines Miles
11. Iberia Plus Avios
12. Jetblue TrueBlue
13. Qantas Points
14. Spirit Airlines Miles
15. SAS EuroBonus
16. Tap Miles & Go
17. Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
18. United Airlines MileagePlus
19. Virgin Australia Velocity
20. Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Pros

• The free version is terrific.
• The paid version is cheaper than competing tools
• Supports most of the most relevant points & miles currencies
• Searches for business and first class award space at once
• Results populate quickly
• Supports multi-city and open jaw itineraries
• Displays number of miles required for each award
• Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
• Supports transferable points programs
• Offers up to 3 free alerts!

Cons

• It does not yet search all popular programs. Specifically, I’d like to see support for British Airways Avios
• Does not include award booking instructions

Roame

roame is a free tool that searches across a moderate number of programs but it does cover most of the ones that you’re likely to care about.  At the time of this writing, roame supports the following programs:

1. AeroMexico Club Premier
2. Air Canada Aeroplan
3. Air France / KLM Flying Blue
4. Alaska Mileage Plan
5. American Airlines AAdvantage
6. Avianca Lifemiles
7. Delta SkyMiles
8. Emirates Skywards
9. Iberia Plus
10. Jetblue True Blue
11. United Airlines MileagePlus
12. Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
13. Virgin Australia Velocity Flyer

Pros

• It’s free!
• Supports most of the most relevant points & miles currencies
• Searches for business and first class award space at once
• Results populate quickly
• Displays number of miles required for each award
• Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
• Supports transferable points programs

Cons

• It does not yet search all popular programs. Specifically, I’d like to see support for British Airways Avios and Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
• Can only search a single date at a time
• Does not include award booking instructions

Specialty award search tools

Expert Flyer

Expert Flyer is a nerdy tool for finding award space, upgrade space, open seats and more.  Expert Flyer doesn’t do general award searches across airlines.  Instead, you tell it which specific airline you want to fly, which route and dates, and it will tell you if it can find saver level award availability.  It won’t tell you the award price or which program to use to book the awards.

Pros

• Supports a huge list of airlines (64 at the time of this writing)
• Identifies multi-leg awards, not just non-stop
• Provides many other flight features besides award searches

Cons

• Requires you to know which airline you want to fly
• Doesn’t display award prices
• Doesn’t help identify best points or miles to use to book a given award
• Setting alerts can be a painstaking process: You need to set up a separate alert for each and every flight + date of interest.  For example, if there are three flights per day that would work for you and you’re open to flying on any of 4 different days, then you would need to setup 12 different alerts.

SeatSpy

SeatSpy is unique in that it displays a full year of award availability all at once… and relatively quickly.  If you know which airline you want to fly on a nonstop route, and if that airline is supported by SeatSpy, there’s no other tool that compares.  See: SeatSpy — A tool for finding non-stop awards. Why is that useful?

Pros

• Displays an entire year of results at a time
• Very fast results (especially considering that it shows an entire year at once!)
• Displays award prices when you click on a date
• Alerts are easy to set up and can be set for an almost unlimited date range
• Inexpensive compared to the other tools

Cons

• Relatively few airlines supported so far
• Searches only for non-stop flights
• Alerts aren’t useful with programs that dynamically price awards (such as AA and Air France)

Seats.Aero

Seats.Aero is a awesome nerdy tool that is mostly designed for finding last-minute hard-to-get awards.  See my full review here: Seats.aero — a wonderfully nerdy tool for finding Unicorn flight awards.

Pros

• Lightning fast
• Free standard version
• The only tool that supports broad searches such as “North America” to “Asia”

Cons

• Not all airline routes are included
• Free version only searches 2 months into the future
• Cached results mean that some results are out of date
• Not designed for novices

Which is Best?

All of the tools in this roundup are great for certain purposes and so the best one depends upon what you need.  If your dates are well constrained, any of the general purpose tools may meet your needs.  If you want to save money, try both PointsYeah and the version of point.me that comes with Bilt.  Both are free and, when taken together, they cover pretty much every airline loyalty program you’re likely to care about.  If you want a single comprehensive tool, look to either AwardLogic or the full version of point.me.  The former is quicker and supports both multi-day searches and alerts, but it’s more expensive.  The  latter is less expensive and does a better job of walking you step by step through the point transfer and booking process.

If you want to fly a specific non-stop route on a specific airline, SeatSpy is the best option if it happens to support that airline.  Otherwise, turn to ExpertFlyer since it covers many more airlines.

If you’re an advanced award seeker, Seats.Aero is a nerdy gem that should be added into the mix.  It’s not complete enough to be the only tool you use, but for the specific things it does, it’s great.

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