It’s possible to fly economy class to Hawaii for 10,000 miles, or fly business class to Europe for as few as 34,000 miles, or fly business class to South Africa for 75,000 miles. It’s easy to dream about enjoying flights like these, but it’s often very difficult to find award availability. That’s where tools can help. Instead of searching day by day and from one airport to another, over and over, you can save a ton of time by letting award search tools do the work…
This post has been re-written since last publication (again!). Modern award search tools let you search for award flights across a wide range of loyalty programs. The best tools allow live searching a range of dates and multiple airports at once. They also offer a way to discover awards across entire regions and across time. By using pre-cached information, they can (for example) show business class awards available for a family of 4 to travel to Europe over summer break. The downside of this approach is that some of that pre-cached information will be out-of-date by the time you see it and so the best of these tools make it easy to refresh results. For more about this type of functionality, see: A new breed of award discovery tools. Finally, since award space comes and goes and comes again over time, the best tools let you create alerts so that you’ll be notified when awards of interest become available.
Award Search Tools
The following sections display information about tools which search across a number of award programs after you to specify an origin airport, destination airport, date of travel, and number of travelers. Tools that operate differently can be found later in this post under the heading “Specialty Award Search Tools”.
Overview
Tool | Price | Search? | Alerts? | Discovery? | Supported Programs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AwardLogic | $4.99/day; $19.99/mo.; $199.99/yr | Yes, 3 day range | Yes | No | AA, AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Avianca, BA, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, JetBlue, EVA, Qantas, SAS, Spirit, TAP Air Portugal, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
AwardTool | Free | Yes, up to 4 dates or airports | Yes | Yes, next 90 days | AA, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Avianca, Azul, BA, Copa, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Iberia, JetBlue, Qantas, SAS, Singapore, Spirit, TAP Air Portugal, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
AwardTool Pro | $10.99/mo.; $84.99/yr* |
Yes, up to 24 dates or airports | Yes | Yes | |
pointhound | Free | Yes, 3 day range | No | Yes | AA, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Alaska, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, JetBlue, Qantas, SAS, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
point.me | $12/mo.; $129/yr | Yes, exact dates & airports only | No | Yes | AA, Aegean, Aer Lingus, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, ANA, Asiana, Avianca, BA, Cathay Pacific, Delta, El Al, Emirates (limited), Etihad, EVA, Hawaiian, Iberia, JetBlue, Korean, Lufthansa, Malaysia, Qatar (limited), Qantas, SAS, Singapore (limited), Southwest, TAP, Thai, Turkish (limited), United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
point.me (via Bilt) |
Free | Yes, exact dates & airports only | No | No | Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Avianca, BA, Cathay Pacific, Emirates (limited), Iberia, Turkish (limited), United, Virgin |
point.me (via Amex) | Free | Yes, exact dates & airports only | No | No | Aer Lingus, AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, ANA, Avianca, BA, Cathay Pacific, Delta, Emirates (limited), Etihad, Hawaiian, Iberia, JetBlue, Qantas, Qatar (limited), Singapore (limited), Virgin Atlantic |
Points Path | Free | Yes, exact dates & airports only | No | No | AA, Air Canada, Alaska, Delta, Emirates, JetBlue, United |
PointsYeah | Free | Yes, 4 day range | Yes | Yes | AA, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Avianca, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Iberia, JetBlue, Qantas, SAS, Spirit, TAP, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
PointsYeah Premium | $89.99/yr | Yes, 8 day range + 2 origin & destination airports | Yes | Yes | |
Roame | Free | Yes, 3 day range | No | Yes, next 60 days | AA, AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Avianca, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Iberia, jetBlue, Qantas, SAS, Spirit, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
Roame Subscriber | $12.99/mo; $109.99/yr | Yes, 7 day range | Yes | Yes | |
Seats.aero | Free | Yes, unlimited airports, 15 day range, cached results only | Yes | Yes, next 60 days | AA, AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Alaska, Azul, Copa, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, GOL, jetBlue, Qantas, SAS, United, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
Seats.aero Pro | $9.99/mo.; $99.99/yr | Yes, unlimited airports, 361 day range | Yes | Yes |
* AwardTool Pro: Save $20 off your first year with code “FREQUENTMILER20”
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a commission if you sign up for any of the above paid subscriptions through our links.
Live Search Details
Here you’ll find more information about each tool’s live award search capabilities:
Tool | Date Range? | Multiple Airports at Once? | Alerts? | Step by Step Booking Tips? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AwardLogic | 3 Days | No | Yes | Yes | Alert settings are very limited |
AwardTool | Up to 4 Days | Up to 4 | Yes | Yes | |
AwardTool Pro | Up to 24 Days | Up to 24 | Yes | Yes | I love the ability to search multiple dates and/or multiple airports up to 24 combinations (e.g. 3 departure airports x 2 destination airports x 4 day range). |
pointhound | 3 Days | No | No | Yes | |
point.me | No | No | No | Yes | |
point.me (via Bilt) |
No | No | No | Yes | |
point.me (via Amex) | No | No | No | Yes | |
Points Path | No | No | No | No | This is a great “set and forget” tool that integrates into Google Flights |
PointsYeah | 4 Days | No | Yes | Yes | |
PointsYeah Premium | 8 Days | 2 origin; 2 destination | Yes | Yes | The total number of allowed combos (8x2x2=32) exceeds AwardTool Pro (24 max), but I prefer how AwardTool lets the user decide and can therefore do more airports or more dates at once. |
Roame | 3 Days | N/A | No | Yes | |
Roame Subscriber | 7 Days | N/A | Yes | Yes | Creating an alert requires enabling Sky View. |
Seats.aero | 15 Days (cached results only) | Unlimited | Yes | No | Only searches for single seat. Alerts are canceled after they’re triggered, so if you don’t like the first finding, you’ll have to create the alert again. |
Seats.aero Pro | 361 Days | Unlimited | Yes | No | Can specify number of travelers, max fees, max stops, etc. Alerts are canceled after they’re triggered, so if you don’t like the first finding, you’ll have to create the alert again. |
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a commission if you sign up for any of the above paid subscriptions through our links.
Cached Discovery Details
Here you’ll find more information about each tool’s cached discovery capabilities. This is where tools allow the user to search broadly across cached data. For example, some of these tools allow you to show business class flight awards over the next two months departing from the United States and arriving in Europe.
Tool | Date Range | Broad Origin and Destination? (e.g. “from United States” to “Europe”) | Min Seats | Min % Premium? | Easy Refresh? | Discovery Alerts? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AwardTool Panorama | 30 Days | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes. Refreshes results while you watch | Yes | Results limited to next 90 days. |
AwardTool Pro Panorama | 90 Days | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes. Refreshes results while you watch | Yes | |
point.me Explore | 12 Months | Broad destination only | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
pointhound top flight deals | 31 Days | Broad destination only | Yes | No | No | No | |
PointsYeah DayDream Explorer | 60 Days | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Allows setting a Deal Alert based on explore criteria |
Roame | 7 Days | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 1 alert but I couldn’t find a way to delete or replace it. | Results limited to next 60 days |
Roame Subscriber SkyView | 60 Days | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
Seats.aero Search, Explore | 15 Days via Search; 60 Days via Explore | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Explore results limited to next 60 days |
Seats.aero Pro Search, Explore | 365 Days | Yes | Yes | Automatic | Yes | Yes |
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a commission if you sign up for any of the above paid subscriptions through our links.
Notes about each search tool
AwardLogic
- Crazy expensive compared to the competition
- Does not offer award discovery
- I do not recommend this tool.
Award Tool
- Standout features include free multi-day search, free multi-airport search, free alerts, excellent discovery features, and fast results.
- Free version: In addition to offering 4 day search windows, AwardTool also offers “Mega” searches which can include ranges of up to 24 days when searching a single program. The catch is that you are limited to running these no more than 3 times per day.
- Paid version: gives you the flexibility to choose how you want to use your 24 degrees of freedom: you can do a 24 day date range; or list up to 24 airports with a single date; or search across 2 origin airports, 2 destination airports, and 6 dates; or any combination thereof.
- Panorama (Award Tool’s discovery feature) refreshes results live while you’re viewing them. This is great but also a little confusing since results you are looking at can disappear while you’re looking. The free version only lets you view results within the next 90 days.
pointhound
- Features a cute dog.
- It works well enough, but it doesn’t have as many useful features as some other tools (no alerts, for example).
- May be a good option for beginners.
point.me
- Searches more relevant airline programs than any other tool
- Offers the most detailed instructions for beginners.
- Neither date ranges nor alerts are supported
- Explore (point.me’s discovery feature) allows broad destination searches (e.g. “to Europe”) but requires the departure airport to be specified exactly (you can’t ask it to find all flights from the United States, for example).
- point.me’s searches are very slow, but we’ve been told that they’ll be rolling out dramatic speed improvements soon.
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 (go to Travel… Flights… Transfer Partners). 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!
- Standout feature: detailed instructions for beginners.
- 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.
point.me (via Amex)
- American Express and point.me have teamed up to offer a free version of point.me for American Express customers. This version of point.me includes only transfer partners that are available through Amex Membership Rewards.
- Standout feature: detailed instructions for beginners.
- Use this link to log-in: point.me/amex
Points Path
- Points Path is different from the other tools in this round-up in that it’s a Chrome plug-in that works automatically with Google Flights. See details here: Points Path – An easy “set and forget” award search tool.
- Standout feature: Set and forget. If you use Google Flights regularly, this tool will automatically show you point prices alongside cash prices.
PointsYeah
- Standout features include free multi-day search, free alerts, and fast results.
- The premium version offers an 8 day date range and up to two origin and two destination airports for a total of up to 32 degrees of freedom (more than Award Tool’s 24). Unfortunately it’s not as flexible as AwardTool in that you can’t do more than 2 airports or extend the date range beyond 8 days.
- Standout features include multi-day search, multi-airport search, alerts, excellent discovery capability, and fast results.
roame.travel
- Free version offers 3 day date range and paid version offers 7.
- SkyView (roame’s discovery feature) is well integrated with its search capability such that you can easily switch back and forth while looking for awards. This goes a long way towards making up for the fact that the search feature doesn’t allow choosing multiple airports at once.
Seats.aero
- This tool was initially designed purely as a special purpose award discovery tool (for finding cached results), but it now also offers live search for Pro users.
- This tool is extremely powerful for advanced users. It makes it super easy to find some of the toughest-to-find awards such as Qatar QSuites, Emirates first class, and more.
- More about Seats.aero can be found below under Specialty Award Search Tools.
Specialty Award Search Tools
Unlike general purpose award search tools, the specialty award search tools listed below 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.
Expert Flyer | SeatSpy | Seats.aero | |
---|---|---|---|
Cost | $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year | Premium: $3.99 per month; $39.90 per year | First Class: $9.99 per month; $99.90 per year | Standard: Free | Pro: $9.99 per month; $99.99 per year |
Search Date Range | 7 Days | 365 Days | 360 Days |
Key US Airlines | Alaska, AA | AA, United | Alaska, AA, Delta, United |
Other US Airlines | Hawaiian, JetBlue | N/A | JetBlue |
Other Key Airlines | Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France, Air New Zealand, British Airways, Emirates, KLM, Korean, Qantas, Turkish | Air France, British Airways, Etihad, KLM, Virgin Atlantic | AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France/KLM, Emirates, Etihad, Qantas, SAS, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia |
Award Alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Multi-Leg Awards? | Yes | No | Yes |
Display Award Prices? | No | Yes | Yes |
Search Across Carriers at Once? | No | No | Yes |
Step by step instructions for beginners? | No | No | No |
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a commission if you sign up for ExpertFlyer, Seatspy, or Seats.Aero through our links.
Notes about each of the above programs:
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
- 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, and if that airline is supported by SeatSpy, this is a great option.
Pros
- Displays an entire year of results at a time
- 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 relevant airlines supported
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
- 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
- Not designed for novices
Which is Best?
If you’re looking for a free general purpose tool, AwardTool and PointsYeah offer similar capabilities. Both offer date range searches, award alerts, and capable discovery functions. PointsYeah has an edge because its discovery function (DayDream Explorer isn’t limited for free users). On the other hand, if you want to search multiple airports at once, you’ll need AwardTool. Of course, since the tools are free, you might as well use both! And, while you’re at it, if you regularly use Google Flights, you should consider installing Points Path so that you’ll automatically get award prices within your Google Flights search results.
For the paid tools, again my favorites are AwardTool and PointsYeah, but I slightly prefer AwardTool thanks to the fact that its possible to search up to 24 airports at once.
Among the specialty search tools, Seats.Aero is my go-to. I love that I can do things like find available Qatar QSuites awards or Emirates first class awards, anywhere in the world, in seconds.
Interested in hotel awards? See:
Is awardfares.com any good? They seem to have a nice interface.
What PointsYeah does to the competitors seem at least unrespectful. They even threatened and DDOS attack college student project to protect themself. Just Google “PointsYeah CEO”, and it’s unacceptable.
Roame does not include hawaiian. point.me does though.
so does google flights with points path
seat spy dropped united recently. i have a query in to find out why.
they said “We have been working with the United data recently and we can see that there are some issues with it. We strongly suspect that we will have to remove the United airline availability from the site indefinitely. While we continue to look into this data I would recommend that you check on the United site directly for availability.
New paid points.me customer. Far from impressed. First search I tried to find award space for Air France and/or via Virgin Atlantic. Very clearly noted as available on both sites but it does not show up on points.me Submitted a request to points.me to ask them to look into it and it’s been a week with no reply. To me, that is not customer service worthy of a paid subscription.
Awardtool is a game changer, very helpful. The provided discount code makes it incredibly cost-effective.
I used Seat Spy recently to set a reward search on Flying Blue from Paris – Houston on a specific date and at a no more than 50,000 rate for business class for 2 seats. That rate wasn’t currently available on the day I was searching but I got an alert about a week later that the seats were available at that price. I verified availability on the Flying Blue site, transferred my points and then booked the flights. So I do think Seat Spy searches dynamically priced rewards if you set a search with the reward parameters you’re willing to pay.
AwardTool is awesome, love it! Thanks Greg!
[…] Getting crowded in this space so here is a post about all of them: Which award search tool is best? […]
What about Award Nexus? I find they are a great tool for award space. Especially for multiple flight itineraries.
Has a some gotchas but no more than expertflyer
I haven’t looked at that one in many years. What can it do that’s better than the tools highlighted here?
I think it is somewhat like Award Tool but I find the inclusions and exclusions a bit better. The calendar grouping of the offerings seem a bit easier to scan and the alerts work well.
Not sure it is neccessarily “better” but I find it works well and if you are a contributor on Flyertalk, you get most of the Award Tool Pro level options for free.
that is free with the credits you earn
AwardTool feels like the best yet the most affordable option, even before applying your $20 coupon code. Bravo!
After playing around with it for a while, I’ve found that AwardTool Panorama and Routes are much more useful to me than their real-time search. It offers max flexibility and super fast. They also track thousands of routes, similar to seats.aero, but with more programs. It would be interesting to see the comparison between the two.
A comparison between tools like that is scheduled to publish tonight
Perfect! Looking forward to it!
I’ve been seeing a lot of SAS results on PointsYeah. That’s a program that I haven’t seen discussed by bloggers. Any thoughts on SAS as a program to be learning about? One thing I’ve noticed is that I haven’t found any of these that seems to see the extra United availability for cardholders, and I realize it would be hard to handle that in the formats they use. I often see better United results at that website than on a search tool.
None of the major transferable points programs transfer to SAS, so I don’t find it interesting.
Correct about extra United availability: you can’t expect any of the tools to show that.
What I like about Points Yeah is that it tells me about transfer bonuses. The Bilt app doesn’t distinguish between using points to pay cash vs transfers. Although, when the price yesterday was cheaper on Bilt, I realized it was cheaper to pay cash and transfer points than to use points. I just wish it alerted me to the difference.
AwardTool also tells you the transfer bonus.
Would it be possible to update this post for any hotel award search tools? Or is there another article? Thanks!
I used https://rooms.aero/ to set up an alert for the Conrad in downtown Indianapolis to attend the Swifty concert. As soon as award space opened at 70k, I received an alert and booked immediately. A few days later, Hilton’s revenue people adjusted the prices to over 1.5 million points for a standard room. Insane! Rooms.aero doesn’t have every hotel in a particular city, however, so keep that in mind.
Here’s a post comparing a couple of hotel award tools: https://frequentmiler.com/tools-for-finding-impossible-hotel-awards/
Is it reasonable to add AwardTool to the list of tools for hotel awards since it also has a hotel section & hotel alert?