Which award search tool is best?

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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…

Qatar Qsuites business class. It’s possible to book Qatar business class to Doha and then onward to South Africa for as few as 75,000 American Airlines miles one-way. But finding award availability isn’t easy unless you use a tool like Seats.aero (as described here).

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 The downside of this approach is that some of that pre-cached information will be out-of-date by the time you see it and so the best of these tools make it easy to refresh results.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)

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

a screenshot of a computer screen
Expert Flyer searches require entering origin, destination, departure date, and airline.  You can choose up to 3 days on either side of your dates in order to get 7 total days worth of results. You can also choose to search for one or more classes of service at once.
a screenshot of a flight schedule
Expert Flyer’s search results show both nonstop and connecting routes, along with detailed information about each segment.

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

a screenshot of a chat

a screenshot of a calendar
SeatSpy offers a unique display that cleanly shows a year’s worth of results at once.  Different colors indicate different classes of service that are available on each day.  When hovering over a single day, you can see the number of seats available for each class of service, along with the number of points required by that airline’s loyalty program to book the award (note: you may be able to get better award prices by booking through a partner program, but SeatSpy isn’t designed to give you that kind of information).

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

a person typing on a laptop

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:

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113 Comments
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Antonio

Is awardfares.com any good? They seem to have a nice interface.

pointsyeahsucks

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.

Last edited 5 months ago by pointsyeahsucks
cameron

Roame does not include hawaiian. point.me does though.

cameron

so does google flights with points path

cameron

seat spy dropped united recently. i have a query in to find out why.

cameron

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.

Richard

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.

Last edited 5 months ago by Richard
Burns

Awardtool is a game changer, very helpful. The provided discount code makes it incredibly cost-effective.

Anne

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.

Greek A

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? […]

Amy

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

Amy

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.

Amy

that is free with the credits you earn

Mathew

AwardTool feels like the best yet the most affordable option, even before applying your $20 coupon code. Bravo!

DouglasS

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.

Last edited 8 months ago by DouglasS
DouglasS

Perfect! Looking forward to it!

DaveS

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.

ssss

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.

DouglasS

AwardTool also tells you the transfer bonus.

Z Man

Would it be possible to update this post for any hotel award search tools? Or is there another article? Thanks!

Andrew R.

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.

DouglasS

Is it reasonable to add AwardTool to the list of tools for hotel awards since it also has a hotel section & hotel alert?