Google Flights offers features to help you find the best fares for when you want to travel.
Find “Best” or “Cheapest” flights
By default, Google shows you the flights that offer the best trade-offs between price, convenience, and ease of booking. In the “Best” tab, you can find these flights.
The “Cheapest” tab prioritizes low prices, and includes additional itineraries and prices from online travel agents. You can save money with these additional options, which may cost some trade-offs, such as:
- Self-transfer of the luggage between connecting flights.
- Fly through different airports in the same city on the onward and return flights.
In the “Cheapest” tab, you might also find cheaper fares from online travel agents for the same itineraries as in the “Best” tab.
How we rank "Top departing flights"
These flights are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during layovers. We may also include non-stop itineraries from airlines for which we do not have price information, but these itineraries will always appear in the lowest position.
To show you these results, Google Flights compares offers from over 300 travel partners, including airlines, online travel agencies and aggregators. Results may not reflect all available offers.
Travel partners don't pay Google to appear in the list of flights, and the list order isn't influenced by Google's relationships with these partners.
How we rank "Other departing flights"
We rank these flights in ascending order of price. Itineraries without prices appear below all priced results.
How we rank booking links
The Google Flights link-ranking algorithm takes into account a few factors with different weights, like:
- Whether the link has a price.
- The price offered by the partner on Google Flights.
- Whether the link is an airline or an OTA link.
- Google’s data shows that users prefer airline links, but Google aims to provide both airline and OTA options among the top results.
- Link type and quality, with a consideration for shallow versus deep links.
- The user should not have to select the itinerary again on the partner’s website.
- Whether the link that’s integrated on Google Flights leads to a mobile-friendly website.
Understand why some prices are in green
While we consider several factors when ranking flights and booking links, we recognize that price is a very important factor for many users. We use a green font to highlight the most affordable flights and booking options so you can find these options more easily.
These most affordable flight and booking options are determined based on price relative to the lowest-priced option, and the total number of options available.
Know when to book your flights
The Tips section may contain notes that let you know if you’re getting a good deal.
- Prices are unlikely to drop before you book: This tip is shown when Google Flights predicts with a high degree of confidence that prices for the trip will not drop between the time of your search and the flight’s departure. This prediction is based on an analysis of price trends of past flights, and there is always a chance that future prices will not behave as we expect. (On mobile this note may appear under the "Book soon" section.)
- Prices are less than usual: This tip is shown when prices for the trip are significantly less than expected based on an analysis of past prices of similar trips. When you click the tip, it will tell you what factors Google Flights used to determine why the price is less than usual
- Prices are likely to increase: You may also find a tip that “prices are likely to increase” by a certain amount in the coming days, which is shown when Google Flights is able to predict with a high degree of confidence that prices will increase and by approximately what amount. This prediction is based on an analysis of price trends of past flights, and there is always a chance that future prices will not behave as we expect. (On mobile this may appear under the "Book now" section.)
Know when and where to fly
- Dates: You may notice that flight prices fluctuate when you choose a different day of the week. When you click Dates, you can find which travel dates have the best fares.
- Price graph: If your travel dates are flexible, clicking Price graph lets you explore fare trends by month or week. In this section, you can also opt in to tracking flights and prices.
- Airports: The Airports section may note that fares are cheaper at different airports, and allows you to find what those fares are.