New Google Flights feature to reveal cheapest time to book (2024)

FAQs

New Google Flights feature to reveal cheapest time to book? ›

According to new pricing data integrated into flight searches, the sweet spot for holiday travel prices is 71 days before departure.

New features for Google Maps also aim to help people plan trips. Now, when you search for a city, Maps will show you "curated lists of recommendations" from top travel sites like Lonely Planet and The New York Times' "36 Hours" series and and Google Maps users.

Average prices tend to be lowest 71 days before departure — a big change from our 2022 insights, which found that average prices were lowest just 22 days before departure. And the typical low price range is now 54-78 days before takeoff.

Get insights about price changes

You also get a notification in Google Flights, an email, or a mobile notification when: Prices for a route you're tracking are likely to go up. The current fare for a flight expires soon and the new fare is likely to cost more.

You can find cheap flight deals to anywhere in the world on Google Flights. Just enter your departure city, choose Anywhere as the destination, and select Explore. You can pick specific dates or leave departure and return dates blank if your plans are flexible. The cheapest fares to popular destinations will appear.

New features include AI Overviews, multistep reasoning capabilities, planning capabilities, AI-organized search results, and a new Google Lens ask with video feature.

Google Travel, formerly Google Trips, is a trip planner service developed by Google. It was originally launched as a mobile app on September 19, 2016, for Android and iOS, which was shut down on August 5, 2019. The service is now only available on the website.

The Bottom Line

The best time to book airfare is within a window of 21 to 74 days before you plan to fly, and the cheapest tickets are generally on mid-week flights. You can also save if you use an airline miles credit card to book flights that help you earn miles or points toward future air travel.

However, the day of the week of the flight does impact the price. Fridays and Sundays, when people travel the most, garner the highest prices. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when people are typically at work, are when fares drop to their cheapest.

Tuesday and Friday flights can help you avoid the rush earlier in the week. Sundays and Mondays are the most expensive days to depart for domestic trips. If you can't fly on the cheapest days, flying on Tuesdays or Fridays might also be a good option.

Is it good to book flights through Google? ›

Google Flights is a reliable, legitimate, and trustworthy site for flight searching. In general, its prices are accurate and reflect the same prices as you'll find on the airline websites and other OTAs.

Our analysis shows that flight prices go through a weekly cycle. Typically, the lowest prices are made available earlier in the week, and the highest prices are offered later in the week. This is why the answer to the question, “When do flight prices go down?” is sometimes… a Tuesday!

If you want to put a price watch on all flights to and from your destination within your desired travel date range, toggle the button to the right of "Track prices." Once that dot is blue, you will get a pop-up on the bottom of the page that says "You'll get emails when prices change" for your dates.

Incomplete airline coverage: Google Flights does not display results from Southwest Airlines, requiring users to check fares directly through the airline's user-friendly Low Fare Calendar. Missing hidden fares: Many mistake fares appear only on smaller OTA websites, which Google Flights may not detect.

To be clear, Google Flights is not shutting down, but will continue to enable travelers to click on airline and online travel agency links to book their flights, as they have done for years for the vast majority of flights.

Google Maps and Travel

Unquestionably, the digital map has revolutionized the ease at which we can travel – whether it be by car, boat, plane, train or foot. With a giant network of directories, listings, and Google Map Maker efforts our present experience with digital maps is pretty streamlined.

Google Maps introduces new features, design updates, curated restaurant recommendations, hidden gems discovery, and AI-powered dish identification, enhancing the user experience for efficient navigation and travel planning.