Type "where to find cheap flights" into any search engine and you'll get the same five names back, in roughly the same order: Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak, Momondo, maybe Hopper. They're all genuinely useful, and none of them are wrong to recommend. But treating "where" as a single list of five apps misses the bigger point: different platforms surface fundamentally different inventory, and the biggest savings usually come from checking a source most roundups don't mention at all.
This guide is organised by category rather than as a flat top-ten list, because the "where" question is really several smaller questions: where do the widest comparisons live, where do the discounts the public can't see live, and where do the fares nobody's watching live. Each source below answers a different one.
Metasearch engines: the widest net, not the deepest one
Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak and Momondo all do the same core job - they scan a huge number of airlines and travel agencies at once and show you the cheapest combinations across a route. Google Flights is generally the strongest starting point for flexible-date browsing and price trend graphs; Skyscanner and Momondo tend to surface a wider spread of smaller regional agencies that Google sometimes misses; Kayak's strength is combining two separate one-way fares into a single itinerary, which occasionally beats a round trip on the same airline.
What none of them do particularly well: verified student and youth pricing. These platforms search publicly listed fares, and discounted fares that require proof of eligibility simply aren't part of that public inventory, so a metasearch engine can only ever show you the ceiling price, not the actual floor available to a specific traveller.
Airline websites directly: still worth the extra click
It's tempting to assume a metasearch engine already found the best price an airline offers, but that's not always true. Airlines sometimes hold back certain fare classes, loyalty-member-only prices, or last-minute seat releases that don't flow through third-party comparison sites at all. Checking the airline's own site directly is particularly worth doing on regional and budget carriers, where inventory management tends to be tighter and third-party listings can lag behind what's actually available. Carriers such as Eurowings and ITA Airlines are good examples - both run frequent short-notice fare drops on their own booking channels that don't always propagate to comparison engines in real time.
Booking direct also avoids the extra fees some third-party agents add on top of the base fare, and it means any schedule change or cancellation is handled by the airline itself rather than through a middleman.
Student and youth fare platforms: the source most guides skip entirely
Here's the biggest blind spot in almost every "where to find cheap flights" roundup: none of them mention verified student or youth fare platforms, because they're built around comparing public pricing, not discounted access. If you're a current student, this is arguably the single most valuable "where" on this entire list, since it's not a matter of searching harder - it's an entirely separate pool of pricing that a general aggregator structurally cannot show you. Fares through this channel are commonly discounted by up to 70% against the standard published price, which routinely beats anything a metasearch engine will ever surface for the same seat.
This is where a platform built specifically around verified student and youth pricing earns its place - not as a replacement for Google Flights or Skyscanner, but as an additional source that covers ground the others structurally can't.
Error fare and mistake fare alert communities
Every so often, an airline's own pricing system slips and lists a fare far below its intended price. These error fares (sometimes called mistake fares) are corrected quickly, often within hours, so they rarely stay visible on a general metasearch engine long enough to be found by manual searching. Dedicated deal-alert services and error-fare communities exist specifically to catch and broadcast these the moment they appear, which is a genuinely different "where" than any general comparison site - it's less about searching and more about already being subscribed when the fare briefly exists.
Budget and regional carriers, checked directly
Low-cost and regional carriers are inconsistently represented across metasearch engines. Some, particularly smaller regional operators, opt out of major comparison sites entirely or only list a subset of their routes there. Checking these carriers' own booking channels directly is often the only way to see their full route map and pricing. Airlines like Icelandair, which covers routes and connections that don't always appear prominently on general search engines, are a good example of where a direct check turns up options a broad aggregator search would have missed entirely.
Departure city and regional airport searches
Where you search from matters as much as which platform you use. Checking departures from a secondary or regional airport near you, rather than only your default one, regularly surfaces a meaningfully cheaper fare on the same route. This is particularly true for major hub cities with multiple nearby airport options - travellers searching cheap flights from Berlin, cheap flights from Milan or cheap flights from Stuttgart, for example, often find that broadening the departure search to include a nearby secondary airport turns up options a single-airport search would never have shown.
Social media and dedicated deal-alert accounts
A newer addition to the "where" list: dedicated flight-deal accounts on social platforms and standalone alert services have become a genuine source for spotting fare drops and error fares quickly, often faster than a manual search would catch them. They're worth following if you have a handful of routes you fly repeatedly, though they tend to cover popular leisure routes more thoroughly than niche or regional ones, so they work best as a supplement to your own tracked searches rather than a replacement for them.
Where the savings tend to be smaller than expected
Not every "where" that gets recommended actually delivers much. Cashback and points portals can occasionally shave a small percentage off a booking, but the saving is usually modest compared with checking a student platform or a direct airline site, and it typically requires locking your booking through a specific portal to claim it. Third-party budget travel agents sometimes advertise an attractively low base fare, only for extra fees at checkout to close most of the gap versus booking directly - worth factoring in before assuming the lowest number on a results page is the actual final price.
Consolidators and student travel agencies: an older channel still worth knowing
Before flight search engines existed, consolidators - travel agencies that buy blocks of seats from airlines at wholesale rates and resell them, often specifically to students and young travellers - were the main way to find genuinely discounted long-haul fares. That channel still exists, and while it's a smaller slice of the market than it once was, it hasn't disappeared. Modern student fare platforms are, in a sense, the digital-native version of the same idea: negotiated access to pricing tiers that aren't part of the public fare structure, just delivered through a search interface instead of a phone call to a travel agent. Worth knowing about even if you never use the older version directly, since it explains why "verified student pricing" isn't a marketing gimmick - it's a genuinely different wholesale arrangement behind the fare.
How OTAs differ from the airline and from each other
Online travel agencies (OTAs) sit in an odd middle ground between metasearch engines and airlines themselves. Unlike a metasearch engine, which mostly points you elsewhere to complete the booking, an OTA sells the ticket directly and often bundles in extras like flexible date changes or basic travel insurance. The trade-off is that OTAs typically add a service fee on top of the base fare, and if something goes wrong with the flight, you're dealing with the OTA's customer service rather than the airline's, which can add friction to refunds or rebooking. They're worth checking as one more comparison point, particularly for multi-city or complex itineraries where an OTA's search tools sometimes handle the combination better than an airline's own site - but the headline price shown isn't always the price you'll actually pay once fees are added at checkout.
Building a simple multi-source routine
Checking every source above on every single search isn't realistic, and it isn't necessary either. A practical routine looks like this:
- Start with a metasearch engine for a broad sense of the going rate on your route.
- If you're eligible, check a student or youth fare platform separately - this is the step most travellers skip, and it's usually the one with the biggest single impact.
- For budget or regional carriers, check their own site directly rather than trusting the metasearch listing is complete.
- Set a price alert on your specific route so you're notified of drops automatically, rather than repeating the same manual search across multiple sites every few days.
- Treat cashback portals and deal-alert social accounts as occasional bonuses, not primary sources.
Following even the first three steps consistently covers the vast majority of the savings available across all these sources combined, without needing to manually check every single one for every trip.
A quick reference: where to check, and what it's actually good for
- Metasearch engines (Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak): Best for comparing prices across many airlines at once.
- Airline direct sites: Ideal for finding loyalty fares, last-minute seat releases, and avoiding third-party booking fees.
- Student and youth fare platforms: Offer exclusive discounted fares that aren't available to the general public.
- Error fare and deal-alert services: Help you spot short-lived mistake fares before they're corrected.
- Budget and regional carrier sites: Often include routes and fares that don't appear on major flight aggregators.
- Nearby or secondary airport searches: Can reveal lower fares that a single-airport search would miss.
Putting these sources together
None of these replace each other, and that's really the point: a metasearch engine, a student fare platform, and a price alert on your specific route are each answering a different version of "where do I find this cheap." If you want the fuller strategy for using price movement to time a booking, our guide on how to find cheap flights covers the search and timing tactics in depth, while our guide to tracking flights walks through setting up alerts once you've found a route worth watching. If you're specifically weighing when to click "book," our breakdown of the cheapest day to book flights is worth a look too, though the short version is that which platform you're searching on matters more than which day you search it.
The takeaway
Where you look changes what you find far more than most roundups suggest. Metasearch engines are the right starting point, but the biggest savings tend to sit outside them entirely - in verified student pricing, direct airline channels, and alerts for fares that won't stay listed for long. Set up your Flyla flight deal alerts to cover the sources a general search was never built to show you.