The cheapest flight on any given route is almost never the one Google Flights shows first. Google leans on five major airlines for inventory and silently down-ranks low-cost carriers; the absolute cheapest fare is typically 15-40% lower and lives on a budget carrier most metasearch tools list as a footnote. The Valor cheapest-flights finder ranks low-cost carriers equally with legacy airlines and surfaces the actual lowest total price per route.
Search flights now →Google Flights ranks by an internal score that weights brand familiarity and conversion rate, not by lowest price. Airlines like Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, Norse Atlantic, French Bee, Play, Wizz Air, and AirAsia are routinely 20-40% cheaper than the cheapest legacy carrier on overlapping routes; they appear below the fold or in the "more options" tray, which 90% of users never expand. The Valor finder reverses this: low-cost carriers appear at the top of results whenever their total cost (including baggage) is lower.
Every result on the cheapest-flights finder shows total trip cost, not just the published fare. Budget airlines unbundle aggressively: a $79 Spirit fare becomes $135 once you add a carry-on, seat selection, and a single soft drink. We add those by default so the displayed price is what you actually pay. About 20% of the time, after this adjustment, a legacy carrier with included baggage ends up cheaper than the budget carrier despite the higher headline fare.
Hidden-city ticketing is a trick where you book a connecting flight whose layover city is your actual destination, then skip the second leg. It can save 30-60% on certain routes. We do not show these in the cheapest-flights finder because (1) most airlines explicitly ban it, can cancel return tickets, and have sued repeat users, and (2) it does not work with checked baggage. If you want to try it, Skiplagged is the dedicated tool; understand the risks first.
Two settings move the cheapest-price meter more than any other: opening the date range to a 3-day window on each side, and including nearby airports (within 90 minutes by ground transit). Both are on by default in our finder. About 65% of users save more by switching airports than by switching airlines. NYC to LON is the canonical example: JFK-LHR is the published "cheapest" route but EWR-LGW is typically $40-80 less.
On about 70% of routes, yes, by 8-30%. The biggest gaps are short-haul European routes and US-Asia routes where low-cost long-haul carriers dominate. On the busiest US domestic routes (LAX-JFK, ORD-DFW, etc.) the difference is usually under 5%.
It runs three parallel queries: nearby-airport pairs (often $40-100 less), one-day-shifted dates (often $60-200 less), and unbundled budget carriers (often $30-150 less after baggage). It then picks the lowest total-cost combination.
Yes, but nonstop filtering kills 30-60% of the cheapest results because budget long-haul carriers usually require one connection. The default is "smart": nonstop if the price gap is under $50, otherwise show both.
The finder is cash-only. For points and miles use a dedicated tool like Point.me or seats.aero; we are not in that market yet.
Updated 2026-05-20 by Valor Flights. Run a free flight search →