The Best Award Travel Search Tools

Searching for the perfect way to use your miles and points can seem like a part-time job. But the right award travel search tool can do the hard work for you. Choose one that’s aligned with your particular redemption. One tool may be best for finding a specific flight on a particular date, while another tool will work better if your dates are flexible or you want recommendations on where your points can take you. Here are NerdWallet’s top picks.How award search tools workHow award search tools workDespite their individual differences, most award search tools function like Kayak or Google Flights, only for award travel. You select the airline, hotel or credit card points you want to redeem, input your travel details, and they show you the available options. Some tools use live search data, while others use cached data. Cached data can range from hours to days or weeks old. For that reason, always check for award availability directly with the airline or hotel before you transfer points.🤓Nerdy TipNo award search tool is perfect. Be sure to confirm award availability with the airline or hotel website before you transfer points from your credit card to a loyalty program.Points Path: Best overall airline search tool Points Path Pro - 1 yearLimited-Time Deal: Get 15% off your first year of Pro on Points Path's website Points Path is a browser extension and app that shows airline award prices next to cash fares on Google Flights. It’s fast, accurate and provides a simple search and results interface to understand if you’re better off using points or cash for each flight based on the Points Path valuation for each airline’s rewards. We picked Points Path as the best overall airline search tool because its features and search function allow people to find award flights using the same process they typically use when searching for cash flights. There are no extra steps or complicated features to navigate, and the interface is easy to understand.The free version provides access to five major domestic airlines, while the Pro version provides access to 12 additional international airlines. Features include everything that typically comes with Google Flights, including the ability to search across multiple origin and destination airports and a chart showing historical pricing trends, so you know if it’s a good time to book. All searches are live and there’s no cached discovery. That means you’ll know the results can be booked. One drawback: It’s limited to the search capabilities of Google Flights and users can’t scan results over a broad set of dates or queries. With the tool, you can:Filter for pricing that includes cardholder discounts for both United Airlines and Delta Air Lines (for example, the 15% off award flights for eligible Delta cardholders).Filter out basic economy results, mixed-cabin itineraries and award programs that may not be relevant to you. View active credit card transfer bonuses, and see where you can get the best value from your transferable rewards.Points Path is also the only award search tool to actively tell you if an airline program is not online and won’t show in the search results. Search tools sometimes lose temporary access to individual airlines, so this feature will let you know why a potential redemption you’d expect to see isn’t showing up. Seats.aero: Best airline search for expertsIf your travel dates are flexible, Seats.aero is probably the most powerful tool for you. You can search for premium cabin award space across a wide range of dates and airports for specific aspirational redemptions like Japan Airlines first class, Qatar Airways Qsuites and Etihad apartments. Pro users can search over an entire year for availability, and all users can filter by regions, such as North America and Europe. While Seats.aero is powerful, it’s not very beginner-friendly. That’s why Points Path is ranked as our better overall tool, even though Seats.aero covers more airline programs (25). In NerdWallet’s hands-on testing, we found that the user interface wasn’t always intuitive. To make sense of the results, you’ll need to have more details about each award program, especially around how partner award availability is handled. Additionally, text or email alerts are removed after they’re triggered, so if you don’t like the results from the first alert, you have to set it up again. But there’s also no limit on the number of alerts Pro users can set.Similar to Points Path, Seats.aero has a Chrome extension that shows award pricing inside Google Flights. Even better, the extension also works in Chase’s travel portal. That’s huge, as you can immediately see whether you’ll get a better value for Chase Ultimate Rewards® by booking through the portal or transferring points to a partner airline.Seats.aero generally displays cached search results and only uses live results for Pro users performing specific origin-and-destination searches. For that reason, you’ll want to confirm award availability with the specific airline website before transferring credit card points.PointsYeah: Best explorer toolPointsYeahPointsYeah is a great all-around tool, but the most notable aspect is its map-based “Daydream Explorer” feature. It’s great if you have a stack of travel rewards and want to see different places you can use them for both flights and hotels. For flights, the explorer tool can search over a 60-day window using useful filters, including:Cabin type (economy, business or first). The type of airline or credit card points you want to use. Several trip themes, such as beach, mountains, golf or scuba diving. You can search between up to three arrival and three departure airports, continents or regions. For hotels, you can search over a 13-month period. The filters allow you to find properties to use free night certificates and Fine Hotels and Resorts (FHR) credits from the American Express Platinum Card® (terms apply; see rates and fees). (There isn’t a filter for using The Edit credits from the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, though.)Note that Daydream Explorer uses cached discovery, meaning the results aren’t live. However, PointsYeah also supports fast, live searches through its standard award search engine.Point.me: Best airline search for beginnersPoint.mePoint.me recently refreshed its interface and increased the speed of searches. Results offer integrated booking instructions for transferring points from your credit card to the airline loyalty program, which may be helpful if you’re starting out in the world of miles and points.Point.me offers limited complimentary search access to American Express and Capital One Business card holders. However, you can only search for award availability from airlines that are transfer partners of those rewards programs.Gondola: Best hotel searchesGondolaGondola makes it easy to compare cash and award prices across brands and to stack rewards when booking with cash.Say you’re trying to decide between redeeming Hyatt points and Marriott points. Gondola can show you the cash and points costs for properties in both chains, plus color-coded redemption values. That makes it easy to scan the results for the best deals. Gondola includes many of the features you’d expect from a strong travel search platform, like alerts when cash or points prices fall, fast search results and useful historical pricing data for individual hotels. You can also sort results by redemption value, making them easier to scan than other tools such as PointsYeah and Rooms.aero.Beyond credit card and hotel loyalty rewards, Gondola has its own rewards program called Gondola Cash, which gives you 3% to 7% back on future cash bookings depending on your status with Gondola.To view rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, see this page.How to maximize your rewards