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My 4 Favorite Airfare Deal Websites: The Flight Deal, Fare Deal Alert, Exit Fares & GTFO Flights

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Good afternoon everyone.  When I first meet people who love to travel but are not into travel hacking, they usually ask me what website I use to find the best airfare deals.  I usually recommend subscribing to a few airfare deal websites.  These sites find the best airfare deals and send out daily emails to their subscribers.  The 4 airfare deal websites I use are:

Each airfare deal website tracks different departure cities and no website tracks every city.  To begin, find your nearest city in the table to see which website you should use.  If you live near a large international airport, you will have several options.  Unfortunately, if you live near a regional airport or a smaller international airport, your options are limited or nonexistent.

a table with a number of cities


Up first is The Flight Deal, my personal favorite.  Here is an email that they sent out yesterday with all their recent airfare deals.  I like the way they list the deals in the email (airline name, roundtrip price, departure city, and arrival city).  I usually skim the list and look for any deals that have San Francisco or Los Angeles in the name.  If I see a deal that I like, I click the link in the email to go directly to the deal.

a screenshot of a websitePros: The Flight Deal tracks 12 of the largest international airports, offer details to 15 different destinations / regions, and let you look at deals from 3 major airlines.

a table with names and cities

Cons: Cannot customize their daily email or subscribe to specific deals (departure city or destination).


Up next is Fare Deal Alert, which is the baby brother of The Flight Deal.  The site is run by the same guys that run The Flight Deal, but they focus on 10 smaller airports.

Pros: Fare Deal Alert tracks 10 departure cities and is the only service that offers deals for Detroit, Kansas City, and San Diego.

a white sign with black textCons: Cannot customize their daily email or subscribe to specific deals (departure city or destination).

Here is an email that they sent out yesterday with all their recent airfare deals:

a screenshot of a computer


Up next is Exit Fares.  I like the way their daily email is laid out by breaking up destination / region into different sections.

Pros: They track several departure cities. You can subscribe to deals for specific departure cities (I live in the Bay Area, so I only receive deals for San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose).

a table with black textCons: The daily email only shows deals that people found on SkyScanner and when you click through to view more details, it takes you to a SkyScanner search results page.

Here is an email that they sent out yesterday with all their recent airfare deals:

a screenshot of a website


Last but not least is GTFO Flights (GTFO stands for “get the f* out”).  I believe they used to aggregate the deals from the other airfare deal websites, but maybe they stopped doing that.

Pros: When you click on a deal, you see a deal score, ranging from 0.0 to 10.0, based on price, routing, and availability of dates.

Cons: GTFO Flights only tracks 6 departure cities.  Their email is a bit sparse and does not mention which airline the deals are on or what time of year the deals are good for.

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Here is an email that they sent out yesterday with all their recent airfare deals:

a screenshot of a website

Did I miss any of your favorite airfare deal websites, let me know below.  If you have any questions about these airfare deal websites, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!


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9 thoughts on “My 4 Favorite Airfare Deal Websites: The Flight Deal, Fare Deal Alert, Exit Fares & GTFO Flights

  1. Christian

    Mighty Travels does a free customized alert that works for smaller cities. As a resident of a tertiary city, this helps.

    Reply
    1. Grant Post author

      Oh awesome, I’m glad there is some love from the smaller airports. Do you get many good deals from your home airport?

      Reply
        1. Christian

          Duh, took your question kind of out of context. Sorry. I get a few decent deals, but mostly to BKK/KUL/MNL on ANA for some reason. Beats nothing, I guess.

          Reply
  2. bluecat

    Grant, you can set up filters with a 2nd GMail account to only look for certain keywords in their Twitter feed and then only forward those to your main email account and/or text. I use this to filter for TheFlightDeal cities I am interested in.

    Reply
    1. Grant Post author

      That’s a good tip. If I had more PTO / vacation time, I’d love to go on more cheap flights. Sometimes I think earning miles and redeeming them for flights is pointless when I can just buy a super cheap flight to the same place.

      Reply
  3. Bob

    I’ve always liked airfarewatchdog – a lot of noise but I find it helpful to see the full list of options.

    Reply
    1. Grant Post author

      I’ve never subscribed to airfarewatchdog but I know that is a popular service. I just need more PTO so I can travel more.

      Reply

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