You’re not the only person who wonders if they’re missing out on a deal when booking travel through Google Flights. Are there discounts you’re not hearing about? What if there’s a better price out there? Travel Arrow is a Chrome extension that can mitigate some of those fears without requiring a lot of extra work on your part.
Once installed, Travel Arrow will cross-reference your exact flight search with other flight search engines and airlines across the internet to make sure you’re getting the best deal. Here’s how it works.
What is Travel Arrow?
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Travel Arrow is a free Google Chrome extension that will search your flight itinerary on Skyscanner, Kayak, Trip, and Expedia (all the major competitors to Google Flights) by opening new tabs, so you can scan through them to find the best price for your flight. And if you’re looking for a domestic flight, Travel Arrow will also search Southwest Airlines—the only airline that typically doesn’t display fares on third-party websites.
Travel Arrow can find cheaper flights than Google Flights
The tool specifically promises to beat Google Flight prices, so I tested it out to see if it really would, searching a few hypothetical itineraries. In some cases, Travel Arrow did what it promised: The cheapest flight from San Francisco to Austin on Google Flights was $281 (via Frontier Airlines, with layovers and an 11-hour total travel time), while the “best” flight was a three-and-a-half hour, $323 direct flight. Travel Arrow offered up a cheaper flight via Kayak, which found an 11-hour Delta flight (including layovers) for $243.
The tutorial video above highlights a flight from Dallas to Madrid, where the cheapest flight on Google Flights was $1,916 with a 17-hour travel time. Travel Arrow found a flight on Kayak with the same route for $1,083 with a flight time of around 20 hours.
You might not find huge savings on every search, and in some cases, Travel Arrow’s options might be more expensive, but price isn’t everything: Another sample search on Google Flights for flights from Atlanta to Rome found an itinerary with 19 hours of travel time for $1,211. Travel Arrow’s cheapest option was $1,128 via Expedia, though the travel time for that option was significantly shorter—around 12 hours.
In all of these cases, the real strength of Travel Arrow is that it casts a wider net by quickly allowing you to search all your options at once, rather than bouncing between different airline and travel booking sites.
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You can also find airline deals with Travel Arrow
If you have more flexibility in your travel plans,. Travel Arrow also highlights limited time travel deals. There are two ways to view them via the extension:
- Go to an airline’s website, and if there is an active, relevant deal, Travel Arrow will generate a pop-up alerting you to the promotion.
- Another option is to search within the extension itself—just type in the search bar that says “filter by hotel/airline.” Any current travel deals will be displayed. You can also scroll and find active deals without having to do any keyword searches.
A cheaper flight isn’t always better
There is an important caveat to consider with Travel Arrow, or any site that offers up cheap flight options: The cost of your time. Sure, you might save some money, but you need to pay close attention to the overall flight time for the options shown to you. Some flights could be $20 cheaper, but include a layover or two that will extend your travel time, so you’ll have to decide if the tradeoff is worth it to you.
Also, since Travel Arrow works by comparing options on third-party sites, some prices may seem cheaper at first, but once you are ready to pay, you might find fees and other charges increase the price. It’s also worth double-checking your chosen itinerary directly on the airline’s site; there’s a chance you might be able to score a similar price, and it can be easier to change or cancel a flight you’ve booked directly.