AwardFares: The Google Flights for Searching Award Tickets (2023)
Everyone loves miles and points, but isn’t it a struggle to make good use of them? AwardFares is here to change that. With a fast and modern UI, and speedy lookups, you can find award seats in a matter of seconds and with just a few clicks. Ah, and you can get reminded when certain flights become available, no matter which frequent flyer program you are using. Cool, right?
At Feisworld, we have been using AwardFares since we shot our documentary. Since the production was quite costly, I was using my Chase Ultimate Rewards (thanks to Nonstop Dan!) card to stack up plenty of points, and at that time there were pretty good bonus offers for United MileagePlus.
I was new in the whole miles and points game, so was following The Points Guy and reading his guides for MileagePlus I was having a hard time searching and understanding where I could use those points (with extra transfer bonus) wisely. Ideally, I wanted to move all my crew, or minimize some of the logistic costs by getting free flights rather than paying for them.
That’s when found AwardFares, with a great black friday deal also, so after trying it for a few days I decided to jump on and sing-up for their Gold plan (more than enough for a casual traveller like me). Their search engine is fast, responsive, and lets you perform broad searches from regions or areas to specific cities. As I had to sync my crew from Boston to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and some members even from Europe, it was incredibly handy to have this tool around.
AwardFares Review: Like Google Flights but for Award Tickets
What is AwardFares?
AwardFares is an online travel tool specifically designed to help users find and track award seat availability on multiple airlines and across frequent flyer programs. AwardFares is a fantastic option for travelers who are primarily focused on finding and tracking award seat availability quickly. Instead of spending hours on United or some other airline website, you can search for awards from a user-friendly interface that helps you maximize the value of airline miles and points.
In my case, it was also helpful to understand wether I should transfer my Chase Ultimate Rewards points to United’s program, or find some other alternative.
Main Features
Pricing – How much does it cost for US members?
AwardFares offers flexible pricing options in three tiers: Basic, Gold and Diamond. For users getting started, a free account should be good enough to get started. For casual flyers and credit card users, the Gold package is an excellent option with reasonable search and alert limits.
- Basic (free): award calendar, award map, journey planner, hourly availability on award seats, and award release dates tool.
- Gold (USD 9.99): award search, award calendar, award map, journey planner, hourly availability on award seats, 5 seat alerts, 100 custom searches per day, max 7 searches at once, award availability count, search with stops, per-program availability, cabin annotations, seat maps, award release dates, and flight schedules tool.
- Diamond (USD 19.99): award search, award calendar, award map, journey planner, real-time availability on award seats, unlimited seat alerts, unlimited custom searches per day, max 30 searches at once, award availability count, search with stops, per-program availability, cabin annotations, seat maps, award release dates, and flight schedules tool.
Example Searches
I quickly performed two wide searches ex-Boston for the first week of May.
Example 1: Boston to Anywhere on May 1st (Map view)
Example 2: Boston to Paris CDG in Business Class on May 1st
Conclusion: AwardFares
AwardFares is a great insight tool that helps you make more informed decisions about your miles and points. It is a great complement to personal and business credit card users (like us at Feisworld), that easily stack up points and find them hard to redeem.
From my perspective, the broad searches are a key feature to explore the different options available and how to make a good redemption. Another great addition are alerts, where you can get notified via email on a certain route or flight that opens for a given date.
Have a look at AwardFares by creating an account here (for free). PRO TIP: they also run heavy discounted sales for events such as Black Friday, so stay tuned!