The Thrifty Traveler Podcast · Tuesday, September 15, 2026
For booking award travel, Google Flights is recommended for gauging cash prices to assess award flight value, while ExpertFlyer is a paid tool for searching award availability across various programs and setting up alerts. SeatGuru is a free resource for viewing aircraft seat maps to choose optimal seats.
“The first one is Google Flights. It's free. It's the best way to find cheap flights. Um, and it's also the best way to get a sense of what award space is going to cost you.”
“And if you're looking for award space, there are going to be a few different places that I'll go. The first one is going to be ExpertFlyer. It's a paid tool. Uh, it's relatively cheap. I think it's about $100 a year.”
“Then the other one that I'm going to mention is going to be SeatGuru. It's free. It's going to show you all of the different seat maps that are out there, uh, for different airlines and different aircraft.”