Best Award Search Tools: Flights, Hotels and Alerts Compared

Nearly every award search tool in points and miles runs an affiliate program, which is why so many “best award search tool” lists read the way they do. I don’t take commissions, so this is just what each tool does, what’s free, what the paid plan costs on the tool’s own website, which airlines it covers, and which ones I actually use. No affiliate or referral links, as always on Travel Summary.

Quick Take

• Start free: PointsYeah has the best free tier, and its Daydream Explorer is where most of my searches start. seats.aero searches the next two months for free without an account, and the free Points Path browser add-on puts award prices right into Google Flights.
• If you pay for one: AwardTool and seats.aero Pro are both $99.99 a year on the web, and PointsYeah Premium is $119.95. Buy on the website, not in the app, where the same plans cost more.
• Holding Southwest, British Airways or Iberia points? Check point.me; most of the others don’t search them (see which tools cover which airlines).
• For hotels: Gondola for planning (it sorts hotels by what you get per point, and it’s free) and rooms.aero for award calendars and alerts (also free).
• For deals you didn’t know you wanted: Straight to the Points, which I subscribe to.
• Never pay full price: seats.aero, PointsYeah, AwardTool, point.me and Roame were all 30% to 40% off around Black Friday 2025.

1. The Short Version: Most of These Tools Are Very Similar

Most of these tools are very similar. They search the same airline websites, they show roughly the same seats, and every one of them misses something now and then, so the honest answer to “which is best” is the one whose layout you like, whose free tier covers how you search, and which covers the miles you actually have.

Where they differ is in four places: how far ahead the free version lets you look, whether a search is live (checked with the airline as you search) or cached (what the tool saw earlier, which is faster but can be stale), which programs they cover, and alerts. A cached result that’s gone when you click through to the airline is the classic phantom; always confirm the seat on the airline’s site before you transfer any points, because transfers can’t be undone.

If you want to go deeper, Frequent Miler tested every major tool program by program in April 2026, searching the same routes in each one and recording which tools found which awards. It’s the most thorough comparison out there, and worth reading if most of your points sit in one or two programs.

2. Which Tool to Use for…

I’ve picked the free option wherever one does the job, and each line says whether it’s free, free with limits, or needs a paid plan.

• Just starting out: PointsYeah, then seats.aero for anything in the next two months. Free
• “Where can my points take me?”: PointsYeah’s Daydream Explorer, or seats.aero’s Explore tool for the next two months. Free
• Should I pay cash or use miles? Points Path on Google Flights, for the big US airlines. Free
• Flexible dates on one route, a year out: AwardTool Pro or seats.aero Pro; the free versions don’t look that far ahead. Paid
• Southwest, British Airways or Iberia awards: point.me, free up to 60 days out (further out needs its paid plan). Free, with limits
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles: AwardTool; Lufthansa Miles & More: seats.aero, AwardTool or PointsYeah (see the coverage chart). Free, with limits
• Planning a hotel stay on points: Gondola. Free
• Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott or IHG award dates: rooms.aero. Free
• Happy to go wherever the deal is: Straight to the Points; the free version sends one alert a week, a few days late. Free, with limits
• A better seat on a flight you’ve booked: ExpertFlyer, one seat alert at a time for free. Free, with limits
• British Airways reward seats or the BA companion voucher: Seatspy, a few free searches a week (alerts are paid). Free, with limits
• Amex FHR or The Hotel Collection dates: MaxFHR, 30 hotels a day with a free account. Free, with limits
• Chase’s The Edit and other card hotels: Credit Stays or Award Helper. Free

Whatever you use, before you transfer points: find the seat with the tool, confirm it on the airline’s own site, then transfer.

3. Award Flight Search Tools

These search airline award space across many programs at once. All of them send you to the airline (or tell you which bank points transfer there) to book; none of them books for you except the paid concierge services at point.me and Pointhound.

3.1 Flight search tools at a glance

3.2 Which tools cover which airlines

If most of your miles sit in one or a specific set of programs, this matters more than anything else on the page. The big US programs are covered everywhere; the differences are in Southwest and the foreign programs, and a couple of them are covered by only one or two tools.

What stands out, combining the tools’ own lists with what Frequent Miler actually found when it ran the same searches in every tool:

• Southwest: point.me is the only one that searches it.
• British Airways and Iberia Avios: only point.me and AwardTool list them, and point.me was the only tool that found them in Frequent Miler’s test.
• Aer Lingus Avios: point.me lists it, and Points Path (Pro) was the only tool that found it in the test.
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles: AwardTool was the only tool that found it in the test.
• Singapore KrisFlyer: listed by seats.aero, AwardTool and point.me, but only point.me found it in the test.
• Avianca LifeMiles: covered by most tools, but not seats.aero.
• Lufthansa Miles & More: seats.aero, PointsYeah and AwardTool; not point.me.
• ANA and EVA: no tool reliably found them.

Frequent Miler’s own picks from that test: AwardTool as the best overall, Points Path for the widest program coverage, PointsYeah for discovery, point.me for beginners and seats.aero for experts.

PointsYeah

PointsYeah is great because of its Daydream Explorer, and it’s free. Daydream is a map of ideas rather than a search: tell it your region, cabin, month or points balance and it shows where you could go. I use it regularly for ideas and quick searches, and when I’m actually looking for a flight I want, I sort by “latest update” so the freshest seats come first. It’s a great starting point for searches.

The free tier also allows unlimited live searches, which few others do.

• Best for: The best free tier, and Daydream Explorer for ‘where can my points take me’ ideas.
• Free: Unlimited live searches (up to 4 days, one origin and destination), Daydream Explorer, hotel search, 4 flight and 4 hotel alerts.
• Paid: Premium $19.99/month or $119.95/year: 8-day searches, more departure and arrival airports per search, 32 flight and 30 hotel alerts, United upgrade alerts, automatic points-wallet sync.
• Covers: 20+ airline programs incl. United, American, Delta (prices shown), Aeroplan, Virgin Atlantic, Alaska; hotels Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Choice, Wyndham.

seats.aero

seats.aero seems to be everyone’s favorite, and it’s good; there’s a reason so many people use it. It’s fast because it searches a database it keeps updating in the background, and the Explore tool lets you click an airport and see every award out of it. Visually, though, it’s lacking, so if you like your results to look nice, you’ll prefer one of the others.

• Best for: Fast searches of a huge cached database, and exploring whole regions at once.
• Free: Search, explore and set one-time alerts for flights departing in the next two months; no account needed.
• Paid: Pro $9.99/month or $99.99/year: a full year of availability, live search, continuous and SMS alerts, rooms.aero Pro.
• Covers: 26 programs incl. United, American, Delta, Alaska, JetBlue, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, Turkish, Singapore, Qantas, Lufthansa; not LATAM, and its published list has no BA/Iberia Avios or LifeMiles.
• Worth knowing: Added an AI assistant, a Google Flights/Chase Travel browser extension and United/JetBlue upgrade search.

AwardTool

AwardTool is very visual and search-friendly, and its big trick is searching dozens of dates and routes in one go. But you get much more from a paid account, because the free searches have date restrictions (a 15-day window for its wide searches, 90 days of route data).

• Best for: Wide live searches (many dates and routes at once) with a very visual layout.
• Free: 4-day live searches, 36-entry searches within a 15-day window, 90 days of route data, 3 alerts, yearly hotel calendars 3 times a day; shows ads.
• Paid: Pro $9.99/month or $99.99/year on the web ($12.99/$124.99 in the app): 36-entry searches across a full year, 365-day Panorama, 100 alerts with SMS, no ads.
• Covers: About 30 programs incl. United, American, Delta, Alaska, JetBlue, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, LifeMiles, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, Singapore, Turkish, Qantas, Cathay, JAL; hotels Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott.

point.me

point.me is the one to check for Southwest, which none of the other tools search, and for British Airways and Iberia Avios, which most of them miss. It also gives step-by-step booking instructions, which helps if you’ve never transferred points before.

If you have an Amex card that earns Membership Rewards, you can use a free version at amex.point.me, limited to Amex’s transfer partners. I used it a few times, but the searches were so limited, with restricted dates, that I never went back.

• Best for: Southwest (which none of the other search tools here cover), a wide program list and step-by-step booking instructions.
• Free: Searches up to 60 days out, 15 results per search, a limited deals map; no alerts. Separately, amex.point.me is free for US Amex Membership Rewards cardholders (Amex transfer partners only; you transfer and book yourself).
• Paid: Standard $19.99/month or $129/year: a year out, unlimited live search, price alerts, booking instructions. Premium $260/year adds a strategy call and concierge credit. Concierge booking from $200 per passenger.
• Covers: 30+ programs listed incl. United, American, Delta, Atmos, JetBlue, Southwest, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic, LifeMiles, Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Turkish, Qantas, Cathay (some marked limited).
• Worth knowing: No free trial.

Points Path

Points Path is a browser add-on rather than a website: search Google Flights as usual and it adds the award price next to each cash fare, which is the fastest way to answer “should I pay cash or use miles?” I use the free version whenever I search Google Flights. It’s useful for domestic flights, but limited with a free account, which only covers the five big US airlines.

• Best for: Seeing award prices right inside Google Flights, next to the cash fare.
• Free: Browser extension showing Alaska, American, Delta, JetBlue and United award prices on Google Flights.
• Paid: Pro $9.99/month or $99.99/year (prices rose Oct 1, 2026) adds international programs and alerts; an alerts-only plan is $34.99/year.
• Covers: 18 programs with Pro, incl. Air Canada, Flying Blue, Avianca, Emirates, Etihad, Qantas, Qatar, Turkish, Virgin Atlantic.

Pointhound

Pointhound works from the bank points you hold (Amex, Chase, Capital One, Bilt, Citi, Wells Fargo) rather than airline programs, and searching is free without an account, which makes it an easy first stop for beginners.

• Best for: Beginners: search by the bank points you hold, no account needed.
• Free: Search any cabin up to a year out, no sign-up.
• Paid: Premium $79/year (shown as a sale from $99): deal emails and flight alerts; concierge booking from $150.
• Covers: Works from Amex, Chase, Capital One, Bilt, Citi and Wells Fargo points; no published program list (it says JetBlue and Southwest aren’t in yet).

Roame

Roame does live searches across many programs at once and adds SkyView, a calendar of cached availability across whole regions that’s handy when your dates are flexible.

• Best for: Live multi-program searches plus SkyView, a calendar of cached availability across whole regions.
• Free: Limited live search with 4-day flexibility; SkyView Lite (7-day window, flights within 60 days).
• Paid: Friends of Roame $109.99/year (shown as 30% off its list price): up to 25 programs live a year out, 8-day flex, full SkyView, SMS alerts, hotel rebate credits. Inner Circle $299.99/year.
• Covers: Up to 25 programs incl. Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Asia Miles, Alaska, American, LifeMiles, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Iberia, JetBlue, Qantas, Qatar, Singapore, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic.

AwardFares

AwardFares is a Swedish tool with a strong alert system and results it says match what the airline shows; the free version is a preview, so it’s really a paid tool with a 24-hour trial.

• Best for: Live and flexible-date alerts, with results that match what the airline shows.
• Free: Basic: preview existing results only, one program at a time; no live searches or alerts.
• Paid: Gold $9.99/month or $99/year; Diamond $19.99/month or $199/year (unlimited live searches, more programs per search, real-time refresh). 24-hour free trial.
• Covers: 17 programs incl. Aeroplan, American, Atmos, Delta, Flying Blue, Etihad, Finnair, JetBlue, Qantas, SAS, Turkish, United, Virgin Atlantic.

Daily Drop Pro

Daily Drop Pro combines flight and hotel points search with deal alerts from your home airports; the free tier is a taste (five searches).

• Best for: Deal alerts from your home airports, with flight and hotel points search in one place.
• Free: Up to 5 live points searches, 1 home airport, 3 economy deal alerts.
• Paid: Pro $149/year: unlimited searches, up to 10 home airports, all-cabin alerts, points wallet.
• Covers: Dozens of airline programs; Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Accor, Choice, Wyndham.

4. Hotel Award Search Tools

Hotel award search is newer than flight search, and the two tools I’d start with are both free: Gondola for deciding where to stay, and rooms.aero for finding the dates the award is actually available.

4.1 Hotel search tools at a glance

Gondola

Gondola is completely free, and it’s the one Frequent Miler called its go-to tool for hotel trip planning in July 2026. Frequent Miler’s opinion carries a lot of weight with me. What sets it apart is sorting hotels by the value you get per point rather than by the raw points price, with reviews, fees and the benefits your elite status gets you on each hotel’s page.

It also watches your bookings (including ones made elsewhere) and rebooks automatically when the price drops. What it doesn’t do is award availability alerts or calendars, which is where rooms.aero comes in.

• Best for: Planning a hotel stay on points: sorting hotels by the value you get per point, with reviews, fees and your elite benefits on each hotel.
• Free: Everything (it’s completely free).
• Paid: None.
• Covers: Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Wyndham and independent hotels.
• Worth knowing: Frequent Miler called it its go-to tool for hotel trip planning (July 2026); also works inside ChatGPT and other AI assistants.

rooms.aero

rooms.aero is from the seats.aero team, and it’s free to search, explore and set alerts a full year out without even creating an account. It’s a quick way to find the open dates at a hotel that always seems “sold out” on points, and it’s what Frequent Miler uses for the availability alerts Gondola doesn’t do.

• Best for: Free award calendars and alerts across seven hotel programs.
• Free: Search, explore and set hotel award alerts for the whole year, no account needed.
• Paid: Included in seats.aero Pro ($9.99/month or $99.99/year): unlimited alerts and cash-rate searches.
• Covers: Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Choice, Wyndham, I Prefer.

MaxMyPoint and MaxFHR

MaxMyPoint does per-hotel points and cash calendars and alerts for the big four chains, and its sister site MaxFHR searches Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection for the cheapest dates, which is the hard part of using the Platinum card’s hotel credit. MaxFHR recently started limiting how many hotels you can look at in a day (3 without an account, 30 with a free one), which is annoying when you’re comparing a whole city.

• Best for: Points calendars and alerts for specific Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott and IHG hotels; MaxFHR finds the cheapest dates at Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection.
• Free: MaxFHR: 3 hotel views a day without an account, 30 a day with a free account (60 with Pro); MaxMyPoint calendars with daily view limits and 1 alert.
• Paid: Gold $3.99/month or $39.99/year; Platinum $7.99/month or $67.99/year (faster and more alerts, year refreshes, MaxFHR date filters).
• Covers: Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG; MaxFHR: Amex FHR and The Hotel Collection, plus Bilt Home Away From Home rates.

AwardTool and PointsYeah both search hotels too (see above): AwardTool covers the big four with year-long calendars, and PointsYeah adds Choice and Wyndham and compares award prices with cash prices.

Awayz

Awayz compares points and cash prices across seven chains in one search, which is useful in a city where you hold points with several of them.

• Best for: Points-vs-cash hotel searches across seven chains at once.
• Free: Free plan with monthly search limits.
• Paid: Premium plan and a 72-hour Trip Pass (prices shown at checkout).
• Covers: Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Choice, Wyndham.

5. Award Alert Services

Search tools find space when you look. These tell you when it shows up.

Straight to the Points

Straight to the Points is a newsletter, not a search engine: people find premium-cabin award space and send you every date, the number of seats and exactly how to book. I subscribe, and it’s great for anyone not set on a particular destination, who’ll see a deal and think “that’s a cheap flight and a good use of my hard-earned points and miles, so I’m happy to go there.”

Since it’s just an email, one person can sign up and forward it to family and friends. Support the creator by paying if you can, but I know plenty of people who sign up for things like this as a group to lower the cost.

• Best for: Hand-picked business and first class award alerts with every date, the seat count and how to book.
• Free: 1 premium award alert a week, delivered 3+ days late.
• Paid: Premium $14.99/month or $99/year (shown as a discounted rate): alerts first, by email and text, plus the alert archive.
• Covers: Business and first class on many airlines, found by people rather than software.

ExpertFlyer

ExpertFlyer is the old-school power tool for seat alerts (tell me when a better seat opens on my flight), award and upgrade inventory and fare classes.

• Best for: Seat alerts, award and upgrade inventory, and fare-class data the airlines don’t show.
• Free: Basic seat maps and 1 seat alert at a time.
• Paid: Basic $6.99/month ($71.88/year); Premium $12.99/month ($131.88/year); Elite $239.88/year (American systemwide-upgrade search). 5-day trial on Basic and Premium.
• Covers: Award and upgrade classes on 28 airlines; seat maps on 400+.

Seatspy

Seatspy is a UK tool built around British Airways reward seats, including availability for the BA Amex companion voucher, and it’s the cheapest paid option here.

• Best for: British Airways reward seats (and the BA Amex companion voucher) a year ahead.
• Free: A limited number of weekly searches.
• Paid: Premium $3.99/month or $39.90/year; First Class $9.99/month or $99.90/year (unlimited alerts, SMS, companion voucher search). 14-day free trial.
• Covers: 10 airlines: Aer Lingus, Air France, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Iberia, JetBlue, KLM, Qantas, Virgin Atlantic.

6. Searching Amex FHR, Chase’s The Edit and Other Card Hotels

Premium cards come with hotel programs (Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection, Chase’s The Edit, Capital One’s Premier Collection, Citi’s The Reserve, Bilt’s Home Away From Home), and the banks’ own search pages aren’t built for the one thing you want to know: which hotel is cheapest, and on which nights.

• Credit Stays: one map of all seven collections, sorted by each hotel’s cheapest night over the next year. Free. Its prices are open-market estimates, not the program rate, so confirm on the bank’s site.
• Award Helper: free maps of The Edit, FHR/THC and Bilt hotels, plus a map of where Amex and Chase hotels overlap.
• MaxFHR: built for FHR and THC dates specifically, now with a daily limit on hotel views (see MaxMyPoint above).
• NextCard: HotelMaxxer and FHRMaxxer map FHR, THC, Bilt and United Renowned hotels against Google prices. EditMaxxer, its tool for Chase’s The Edit, has been paused since May 20, 2026, and HotelMaxxer has hidden The Edit too, so use Credit Stays or Award Helper for The Edit for now.

7. Tracking Your Points

AwardWallet

AwardWallet tracks every balance, expiration date and elite status in one place. It used to be the go-to, but free accounts have been degraded so much that they’re barely useful these days (a couple of updates a day and only a few expiration dates). PointsYeah and seats.aero also have points wallets if you already use them.

• Best for: Tracking every balance, expiration and elite status in one place.
• Free: 2 updates per account a day; only up to 3 expiration dates shown; ads.
• Paid: Plus $49.99/year: unlimited updates, auto-refresh, expiration dates, history, export.
• Covers: Hundreds of airline, hotel, bank and rental-car programs.
• Worth knowing: Plus went from $30 to $49.99 in Dec 2024.

8. The Airlines’ and Hotels’ Own Free Tools

Before paying for anything, the programs’ own sites do more than people think, and they’re always live:

• United: Book with miles, then Flexible dates: a month of saver and everyday prices.
• Alaska / Atmos Rewards: A calendar view on award searches, including partners.
• Air Canada Aeroplan: Flexible-date award search, good for Star Alliance partners.
• Flying Blue: Promo Rewards: a monthly list of discounted awards.
• British Airways: Reward flight availability for its own flights.
• Virgin Atlantic: Reward Seat Checker: a year of reward seats by route.
• Qantas: Flight Reward finder: browse international Classic reward seats on Qantas, Jetstar and partners by region and date.

Hotels:

• World of Hyatt: Points Calendar after ticking Use Points (web and app).
• Hilton: Flexible dates with a monthly points calendar.
• Marriott: “I’m flexible” dates for a monthly view (not always reliable).
• IHG: View Price Calendar in the date picker.

9. Don’t Pay Full Price

Most of these tools run promotional rates, first-year discounts and holiday sales (Black Friday especially), so don’t pay full price. What they did last time, as reported at the time:

Two more ways to pay less: pay yearly (usually two months free or more), and subscribe on the website rather than in the iPhone app, where the same plan often costs more. And there’s no shame in subscribing for one month while you plan a big trip, then cancelling.

10. Quick Answers

Sources: each tool’s own website, pricing page and help center (linked above); airline coverage from each tool’s own program list, plus Frequent Miler’s tool-by-tool test (April 2026); discounts from the operators’ own pages where shown, otherwise as reported at the time by The Points Guy, Frequent Miler, Upgraded Points and AwardWallet. Prices change often; the tool’s site has the final word. Last checked: October 16, 2026.