This post has been updated since its original publication with updated details, including Roame.travel adding the ability to search for Alaska Mileage Plan awards.
Airline miles offer us flying experiences we would never dream of paying cash for. Pictured above is Etihad’s First Class Apartment which I flew in 2019. While other passengers probably paid around $7,000 for the same flight from Abu Dhabi to London, I paid only 80,000 American Airlines miles (and that also included a business class flight from the Seychelles to Abu Dhabi).
At Frequent Miler, we often write about sweet spot awards like the one above. It’s easy to dream about enjoying flights like these, but it’s often very difficult to find saver award availability. Most airlines have multiple award pricing tiers and only the cheapest awards (often referred to as “saver awards”) are available to book with partner miles. And that’s key. The best deals with airline miles usually involve using one airline’s miles to book awards on a partner airline. To take advantage of those opportunities, you have to find saver award availability on the partner airline’s flight. Often, that’s very hard to do. Enter award search tools…
Award Search Tools: Quick Compare
Several online tools have been developed over the years to try to make award searches easier. Among these, there are at least two distinct types of tools: general purpose, and specialty award search tools. With the general purpose award search tools, just like paid flight searches via Kayak or Google Flights, you enter your desired origin airport, destination airport, dates of travel, number of travelers, and class of service; press “search,” and the tool will find available awards across multiple loyalty programs and airlines. The specialty award search tools, meanwhile, are designed to help find awards for specific carriers or routes. For example, if your heart is set on flying a specific United Airlines route, one of the specialty award search tools may be the best option for you.
Comparison of general purpose award search tools
The following tools are designed to help you find award flights across multiple loyalty programs and airlines after you select your desired origin, destination, date of travel, number of travelers, and class of service…
| AwardLogic | point.me | point.me via Bilt | roame | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $4.99 per day; $19.99 per month; $199.99 per year | $5 per day; $12 per month; $129 per year | Free | Free |
| Search Date Range | 3 Days | Specific Date Only | Specific Date Only | Specific Date Only |
| Number of Loyalty Programs Supported | 35+ | 30+ | 12 | 10 |
| Award Alerts | Yes (Beta) | No | No | No |
| Multi-Leg Awards? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Display Award Prices? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Search Across Carriers at Once? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Step by step instructions for beginners? | Some | Detailed | Detailed | No |
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a small commission if you sign up for AwardLogic or point.me through our links.
Comparison of specialty award search tools
| Expert Flyer | SeatSpy | Seats.aero | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year | Premium: $3.99 per month; $39.90 per year | First Class: $9.99 per month; $99.90 per year | Standard: Free | Pro: $7.99 per month |
| Search Date Range | 7 Days | 365 Days | 14 Days |
| Number of Loyalty Programs Supported | 64 (Details Here) |
13 | 9 |
| Award Alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-Leg Awards? | Yes | No | Yes |
| Display Award Prices? | No | Yes | Yes |
| Search Across Carriers at Once? | No | No | Yes |
| Step by step instructions for beginners? | No | No | No |
Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a small commission if you sign up for ExpertFlyer, Seatspy, or Seats.Aero through our links
Each of the tools in this round-up have pros and cons…
General purpose award search tools
All of the tools in this section search for awards across multiple loyalty programs based on simple search criteria such as origin, destination, number of passengers, class of service, and date of travel.
AwardLogic
AwardLogic is one of the most well-rounded tools in this lineup, but it’s also the most expensive. See: Point.me vs AwardLogic. Which award search tool is best?
Pros
- Supports most relevant points & miles currencies
- Searches up to 3 days at once
- Includes up to 25 Flight Alerts (currently in Beta) so that you’ll get emailed when award space opens up.
- Displays number of miles required for each award
- Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
- Supports transferable points programs
Cons
- Can only search a single class of service at a time
- Most expensive tool in this round up
point.me 
point.me is probably the single most thorough award search tool available. It searches across a huge selection of loyalty programs and it provides step-by-step instructions for how to book the awards once found.
See:
- Point.me, a Kayak-like tool for flight awards, has launched.
- Point.me vs AwardLogic. Which award search tool is best?
Pros
- Supports most relevant points & miles currencies
- Searches for business and first class award space at once
- Displays number of miles required for each award
- Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
- Supports transferable points programs
- Offers step-by-step instructions for transferring points and booking awards.
Cons
- Can only search a single date at a time
- Results populate very slowly
point.me via Bilt
Bilt Rewards is a rewards program intended for people who pay rent, but anyone can join for free. Once you’ve joined and installed the Bilt app on your phone, you can use the free embedded version of point.me to search for flight awards. This version of point.me is limited to Bilt’s transfer partners (found here). See also: Bilt adds free Point.me integration for award searches with partners!
Pros
- It’s free!
- Supports most of the most relevant points & miles currencies
- Searches for business and first class award space at once
- Displays number of miles required for each award
- Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
- Supports transferable points programs
- Offers step-by-step instructions for transferring points and booking awards.
Cons
- Search only via Bilt’s mobile app (no way to search via a desktop browser)
- This free version does not search all popular programs (only those that are transfer partners with Bilt). Noticeably absent: Delta and Avianca LifeMiles
- Can only search a single date at a time
- Results populate very slowly
Roame
roame is a free tool that searches across a relatively small number of programs but it does cover most of the ones that you’re likely to care about. At the time of this writing, roam supports: AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air France / KLM, Alaska, American, Avianca, Delta, Iberia, JetBlue, United, Virgin Atlantic
Pros
- It’s free!
- Supports most of the most relevant points & miles currencies
- Searches for business and first class award space at once
- Results populate quickly
- Displays number of miles required for each award
- Displays estimated taxes and fees for each award
- Supports transferable points programs
Cons
- It does not yet search all popular programs. Specifically, I’d like to see support for British Airways Avios, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, and Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
- Can only search a single date at a time
- Does not include award booking instructions
Specialty award search tools
Expert Flyer
Expert Flyer is a nerdy tool for finding award space, upgrade space, open seats and more. Expert Flyer doesn’t do general award searches across airlines. Instead, you tell it which specific airline you want to fly, which route and dates, and it will tell you if it can find saver level award availability. It won’t tell you the award price or which program to use to book the awards.
Pros
- Supports a huge list of airlines (64 at the time of this writing)
- Identifies multi-leg awards, not just non-stop
- Provides many other flight features besides award searches
Cons
- Requires you to know which airline you want to fly
- Doesn’t display award prices
- Doesn’t help identify best points or miles to use to book a given award
- Setting alerts can be a painstaking process: You need to set up a separate alert for each and every flight + date of interest. For example, if there are three flights per day that would work for you and you’re open to flying on any of 4 different days, then you would need to setup 12 different alerts.
SeatSpy
SeatSpy is unique in that it displays a full year of award availability all at once… and relatively quickly. If you know which airline you want to fly on a nonstop route, and if that airline is supported by SeatSpy, there’s no other tool that compares. See: SeatSpy — A tool for finding non-stop awards. Why is that useful?
Pros
- Displays an entire year of results at a time
- Very fast results (especially considering that it shows an entire year at once!)
- Displays award prices when you click on a date
- Alerts are easy to set up and can be set for an almost unlimited date range
- Inexpensive compared to the other tools
Cons
- Relatively few airlines supported so far
- Searches only for non-stop flights
- Alerts aren’t useful with programs that dynamically price awards (such as AA and Air France)
Seats.Aero
Seats.Aero is a awesome nerdy tool that is mostly designed for finding last-minute hard-to-get awards. See my full review here: Seats.aero — a wonderfully nerdy tool for finding Unicorn flight awards.
Pros
- Lightning fast
- Free standard version
- The only tool that supports broad searches such as “North America” to “Asia”
Cons
- Not all airline routes are included
- Free version only searches 2 months into the future
- Cached results mean that some results are out of date
- Not designed for novices
Which is Best?
All of the tools in this roundup are great for certain purposes and so the best one depends upon what you need. If your dates are well constrained, any of the general purpose tools may meet your needs. If you want to save money, try both roame and the version of point.me that comes with Bilt. Both are free and, when taken together, they cover pretty much every airline loyalty program you’re likely to care about. If you want a single comprehensive tool, look to either AwardLogic or the full version of point.me. The former is quicker and supports both multi-day searches and alerts, but it’s more expensive. The latter is less expensive and does a better job of walking you step by step through the point transfer and booking process.
If you want to fly a specific non-stop route on a specific airline, SeatSpy is the best option if it happens to support that airline. Otherwise, turn to ExpertFlyer since it covers many more airlines.
If you’re an advanced award seeker, Seats.Aero is a nerdy gem that should be added into the mix. It’s not complete enough to be the only tool you use, but for the specific things it does, it’s great.
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“Best” is subjective on point currency, destination, departing airport & willingness to locate to hubs.
Thanks for cutting through the hype around a certain award booking tool that gets a lot of coverage but seemingly promotional.
You may want to update point.me via Bilt. You are able to search award flights on a regular browser. Initially, it was only available on the Bilt mobile app, but for some time now, they’ve added the feature to their site.
I love Award Logic. The $20 a month is relatively high, but is peanuts if you’re spending hundreds of thousands of points or miles on a blow-out junket. Just plug in a city pair and a 3-day range and it finds what’s available and what the best deal is, with whatever points or miles you’re holding. It even factors in transfer bonuses!
Only drawback is it makes you wait a minute or more between searches, which is a bummer if you’re scanning multiple cities/dates.
Thank you for reviewing all these award flight search tools. Just tried Roame.Travel because it was free and it’s surprisingly easy to use with some great redemptions! Love it so far
All of them are deficient in one aspect- calculating real cost to the user
I have stashes of points I value differently, e.g., Capital One at 1.3c and Ultimate rewards @ 1.5c in my mind and Amex at 1,7c, AA/UA/US at say 1.8c and DL @ 1.5c, Avios, AF/KLM at 1.3,
The search should tell me cost in My calculations ie the miles multiplied by my cost + taxes for each option and sort it accordingly
No point in telling me it is 50000 virgin but 900 in taxes vs 61k Cathay and 2000 taxes
I would choose Cathay, but if this calculation was done upfront (with the ability of the user to set different values for each of their points, THAT would be a killer App
[…] Award Search Tool is Best: This post on Frequent Miler is a great overview of the tools available to search for award flights. I’ve paid to use […]
Thanks for updating this article, Greg. I’ve been a studious reader (or so I thought) for years but somehow missed this one!
Let’s say I only redeem for 1-2 big trips each year and just want to pay someone to find the optimal flights for me, paying $200ish for each successful booking – is there a concierge service out there you’d recommend?
I imagine many readers here would take up the hustle?
We keep a list of award booking services here: https://frequentmiler.com/award-booking-services/
We can’t really recommend any because we haven’t used any. Actually, I did use one (Award Booking Service) ten years ago, and that worked out well, but I haven’t since.
Rather than spending hours searching multiple different routes on multiple different dates, if I wanted to use a tool to setup email alerts for all saver business or first class awards leaving from my home airport to ANY destination on ANY date (there’s about 15 different destinations), what would be the best tool to use?
I think that seats.aero is the only one that comes close to doing that but only for flights within the next 2 months, and you wouldn’t set up alerts but rather just look regularly for flights from your home airport to anywhere
You can do it in awardnexus but you will need to setup an alert for each of the 15 destinations. But the alert can cover multiple days and multiple airlines.
Seats.aero cabin alerts can do this; you can create an alert for any flight departing from the airport you choose within a date range. https://seats.aero/lifemiles/alerts/cabin
(I created Seats.aero)
Hi Ian,
I don’t think we can thank you enough for creating seat.aero…. it’s such a nifty tool, super helpful.
Thanks again!
Quick question on best tool to use. I’m specifically looking to book DFW to GRU this summer and DFW to YYZ for 4 tickets. All operated by AA but I want to use BA miles. Dates are more flexible. Any suggestions for best place to set an alert or a simple daily search that can look across monthly calendar?
Expert Flyer and search for (U) space for biz. Good luck they rarely open space.
What would I search for for first?
I think that Expert Flyer is your only option for that but unfortunately it would require setting up alerts for every day
At $19.99 per month, Award Logic comes out to 67¢ per day. I’m sorry, but I know people (not me) who spend 10X that amount on Starbucks coffee each day. Seems to me that if you’re looking for premium award airline seats which may have a cash value of $5K-$10K, you shouldn’t be concerned about $20 to give you the time and resources to maximize your redemption value. Which leads me to the conclusion that “most expensive” is a relative term here. You’ve worked hard for your huge stash of points. Now spend a little to make sure you get your dream vacation with them!
Just tried AwardLogic. What a disappointment!
Looking for 2 x Business Class awards to various places in Europe in October.
It shows many lovely cheap flights EXCEPT: either they are 12% in Business or $700+ in fees. Yes, you can slide the bar to say 80% or 100% business but it keeps going back to a lower setting.
How hard can it be to show what everyone wants to see? Why not allow me to set the % in business (I would be happy with 80% and why not allow me to say I am willing to pay $200 in fees?
Instead I see 30 or 40 options, none of which is any use to me.
So near yet yet Sooooo FAR from what most people would want.
.
Even 70% in business would be OK. Maybe even $300 would be too …
The only good thing is it’s fast. Haven’t checked accuracy yet.
And Southwest shows up in Business Class?
Good time to update this blog since point.me replaced juicy miles. It is $100 per year, good value, but painfully slow.
You’re right — this post is out of date!
Point.me is currently only out in very limited release. We’re waiting for the full production release to redo this analysis. I hope/expect that the production version will be faster and have more features. We’ll see! (hopefully soon)
I’ve used awardlogic its free for first 30 days and super fast.. reminds me of juicy miles kind of.. oh and it also has bonvoy hotel redemption in their hotel section. pretty cool stuff
I’m not seeing the JM booking tool, just their site for their booking service. Following all the links from this site. Am I missing something?
Unfortunately, the Juicy Miles tool is currently offline. It is being updated and rebranded and will hopefully relaunch soon: https://frequentmiler.com/juicy-miles-relaunching-as-point-me/
Juicy Miles is $360 per year if you pay $30 per month.
However, if you pay in advance you can get the service for one year for $300. This is found in the FAQ at their website.
You should add AwardNexus and KVSTool to your comparison. Both these tools are very good for people who know what they’re doing. KVSTool has the added plus of being a Windows app and not a web app, so it is quick.
I’ll probably add AwardNexus, but not KVSTool. I’m not a fan of any tools that require installing on the desktop.
Hi Greg… I personally think that having a tool on my desktop is a huge benefit in terms of speed, flexibility and especially privacy over web based tools.
So consider that other people will have different criteria than your criteria. The best thing you can do is just is to include it, and give people the facts to allow them to use their criteria and make the best choice for themselves.
I have no connection with the publisher of KVSTool, and in fact I pay for Experflyer, AwardNexus and KVSTools because each has strengths and weaknesses and no tool is perfect… (and KVSTool definitely has its weaknesses, such as a cryptic search results and needing constant updates.)
If you want your blog to really help people and rise above the others, then just give people the full picture, ideally with the strengths and weaknesses and your personal opinion (as it is your blog), and people will then decide for themselves.
[…] I have never paid for this! Because the whole point is to travel for free Which award search tool is best? […]
Used them all. JM By far the best tool for award planning.
Great article, thanks for posting this. Would you ever include Award Nexus in the comparison chart? I have used them for a couple of years, and have had more luck with them than with expert flyer, just easier to use. Very tempted to subscribe to Juicy Miles, their functionality seems pretty great even if they cannot do an annual search
I’d consider it. Has Award Nexus ever updated their site? I had the impression that it was out of date, but I could certainly be wrong.
Hi Greg.
I am not sure how to assess whether the site is up to date. Do you mean are there searches accurate? (for me they have been). Or do you mean they search all airlines (I am not sure to what degree they do, they definitely include most airlines)
What I like about them is that their searches are reasonably priced, and you only pay when you do a search (you buy “credits” in advance, and you use those credits whenever you actually search).
While the sight has a bit of a learning curve, I find it easy to use once you get how the searches work.
Something else I have had happen a number of times is that it found availability a number of times through routing/ a different airline partner that I hadn’t thought to try myself in a manual search. My favorite example is a non-stop business class flight I had found in a manual search on KLM from Amsterdam to Tokyo through Flying Blue for 110K miles + $250 in cash, I was frustrated with the high amount of miles, and went to award nexus to see whether there might be a one stop that looked acceptable, to my happy surprise, it found the same non stop KLM flight with Delta Miles for way fewer miles (80K!), and hardly any “fuel fees” (seems like somewhere in the $50 or $75 range)
It is also kinda great at doing complicated long searches, I have planned travel from my home airport, DFW, to several destinations in Australia and (South East) Asia, the sight produced routing options that I would not have known to try out in a manual search
The sight also has plenty of drawbacks, the searches take a while, depending on how many airlines you tell it to try, not a huge issue for me, but it might turn off people who want to click search and get an immediate hit
It can also be kinda “glitchy”, for example, in the past months, I have done searches in the Star Alliance (lol, I know you have your expiring ANA miles, I have a bunch of KrisFlyer miles that are slowly and cruelly evaporating), almost every time I have done a search, it has an error message saying it is “unable to connect to the ANA search engine”. I have no idea whether this is an Award Nexus or an ANA issue, but it does make the sight feel a bit glitchy
I think that’s about it for my two cents 🙂
Thanks!
Are there similar tools for hotel award booking?
I wouldn’t say similar, but there are some that are helpful. You can find some here: https://frequentmiler.com/the-tools-we-use/#Hotel_awards
For me, the biggest drawback with ExpertFlyer is that award space isn’t shown for Cathay or JAL, which are the two airlines you want to access to Asia. Does Juicy Miles show award space for them?
Yep. Here’s an example result:
I used Juicy Miles about 18 months ago for a trip to Singapore thru Istanbul from Ohio on Turkish Air. The site was easy to use considering the complex nature of looking for options using the points/miles I had in my accounts. And it walked me thru the process to move points to the airline to get the flights booked. PS. The Turkish Air Busn lounge in IST was the best in the world, in my opinion. And a great airport as well.
Seatspy’s concept of seeing a year’s worth of availability quickly is fantastic but it’s a bummer to see that the tool is inaccurate on United. Been testing it for fun against the UA website on a bunch of routes and dates, and Seatspy misses days with nonstop saver availability and shows some days having availability when there is none.
By any chance do you have the United credit card? This would cause you to receive different results (when logged in to United.com)
Maybe you could share the results of your research with Greg — this is important feedback for him to include in his post if he is able to replicate the same issues you are seeing.
I purposefully don’t log in for this reason, but good suggestion and thank you
I forgot to say: one example is EWR-DEL in Sept and first half of Oct. Compare to UA’s calendar search.
Yesterday they updated their system to fix their United bugs. Please give it another try and let us know if it seems to be fixed.
Thank you so much for following up… I posted about UA issues on SeatSpy in a few places and no one ever responded that they were seeing what I was. I felt like i was going crazy! But I just ran a few routes out/in of EWR and it looks like everything is matching up now.
Juicy Miles is great but since the pandemic they haven’t displayed all available airlines all the time. Many times they don’t even show Delta/BA awards. They have informed me that they are working on a new platform so I’m sure it will be vastly improved.
That’s interesting to hear. Did they provide any explanation for why they were having issues with the Delta/BA awards?
No, but they did give me 3 months free service while they are working on the new platform.
Gotcha. Yeah I’m excited to see what they come up with for their new platform. I’ve always been pretty impressed that they are successfully able to do what they do.
Would award maximizer at Travel Codex fall in this category too?
No, tools like Travel Codex & AwardHacker show how many points an award would cost if you can find that award, but they don’t help you find those awards.
Thank you Frequent Miler! I’ll have to try JM some day. Going to apply for a Citi Prem card in the next couple of months. Going through ur link! It’s BMed!
I found Juicy Miles or formerly AwardEx taught me a lot about each of the programs. I hadn’t realized some carriers I could use my miles. For complex trips to uncommon locales, JuicyMiles is a lifesaver. I wish JuicyMiles offered the same fabulous promo AwardEx did to FTU attendees. 🙂
I needed this right now! Thank you, Greg!