How to Find Cheap International Flights 2025 (10 Borderline Genius Hacks You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner)

There is a common perception around flying as being an expensive venture and it is true, but only to an extent. The real truth is that it is not that difficult to find a plane to your destination with fees that are pocket friendly if you know how to go about things.

The industry appreciates that not everyone is going to be willing to part ways with significant sums of money when traveling.

In this article, we will explore several simple tricks known to very few people that are going to change your experience if implemented. These secret hacks will help you find cheap international flights from anywhere in the world.

These tips include; searching better, ways to be flexible, suggestions for low-cost planes, hidden city traveling etc.

How to Find Cheap International Flights

1. Right Timing

If you are going to travel cheaply, then it is important to adjust your schedule according to the time or a season during which fares are low.

This works best when the activity to which you are looking at attending has no definite dates or when these are to be set by you rather than another party. Where that is not the case, you can try to tell the person on the other end about your preferences just in case they are willing to here you out.

In terms of days, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are often the best days to travel. This because they are in the middle of the week so majority of people will be attending to their job demands.

Previously it had also been the case that the days on which one bought a ticket mattered but that no longer stands as algorithms now favor several more factors.

Then there is the seasons. Just like weekends are the worst for costs, so are festive seasons. People will be moving back and forth to be with their loved ones so airlines will always maximize the window. It is better therefore, to schedule your flights in the so-called off-peak times.

Examples of these are; January, February, March, September, October, and November. That is still quite a number of months to choose from.

If you cannot avoid traveling around Christmas and the rest of the big days though, you can take to buying tickets much earlier. I recommend at least four months prior.

It could even be seven i.e. the earlier the better. Note that still, the prices are going to be higher than the less crowded days but you will be in a more preferred place than the folks that you will be traveling with.

This trick works even for the months in which people do not fly a lot. It makes an already good deal even better. You do not have to book six plus months before in this case however. Anywhere between one and three is good.

 

2. Flexibility

As a passenger that is looking at spending less money, you should not be definite with your schedule. This is because prices are always changing and you want to jump on the best possible offer that there is.

It could be for instance, that while you had settled on setting off on a given date, you find that waiting another twenty four hours would win you a far better deal or that whereas you had planned to stay on your trip for a number of days, reducing them by one means that you will spend less on your return journey.

 

3. Don’t be lazy

Very little effort is required to make a difference to the money one gets to pay for their flight yet most people do not realize this because they are lazy. And airlines know this by the way, which is why they will capitalize on it.

A clear example is last minute bookings. In theory, the policy adopted here is that individuals who are coming through late have something urgent to attend to so they are willing to pay high sums of money to be flown to their destination.

To an extent, this is the case as a percentage of passengers coming at the very tail end actually have these sorts of situations but most of them don’t. The latter category is composed of guys that could have avoided this predicament because they knew that they were meant to go somewhere all along but just could not get their things together.

Diligence is thus key. Once you have understood this lesson, you can go on to extend it to many of the other specifics that we will discuss and find that it comes in handy. Back to last minute drama, in order to avoid it, you should try to secure a ticket at least twenty days before.

 

4. Making proper research

You cannot escape research if you want to “fly low”. Before you runaway however, it is not as complicated as people make it out to be, and I am going to show you. By the way, the fact that you looked up this article is already a good sign.

To start, there are several sites out there so it is key that you know where to look. You should also be patient enough to compare data across sites as well as between airline offers.

Probably the one place that you cannot afford to miss out on in this regard is Google Flights. With this site, a single search will bring you at least seven arrival and seven more departure flights of the destination you entered at once. In one go thus, you will already have an idea of how things are.

Great Google Flights competitor sites are Skyscanner, CheapOAir, momondo, and Hopper. With Skyscanner for example, you can request to be notified when a cheap flight becomes available.

Recall that travel comes with several more expenditures, here are the websites to look at for that; TripAdvisor (for finding hotels that suit your desires at a fair price), withLocals (for tour guides), SafetyWing and Squaremouth (for insurance), as well as Viator (for booking airport to hotel transport).

Underlying all these, is the mode of searching. Most people will type a name of a destination in the search bar and then ask about the cheapest flights that go there.

This means that the results you will get optimize the place entered. A better way would be to inquire about the cheapest travels available at a given airport.

This puts the “cheap” factor into focus hence you will have options to choose from that you would not have had otherwise. If you meant to travel for a vacation thus, you will end up going to an equally amazing price at half the price of the stop you earlier envisaged.

 

5. Incognito mode and VPNs

We are all getting attuned to the sad reality of learning that big tech spies on us and then sells the information gathered to advertisers. In the planes business, once an airline establishes that you frequent a certain route, they are going to likely inflate their transport fees the next time you attempt to purchase a ticket because they know that you cannot do without it.

It is good then that as you browse, you switch to incognito mode which means that you would be combing through the web privately.

If you can however, I would suggest that you install Virtual Private Network (VPN) software on your device as Google recently admitted to scavenging user data even when they switch to incognito mode.

A paid for VPN is better but if you cannot afford it, then you can always download one that is free of charge. I personally always use NordVPN cause it’s very effective and yet cheap so I don’t have to worry about breaking the bank.

VPNs also have another added advantage to them in a sense that you can manually set a preferred location.

With tickets, this fact can make the whole difference since airlines often charge varying money depending on the purpose of flying. If you are perceived as a native of the country you are going to thus, you will likely pay less than if you had been taken for a tourist.

 

6. Low-cost Planes

The mere fact that you are here, you recognize that more than the pomp of marketers, what lies at the heart of flying is that one arrives where they are going.

Thankfully, there are planes that seek no more than doing this for passengers without burdening them with fancy foods, sitting… which in real sense only serve to exaggerate the traveling coasts.

If you do your homework right, you can fly for as low as $25 between Croatia and Switzerland. Examples of companies that will happily give you equivalent offers are Jetstar and EasyJet.

The caveat of course, is that the facilities of planes of this kind do not match those of high-end transporters. I would thus recommend them only if you are not flying across a long distance. Please opt for expensive planes too if you have medical issues that require you to be comfortable or if you are of advanced age.

That said, if you would have flown in business class with a big carrier, then the inconveniences to expect in the ones that are not are significantly less so you should hung in there.

 

7. Book on the go

Generally, US airlines policy allows you to cancel a flight that you had booked within 24 hours provided that its take-off is still at least seven days away. No penalty charges will accrue.

Capitalizing on this window allows you to book a flight which by your expectations is low-cost as you wait to compare it with the options you will find about later.

Otherwise, simply taking note of the fees might not be enough as you might return to book later only to find that the plane in question is already fully booked or that the fare has significantly increased.

Before proceeding with this advice however, be sure to check the specific terms of the plane in question since there are a couple that do not go by the general standard.

 

8. Just settle for Carry-on luggage

It is custom that the things one carries with them to the cabin do not attract extra charges and that the reverse is true.

Being minimalist when parking thus will help you save a couple of bucks off your fare. I can see how this one is mostly specific to where one is going. If its home for instance, very likely everything you need will be there already.

Again, we are going to have to dispense with certain things as individuals that are paying small money and leaving stuff behind is a difficult for most people– understandably so. But if you can pull it off, nothing should stop you.

 

9. Hidden city ticketing

Hidden ticketing might be viewed as somewhat icky by some readers but it is usually not illegal and yes, sometimes a man has to do what they have to in order to survive. Anyways, I will leave you to judge for yourself.

Like the name suggests, you will in the hidden ticket venture book a flight to one destination but then board off at the layover point instead.

The rationale for this is that the passenger playing this game will have realized that the plane connecting to their locality asks less money for its full journey elsewhere than those stopping at the place that the passenger is headed.

 

10. Errors in your favor

Okay, here is one more fishy idea before you all call the Police. Sometimes a fare is going to be cheap not because it was intended but because it was an error. Someone missed a zero, they wrote one instead of seven… And because it is a mistake, the fares can be cheap to extents that are near ridiculous.

You have to be on the lookout if you are going to benefit from incidents like these though because they are not many and they will often be corrected in no time.

If you bought your ticket prior to the new changes being effected though, it will remain valid. As they say, luck favors the vigilant!

Seriously though, before you take advantage of this loophole, ask yourself whether you would go on with it if it put someone’s job on the line– which it does.