Skyscanner
Reddit take
AI summary of the Reddit excerpts below — not a quote
Skyscanner is widely regarded as a powerful discovery tool for travelers, particularly valued for its flexible search features like the 'Explore Everywhere' option and country-wide searches. While it excels at identifying cheap routes and budget carriers, the community consensus strongly favors using it strictly for research while booking directly with airlines to avoid potential price markups or third-party complications.
Pros
- Flexible 'Explore Everywhere' search for budget-conscious travelers.
- Allows searching by entire countries to find the cheapest airport options.
- Effective at surfacing low-cost carrier deals, such as €20 flights in Europe.
- Useful for identifying which airlines service specific routes and potential layover connections.
Cons
- Reports of price discrepancies where airline sites show higher prices when accessed via a Skyscanner redirect.
- Potential for hidden fees when not booking directly with the carrier.
- Occasional failure to scrape direct data from all airline websites accurately.
Caveats
- Users frequently recommend using the platform for search but switching to the airline's official website for the actual purchase.
- Some budget airlines may have affiliate partnerships that influence the displayed price compared to direct searches.
Best for
- Speculative travel planning and finding the cheapest possible destinations.
- Travelers with flexible dates and locations.
- Identifying niche budget airlines and complex route combinations.
Avoid if
- You want to book immediately without cross-referencing direct airline prices.
- You prefer to avoid third-party redirects and affiliate links.
This summary uses balanced time weighting with about a 6-month half-life. The evidence is based on 30 selected mentions from r/travel with a median age of 205 days, reflecting established user habits rather than very recent software updates.
Sentiment
24 positive (60%) · 4 mixed (10%) · 12 negative (30%)
Trust + time weighted score: +25% · raw score 30%
What redditors said (10 of 40)
Is Skyscanner still useful? That was my go-to tool when I was doing speculative travel planning.
Skyscanner needs to fully commit to brand awareness, because that's their core business.
I use it because I can choose a whole country as a destination or departure which shows me all the available airports and prices for that specific country. Not possible with Google Flights.
Normally when I'm booking flights, I check Google Flights and Skyscanner to get the best deals but, like any sensible person, I book directly with the airline.
The point is that it's not a third party. It's the same ryanair website just one is being redirected after comparing on skyscanner.
Well I use it. I think it's really useful but I just now found out that they may be charging hidden fees.
I noticed when you search for ryanair flights through skyscanner the price on ryanairs website through skyscanner is higher than if you do not use skyscanner.
Google flights etc are not "incomplete", other than their failures to sometimes not scrape websites when they're public facing direct from the airline or get the data from the airline. But they can't scrape every instance of any party who buys and on-sells flights - tour packages, travel agents etc.
ryanair and skyscanner will be your best friends..... On the right day you can catch a flight in Europe for like €20!
I didn't think budget airlines were even on those comparison sites. Those airlines you basically have to pay for everything so no idea why people would use a third party for those anyway.
Compare
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