When we’ve been based in Europe for most of the year, we’ve taken advantage of numerous cheap flight deals. For example, we spent a weekend in Malta after finding €11 flights from Catania, Sicily, and our anniversary week in Budapest, Hungary for €18. Spain to Morocco? €10-20. Edinburgh to Sicily? €36.
Even in the United States (which is notoriously expensive), if you know where to look and what airlines to use, you can find some great deals under €100.
When it comes to regular travel, housing is likely to be your biggest expense. Second is transportation. However, once you’re out of the US transportation – flights specifically – can be extremely reasonable. Today I’m going to share how we save money flights and what our favorite travel booking platforms are.
Why We’re Obsessed With Cheap Flights
We are by no means luxury travelers. Our philosophy is to see more by spending less, and to prioritize unforgettable experiences over things. With this in mind, we’re always on the lookout for the best deals. Maximum fun, minimum cost.
The key with cheap flights is often found in 1) how flexible your travel dates are and 2) how much luggage you carry. Below you’ll find the best tools, tips, and luggage tricks for seamless, affordable flights.
Our Best Travel Hacks & Tools for Booking Cheap Flights
Skyscanner: How To Find Cheap Flights to Europe (Our #1 Tool)
Skyscanner and Google Flights are usually the top favorites for full-time travelers, but we prefer Skyscanner any day of the week. It allows flexible search, consistently low fares, and it’s great for both international and domestic flights.
Our favorite feature is the “Everywhere” search, where you choose your closest airport and see a list of locations to fly to, organized from least to most expensive. Many of our destinations have been spontaneously decided upon with this feature and simply going where the transportation and housing is the most affordable.
Additionally, you can browse flights with a full-month view and see the best prices for any given month. This is really helpful when your travel days can be flexible.
Lastly, you can see nearby airport options for most places and compare the cost. It might be easier and cheaper to fly into a main city rather than a nearby airport with added transportation to the city center, but then it might not. When we were in Sicily, Palermo was significantly less money to fly into. With this and a few hours by bus, we arrived at our destination in Syracuse with money in our pockets for other things.
You can give Skycanner a try here.
Going (Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights)
If you have a more consistent base and prefer occasional, spontaneous trips instead of full-time travel, Going is a must-have tool to have.
The Going (Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) team scours the internet for flight deals all over the world, and shares them in one easy-to-browse place. You simply set your home airport (and a few nearby airports) and get notifications whenever there are deals you simply can’t afford to miss out on.
You can easily use the free version of Going and find plenty of flight deals to be worth your while. However, the paid tiers offer some pretty great perks. For example, the Premium tier shares flight mistakes, Points & Miles deals, and other membership perks; the Elite membership offers everything from the Premium membership in addition to can’t-miss deals on business class, first class tickets, and so much more.
You can create a free Going account here and set up your flight alerts so you never miss the best deals from your home airport.
Our Booking Strategy
If you’re the type of traveler that wants a perfectly planned itinerary, even last-minute, then this approach might not be the best fit for you. Our lifestyle is very flexible (by design) and we shape our travel days around the most affordable options – not the other way around.
A few of our favorite tips are:
Travel in Low or Shoulder Seasons
This is typically the opposite time of the year that most tourists are going somewhere. This could mean winter in Scotland, fall in Spain, or spring in Ireland, for example. Not only will flights be cheaper, but so will accommodations, tours, and more (i.e. you’ll get local prices).
Leverage Nearby Airports
If you have a secondary airport nearby, always check flight options from there – especially if you have friends or family you could stay with nearby. For example, we often fly out of Seattle because most of our family is based there, however we regularly check flights from Spokane and Portland too. You could save several hundred dollars by simply going to a different, nearby airport.
Prioritize Travel Hubs in Different Countries
Usually the main travel hubs will have the best long-haul flights. This usually means cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Boston, and New York in the U.S. and hubs like London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Dublin, Madrid, Oslo, and Istanbul in Europe. See some of the best airline options for each place below.
Utilize Regional Budget Airlines
Once you’ve arrived at your travel hub city, you’ll find countless options for regional and local airlines that travel between smaller cities. This could be like Ryan Air, Vueling, Iberia, Tarom, and more.
Carry-on Only
I’ll elaborate on this more below, however most airlines make their biggest markups on luggage. The simple way to hack this is to master one-bag travel in a personal item or small carry-on (you can find our guide for this here: The Ultimate Guide to One-Bag Travel). Not only will this make your life and travel time much easier, but it will also save you money in the long run.
Note: You’ve probably heard numerous things online about there being best days to book a flight, however after dozens of flights in multiple countries, we have never found any particular day to be cheaper than another.
As a rule, shorter Friday and Monday flights are perhaps busier in Europe for those taking weekend trips, but the best approach we’ve found is to use something like SkyScanner’s full-month view and choose the cheapest day there.
Budget Airlines in Europe and the US: How to Fly for Cheap Without Getting Screwed
Flying with budget airlines is one of the most powerful travel hacks we use regularly — but only if you understand the rules of the game. Here’s how to take full advantage of ultra-low fares without getting hit with hidden costs or unpleasant surprises.
Let’s be clear: Budget airlines lure you in with dirt-cheap base fares. We’ve flown across Europe for as little as €10 per person each way – and you can hardly get a taxi across a city for that price. But that price only includes a seat on the plane and a personal item (often the size of a purse or regular day backpack).
Everything else, such as carry-ons, seat selection, checked bags, boarding passes, food, breathing air (okay, not quite) – comes with a fee.
If you’re not paying attention, you’ll end up spending more in fees than you would’ve with a full-service airline.
Our suggestion? Bring a personal item only. Bring a bag that fits under the seat and meets the exact measurements listed by the airline.
Many budget airlines have smaller personal item limits than U.S. carriers, and they will absolutely measure it and hit you with a ridiculous fee if it’s even barely over that.
Bonus: European Budget Airlines Luggage Dimensions
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Our Packing Strategy for Budget Flights
Packing light is the single most important trick to actually keeping a budget flight cheap. Airlines aren’t profiting from the €15 ticket, they’re banking on you panicking last-minute and paying $60+ for a carry-on. We’ve avoided hundreds of dollars in fees just by getting strategic about what and how we pack.
(For more on packing tips and how to avoid overpacking, check out our The Ultimate Packing List for Vacation.)
How We Avoid Luggage Fees
Depending on how long we’re traveling, we alternate between personal item only bags and carryon. If we’re based in one spot for a month or more, we almost always travel with personal-item-only bags when flying budget to other locations. That means one small backpack or tote that fits under the seat in front of you. No rolling suitcase. No overhead bin space. But we still manage to pack enough for 1–2 weeks.
This is actually super doable until you need to bring camera gear (guilty here) or any additional gear for activities, secondary work laptops, etc. It’s certainly a challenge to be minimalist, but it can be done.
Here’s how:
- Layer your travel outfit, and wear your heaviest shoes and jacket on the plane.
- Stick to neutral colors and interchangeable outfits. A capsule wardrobe is key.
- Compression cubes and rolling clothes: Small changes = big space savings.
- Ruthless minimalism: No “just in case” items. If you can buy it there (i.e. travel toiletries, extra shoes, etc)
We also double-check the exact dimensions allowed by the airline. If you’re even 1 cm over, some budget airlines (looking at you, Ryanair) will charge you €40+ at the gate.
Our default long-term packing is typically 2 bags: 1 40l backpack (or less) for clothes, shoes, etc. and one personal item. I wrote a blog on my personal website a while back about this, and you can find my 3+ Month Europe Packing List here.
What NOT to pack:
This is of course ultimately up to you and what you think you really need or not, however I’ll share a few things we try to keep in mind when packing light:
- Too many “maybe” outfits, including duplicate items, shoes, etc. Do you really need two jackets or could you carry just your most versatile one?
- Full-size toiletries – stick to travel size here or just pick these up from a pharmacy or supermarket when you arrive somewhere. You’d be surprised at how much space things like this take up.
- Lots of electronics – easier said than done, but these also add up in weight and space very quickly.
- Miscellaneous “what if” items – if you can buy it there, leave it behind.
Bonus Tools and Tips We Sometimes Use
While Skyscanner and Going are our go-to tools for booking cheap flights, there are a few other platforms we pull in to cross-check prices, scout routes, or get travel inspiration when we’re planning a new trip. Here’s how we use them — and when.
Google Flights: Best for Price Trends and Route Mapping
Google Flights isn’t always the cheapest booking option, but it’s excellent for tracking price changes and visualizing multiple flight paths. We often use this when we want to check which airlines fliy to a destination, monitoring prices over time (by setting up alerts), and/or we want a big picture view of flight options.
But even then, SkyScanner offers all of these same capabilities. Sometimes it’s nice to look and see if there’s any other options that different platforms have.
Tip: Once you find a good flight on Google, go book it directly with the airline. Don’t rely on random third-party sellers it links to.
Kayak Explore: Great for “Where Can We Go for $300?”
If you’re feeling spontaneous or planning around a tight budget, Kayak Explore has a neat option that lets you plug in your departure city and see how far your money can take you. You can use it to browse destinations by budget, discover off-the-radar options during shoulder season, and get inspired when your dates are flexible but your budget isn’t.
I don’t think we’ve ever used it to actually book, but it’s fantastic for trip ideation.
Rome2Rio: Your Route Map Across Flights, Trains, Ferries, and Buses
Rome2Rio is a lifesaver when you’re trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, especially in Europe when you don’t know all the transportation options. It shows all possible transport modes, not just flights.
We use it for finding cheaper alternative airports in nearby cities, comparing train vs. flight vs. bus travel options (including time and cost), and finding the best ways to book the last leg of a trip.
It’s a powerful way to build multi-leg trips or avoid overpriced regional flights by taking a scenic train or ferry instead.
Using a VPN to Check for Regional Price Differences
Believe it or not, airlines sometimes show different prices based on where you’re searching from, even for the exact same flight. We’ve seen fares vary by $50–150 just by switching our virtual location with a VPN. This is especially useful when booking with international carriers or budget airlines.
Our VPN of choice: ProtonVPN
We love everything about Proton for their dedication to security and privacy online. The offer:
- Free and paid options
- No-logs, encrypted, and easy to use
- You can quickly switch countries and compare pricing in incognito tabs
To use it, open ProtonVPN (or your preferred VPN) and select a country where the airline is based (or where the flight originates). Open a new incognito window and check the price on the airline’s website or Skyscanner. Then, switch to another country and repeat.
Book using the lowest fare, but make sure payment methods and currency conversion fees won’t cancel out the savings.
Pro tip: This works best with international airlines like Turkish, Qatar, LATAM, or low-cost European carriers like Wizz Air and Ryanair. U.S.-based airlines are hit or miss with geo-based pricing.
Final Thoughts
Cheap flights in Europe can be a predictable result of flexible timing, smart tools, and minimalist packing. If you’re willing to travel light, shift your travel dates by a day or two, or fly into a nearby city and take a train the rest of the way, you can cut your flight costs down to a fraction of what most travelers pay. You can have a seriously bare-bones budget for travel and still get to see plenty around Europe for both short trips and extended ones.
We’ve planned entire trips around €10–€30 flights because every euro saved on transit goes toward better food, richer experiences, and longer stays.
The best part is that this isn’t a lifestyle reserved for full-time travelers. Tools like Skyscanner and Going are free and accessible to anyone. Whether you’re booking your annual vacation or a spontaneous weekend away, you can take advantage of the same deal-finding techniques we use year-round.
With budget airlines and one-bag travel (or an efficient carryon + personal item duo), you can explore the continent affordably and efficiently.
So, if you’re based in Lisbon or Rome or Tbilisi, or bouncing between cities, let your flight deals shape your adventures. Trust the tools, pack light, and say yes to where the most affordable ticket leads.
Ready to Fly Light and Save Big?
If you’re serious about scoring cheap flights across Europe, there’s one rule you can’t ignore: pack light or pay up. Overhead baggage fees can easily double your fare if you’re not careful.
Want to skip the stress and breeze through the airport like a pro? Grab our free One-Bag Travel Packing List – it’s the exact checklist we use to pack for 1–3 months of travel using just a personal item or carry-on.
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