If expensive airline tickets are keeping you from booking your next trip, I’ve got great news. Here’s a secret way for you to find cheap airline tickets. Who doesn’t like cheap flights, right? Everyone wants a deal. Then your dream destinations and trips to see family and friends don’t seem so out of reach. Using a VPN when searching for airline tickets gets you the cheapest deals. Let’s dig in and see how this works and get you traveling more for less.
Do you plan your travels and vacations months or even years in advance? Or do you have an idea and then act on it quickly and off you go? Maybe you do a little of both. No matter which kind of traveler you are or what type of travel planning style you use, everyone still wants to figure out how to get cheaper flights with a VPN.
Here’s how to get cheap flights with a VPN
First, go to a site such as matrix.itasoftware.com or googleflights.com. These sites provide a database of fares. Looking at these fares helps you understand the cost of your flight. On these sites you can compare the costs and all of the available flights and flight connections.
It is a good idea to find all the low-cost airlines operating in your destination. One way to do this is through any specific airport’s website. Each airport lists all of the airlines that fly in and out.
While checking these airport websites, it is important to find localized versions of websites intended for different countries. Prices do differ depending on the country website you’re using.
Travel aggregators allow you to set your location from which you’ll buy your ticket. Here VPN services like ExpressVPN help you to change the IP address. The search service will provide data intended for another country.
By continuously alternating the IP and geolocation, you can search for attractive promo codes, coupons, and other flight discounts. This is how you get cheaper flights with your VPN.
If you are going to visit certain countries, an example would be in Latin America, keep in mind that prices for citizens and foreigners can be significantly different. One of the benefits of using a VPN is that it can save you a lot of money because you’ll be searching for airfares from a local site.
Learn WHY you should never leave home without your VPN!
Flights to your destination expensive? Try this!
Here’s another tip if you see that flights to your destination airports are expensive. Try searching ticket prices for the nearest airports in non-tourist cities. From there you can get to your intended destination using local transportation options. Traveling by ferry, bus, train or local airlines can add adventure to your trip and often save you money.
How to buy cheap flights while using a VPN for airline tickets
A general rule of thumb is that it is much cheaper to fly with airline connections than using direct, non-stop flights. Check for these connections manually through site search options like multi-destination flights. This way you can choose your own stops along your route.
Always remember that you can fly into one city and depart from another city. This may or may not affect the ticket price, but it’s still good to know what your options are. Maybe by using multiple connection points you’ll discover a new favorite destination! You never know.
Get cheap flights by tracking your browsing history
Here’s something you may not have realized before. The price of air tickets is influenced by numerous hidden factors about you that are collected by search engines like Google.
For example, let’s say you start monitoring the prices of flights for a one-way flight to your destination. You’re planning ahead so you spend days and weeks searching to see if prices have changed. Your web browser shares this information with the search service you use.
Search engines recognize you as a customer looking for an inexpensive option. Search engines also know you’ve been searching for a long time. They may start gradually increasing the price for the desired flight to scare you and make you believe the cost will only go up. Naturally they want you to go ahead and make your purchase and buy the ticket.
If you sense this happening, make sure you clear the browser cookies. Then notice how the ticket price returns to the original price!
Hide Your Location to Buy Cheap Tickets
Remember that your computer IP address shows your exact location (city and even neighborhood). It stands to reason then that for the biggest cities and wealthiest countries the cost of air tickets will be higher.
To be an anonymous user who visits the air ticket search site for the first time, you need to enable a hidden mode on the browser. Different browsers call this mode by different names, but they all have one.
In hidden mode you remain anonymous. Your browser will not transmit data to the search engine’s server. Cookies are NOT stored on your computer. Neither is the history of your search requests or the data about your computer model. These all affect the search results you’ll see.
It’s good to hide your IP address by using hidden mode. This lessens its potential impact on the price of the ticket. Just use one of the best VPN services for your country.
Learn more about the benefits of online shopping with a VPN!
Prices do change according to your IP address, browsing or purchase history, zip code, and even which Wi-Fi you’re connected to. This is known as dynamic pricing. A VPN can help you overcome this.
If you have the time to experiment a bit more, try out these methods and see if you can get cheaper flights by:
- Changing your IP address to a developing country’s;
- Changing your IP address to the destination country’s;
- Changing your IP address to the airline’s home country;
- Changing your IP address back to your country.
Here are some of the most common best practices when searching for cheap tickets:
1. Be flexible with your dates: If you want to fly when everyone’s flying (like during Christmas), your chances of finding a cheap ticket are low.
2. Be flexible with your destinations: If you care about visiting Mexico and not just visiting a specific Mexican resort, then you have a wider range of options when it comes to flights.
3. Don’t default to direct: Sometimes, direct flights can be more expensive than connecting ones, all because of the dynamic pricing.
4. Mix and match airlines: If you’re not flying direct, why not use one airline for one leg of your journey, and another one for the next.
5. Book in advance: many travel agents say 2-3 months before departure is a nice sweet spot. Want to travel during peak season? Book early!
6. Use flight comparison sites: If you nail down which airline offers the cheapest flight, you can go ahead and test if the price changes when using a VPN.
Many people wonder if it is legal to use a VPN to buy cheaper flights? Yes, it is legal to use a VPN to do any type of online shopping, including buying cheap flights.
Final Thoughts on Using a VPN for Airline Tickets
No one needs to pay more for airline tickets when they can search using a VPN for airline tickets. Now that you know how to get cheap flights with a VPN, where will you travel first?
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7 comments
Really? Bringing up the whole fake cookies thing, again? It’s been disproven time and again, it’s easy to check for yourself, and repeating an urban legend like that makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of this article.
To be honest this post was not helpful at all. The link to ExpressVPN didn’t include any helpful content on how to locate geography-restricted fares. At least give us some examples of countries where this strategy is most likely to be effective and not violate residency restrictions that may be written in the rules for these deep discount fare buckets.
Hi Kyle, Thanks for reading and commenting. All airlines list rules and restrictions. If you have any doubts, that would be the place to look to see if you are in violation regardless of which fare class you’re looking at. When searching through a virtual private network (VPN) you’ll be lead in the direction of fares, just as any general search would do. A VPN would not show differences in fare restrictions.
Sure. But the fundamental question all of us are asking is how common pricing differences based on IP address really are. Even one example would really help you sell ExpressVPN.
Can you screenshots of where you searched for a flight while not connected to a vpn and then do the same search while on the vpn and show the differences in prices. Can you state some examples, how much cheaper will the flights be, on average how much? Are you talking about 5 bucks, 50 bucks or 500 bucks? I think this is a myth and unless you can provide proof that it actually works.
Also agree – this article just seems like a shill for a VPN affilate link. I’d like to see some proof. Google Flights usually has the cheapest flights anyway. Some countries do have cheaper flights if you buy locally but Google Flights always shows them (while somewhere like the CapOne travel portal shows the non-local rate, which a VPN wouldn’t fix anyway). PS: I had my VPN on and this comment got rejected the first time as being from spam. Lol.
Thanks for reading Ryan. I do see you’re a fan of using a VPN, though obviously not the same one I prefer. As you know, there are many benefits to using a VPN. Whichever VPN people choose, it’s always best never to leave security and privacy to chance. Better to stay protected.