Hack your way to cheaper travel

The term "travel hack" applies to anything that positively disrupts the way flight and travel search engines work, and makes the customer’s travel experience easier, cheaper and more accessible as a result.

A good travel hack saves you money or time, or sometimes even both. Here are some of our hacks that can help you cut costs or speed up your search:

• Take advantage of throwaway ticketing, hidden cities, or self-transfer. When you search for a trip on our website, all the results that feature these hacks will be marked with a little green star and the words ‘Travel hack’.
• Use Nomad, our unique multi-city tool for planning and booking itineraries with more then three destinations. It’ll save you a lot of time (and money too, in most cases).
• If you’re flexible with your plans, you can search for flights for whenever to wherever using our Anytime and Anywhere search filters. This will find you the best deals available from your departure point.
• When planning your trip, you can also look for prices from nearby airports. Do this when you search by extending the radius from your preferred airport to allow options departing within that area to appear in your search results.

Yes. You can’t get into any kind of legal trouble for taking advantage of our throwaway ticketing, hidden cities, or self-transfer travel hacks.

“Skiplagging” is another term that some use to refer to our hidden cities travel hack, which involves saving money on your ticket by using an airline layover as a final destination. To read more about how this works, click here.

Finding cheap flights doesn’t have to be mind-boggling or time-consuming. Here are some tips that can help you simplify or speed up your search for great deals:

• Make use of travel hacks such as throwaway ticketing, hidden cities, and self-transfer.
• If you’re flexible with your plans, you can search for flights for whenever to wherever using our Anytime and Anywhere search filters. This will find you the best deals available from your departure point.
• Don’t forget to consider ground transport. Buses and trains can often be cheaper and sometimes even quicker than getting a flight.
• Include nearby airports, bus stations and train stations in your search to uncover even more travel options.
• Set price alerts for the dates and routes you’re looking for, so you can keep track of price changes and grab the best deal.

When you search for cheap flights with Kiwi.com, this is exactly what you’ll get: some of the cheapest airfares on the market.

You don’t strictly “search” for travel hacks; a hack will appear in a search result if our Kiwi-Code determines that that hack will make the itinerary cheaper. In other words, when you search for a trip on Kiwi.com, we’ll show you every available deal, including itineraries that feature travel hacks. The most common travel hacks which make itineraries cheaper are self-transfer, throwaway ticketing, and hidden cities:

• Self-transfer combines flights from carriers that don’t usually cooperate, making it possible to travel with the big carriers and the low-budget airlines on the same journey. This is the travel hack that’s at the very core of our product.
• Throwaway ticketing catches round-trip tickets that are cheaper than their one-way counterparts.
• Hidden cities is about finding you a ticket with a layover at your intended destination that is cheaper than the direct fare.

All you have to do is look out for the green-star “Travel hack” icon in your search results, click on the itinerary, and you’ll get all the information you need to travel for less.

We can help! Try our Nomad search tool and you’ll be saving time, energy, and most importantly, money. Gone are the days of checking multiple websites to piece together a complex itinerary on your own — with Nomad, you can book your entire trip in just a single search.

1. From the Kiwi.com homepage, select Nomad from the dropdown menu in the search form.
2. Set your departure city, departure date, and the number of nights you want to be away.
3. Add the places that you want to visit and the lengths of time that you want to spend in each one.
4. Based on your search criteria, we’ll build the cheapest itineraries for you.
5. Choose your adventure and book your trip!

Some airlines offer flexible tickets, which tend to be more expensive, but that give you the option to travel on any date or change the date of your trip as many times as you like. With Kiwi.com, you can choose between three simple ticket types regardless of the carrier(s), so you can find the right balance between traveling for cheap and the having the flexibility you want.

If your plans might change but you still want to save a seat, we recommend that you choose our Flexi ticket. If you end up changing your trip, you’ll only pay the fare difference for the new booking. If you cancel, you’ll get back 90% of the amount you paid, either as a monetary refund or in Kiwi.com Credit.

The Standard ticket provides a reasonable degree of flexibility. If you change your trip, you’ll only pay the fare difference for the new booking and we’ll cover the rest. If you cancel your trip, you’ll get €10 in Kiwi.com Credit to put towards a new booking. This applies only to bookings originally priced at €20 or more.

If your plans are set in stone, we recommend the Saver ticket at the very cheapest price. If you need to change your trip, you’ll have to pay for the new booking in full. If you cancel your trip, you’ll get €10 in Kiwi.com Credit to put towards a new booking. This applies only to bookings originally priced at €20 or more.

Price FX (FX = “foreign exchange”) is a foreign exchange rate tool that bypasses the all too common pitfall of high airline exchange rate fees that customers are charged when they pay in their preferred currency.

If you pay on an airline’s website in a currency that the airline doesn’t use, your money will go through a foreign bank — a bank that operates in the airline’s primary currency. When this happens, there is usually a cost to cover the conversion of your money through the bank. Price FX, however, means that when you book with Kiwi.com in your local currency, regardless of what an airline is charging, we will only ever charge you exchange fees based on the middle of the market rate.

Avoid higher exchange fees by booking with Kiwi.com. When you search for flights on our website or in our app, the prices of the results will be in your specified preferred currency, and any exchange to calculate those prices will have been made according to the middle of the market rate.

If you must book directly with an airline, you can cheapen any exchange rate fees by setting the currency on the website to that at the point of the flight’s departure (e.g. to US dollars if you’re departing from New York). You should then only be charged by your own bank according to their fees.

How to change currency on the Kiwi.com website and in the Kiwi.com app

Flight disruptions occur more frequently now than ever before, so it’s good to have a plan B in case any of your flights are canceled, delayed, or rescheduled. This is why we offer the Kiwi.com Guarantee to cover your entire trip, so that you’re protected in case of any changes or cancellations instigated by the carrier(s).

Here’s when the Kiwi.com Guarantee comes in handy:

• your trip gets canceled, entirely or in part
• your trip gets rescheduled by more than 24 hours, entirely or in part
• part of your trip is delayed to the extent that you miss your connection(s)
• your baggage is delayed at reclaim or there are long queues at immigration to the extent that you miss your connection(s)

In any of these cases, we’ll offer you either a refund or an alternative journey to your destination. The exact rules depend on how long it is before your departure day at the time of the disruption occurring.

The Kiwi.com Guarantee covers your entire trip, whether you use self-transfer or not, and no matter whether you’re traveling by plane, train, or bus. We strongly recommend that you add the Guarantee to your booking if you have a complex itinerary with several flights and layovers.

Price alerts help you keep track of flight prices and ensure that you find out that the price of your trip has gone down exactly as it happens. Setting up price alerts is easy:

1. Sign into your Kiwi.com account.
2. Search for a trip; set dates, departure and arrival points, as well as the number of passengers and baggage options.
3. Toggle the ‘Set up price alerts’ slider on your desktop or tap the bell icon in the app (both of which are in the top left-hand corner of the results page).
4. Enable push notifications in the app to get instant alerts, and make sure you whitelist Kiwi.com in your email settings. And that’s it — we’ll send you emails and push notifications when the price of your trip drops.

Flying often seems like the best mode of transport, but it doesn’t work in all cases of A to B. For example, if you’re traveling to a smaller city that doesn’t have an airport, you might need to book both a flight an onward bus or a train. With Kiwi.com, you can book the entire journey in one smooth transaction without needing to compare lots of prices and schedules on different websites. This ultimately means that you’re able to pick the most convenient travel option to suit you.

1. Search for a trip; set dates, departure and arrival points, as well as the number of passengers and baggage options.
2. On the results page, you can then filter itineraries by mode of transport — choose to see or hide itineraries featuring flights, trains, and/or buses. You’ll find these filters at the top of the screen on your mobile device, or on the left-hand side of your desktop screen. Here’s what they look like:

If you decide to combine a flight with ground transport, it’s important to be mindful of the layover duration versus the time it takes to get between the station and the airport, so that you don’t miss your connection. Remember that if you have the Kiwi.com Guarantee and any part of your trip is rescheduled or canceled, we can help you out with an alternative journey or a refund.