How to save dollars on flights by booking through Kiwi.com

As someone who lives near a non-hub airport, I’m used to piecing multiple flights together in order to get the perfect trip.

Though this is incredibly common when it comes to award flights, it can also be a money-saving strategy on paid trips. After all, airline pricing is a complicated and mysterious thing. It’s not unheard of to save hundreds of dollars by booking two separate tickets to get to your final destination instead of one ticket all the way through.

Enter Kiwi.com. Unlike most online travel agencies, the Czech Republic-based Kiwi creatively searches flight and other transit combinations to determine if booking two or more tickets and piecing them together will save you money compared to a traditional search from one airport to another. Their back-end search engine is already set up to look at hundreds of combinations, which saves considerable time over manual searches and may save you money, too.

Let’s take a closer look at booking travel with Kiwi and discuss if you should use it to book your next big adventure.

Searching with Kiwi.com

Kiwi takes advantage of several types of travel search tricks to find you the cheapest way to get from point A to point B.

However, Kiwi.com is probably best known for its “self-transfer” flights. They’ll search hundreds of air and ground transit carriers to find flight combinations that result in the lowest price. They do all the piecing together on your behalf, which may include combining airlines that don’t formally partner with each other or routing you through connecting airports that don’t often show in traditional searches.

They may include ground transportation options in results, too. For example, you might save big by flying into Munich and taking a train to Salzburg rather than flying to Austria directly.

Since Kiwi looks at all types of unorthodox travel options, you can expect to be bombarded with lots of search results.

I suffer from analysis paralysis all too often, but take it from me: That won’t be a problem. Compared to searching manually and keeping track of a thousand options using pen and paper, Kiwi.com offers filters to narrow things down quickly. With a few clicks, you’ll limit yourself to relevant options.

Don’t want to ride a bus or have too much luggage to realistically consider low-cost airlines? No problem.

If you do find a transit combination that works for you, you can buy it in a single transaction on Kiwi.com, which is a huge convenience compared to going to multiple platforms to buy each ticket one at a time. It’s easier for record-keeping, too, since you can see your entire itinerary in one place.

Conclusion:

Taking the cheapest option presented on Kiwi.com will not be right for all travelers. If you are mixing and matching tickets and carriers, you are increasing the odds that something will go wrong with your trip — and you are increasing the complexities of fixing it.

While this risk may be worth it for large cash savings and/or when you are traveling solo or just with another adult and have some flexibility in your schedule, it may not be worth it for a small savings, when less experienced travelers are involved or when you have a very firm time you need to arrive at your destination or back home again.

I’m not convinced that I’m the target customer for Kiwi.com’s optional add-on guarantee, but I still love the Kiwi search platform. It legitimately does find good transport options that you might not consider on your own (or want to take the time to sort through manually), and booking is a breeze with one-stop shopping instead of having to make separate purchases.

For me, booking through Kiwi.com doesn’t always make sense, but it’s usually at least part of my search strategy when ordinary flights are priced higher than expected. After all, you never know what it will come up with.