Seats.Aero Review: An Excellent Free Tool For All

~ Chris Wada

There are plenty of award tools out there to help you search for your perfect award flight, and it’s awesome that Seats.Aero has a free version.

What award programs does Seats.Aero cover?

While there can be changes to which airlines it can track, currently there are 24 airlines Seats.Aero tracks:

For each of the above, Seats.Aero shows availability and points costs for each loyalty scheme but it does include partner award flights on top of the program’s own airline.

How to use Seats.Aero

The Seats.Aero website promises a lightning fast interface and is actually free to use with some restrictions. We’ll talk more about those restrictions in a bit. For now, let’s perform a sample search, from San Francisco SFO to Tokyo TYO on October 15, 2025, +/- 14 days.

First, just enter in those relevant details into the website.

And what do you know? Instant results, just as promised. You’ll find everything neatly organized in rows so you can readily see which cabins are available as awards, which programs are showing the pricing, and the award price for each. Awards in green are nonstop flights while the blue color represents connecting flights.

Want to know more about the flight, such as which airline is the operating airline and fees? Just hover over the award price for that detail. You will need to learn the two-digit IATA codes for each airline, but it’s probably something you’ll pick up anyways if you’re in this hobby long enough.

Something to note is that there’s a chance the flight is no longer available. See that second column just to the right of the date labeled “Last Seen”? The Seats.Aero database isn’t grabbing instant award availability at the time you run your query. Instead, the system is so fast because it’s caching that award availability as it grabs information from other sites.

So, it’s important to make sure you see the award availability on that site before you transfer points. Don’t get caught transferring points only to find out the seat doesn’t exist (or in the quantities you need).

Hub searching is easy with Seats.Aero

One feature that’s very helpful is being able to search not just specific routes but all an airline’s hubs at once. When this is helpful is if you know you need to travel on a certain date and are willing to take any transatlantic/transpacific flight. You just need that long haul flight booked. Seats.Aero actually makes that quite simple.

In the airport field, just type “hub” to see the following hubs:

  • AAH = American Airlines hubs
  • DLL = Delta Airlines hubs
  • UAH = United Airlines hubs

So let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario where we want any flight from London LHR to the United States via American Airlines or their partners. We just type “AAH” into the destination field and get all sorts of results.

I know I’ve been there before where I want any long haul flight in a premium cabin to complete a trip. I can work out short haul journeys in economy with cash, worst case scenario. So, having this functionality is super helpful in this case.

Exploring any awards between regions

What if you have loads of miles or points in a given award program and you need to find any use for them? Well, the good news is the excellent “Explore” functionality. Just click on the tab from the front page and enter your details. Let’s try out Delta SkyMiles, since everyone likes to laugh at how terrible it is for redemptions. In our example, let’s look for flights between North America and Asia.

Sure enough, there is some decent pricing if you’re fine with departing out of Mexico. It’s not a gangbusters rate, but I’d much rather pay 115,000 miles for Delta One than to pay 100,000 miles for regular economy. What’s not immediately apparent is that these flights have two stops along the way. But sometimes getting that cheaper price means going out of the way perhaps more than you’d otherwise prefer.

Can you put in alerts for award availability?

Yes, and it’s quite easy to do so. Just head over to the Alert section of their website and fill out some basic information. If you don’t have a Pro membership, the only option for you will be receiving an alert via email. Pro members get access to SMS alerts, plus plenty of other quality-of-life features like “any date” alerts in case you want to jump on so-called “unicorn” routes (meaning awards that hardly ever become available).

Where Seats.Aero falls short

Perhaps the biggest disclaimer is the one that appears at the bottom of every page: “Data is periodically refreshed and might not be up to date”. The site does an excellent job of telling you immediate results on what was recently available, but it’s not fully up-to-date. It’s entirely possible that someone else jumps in on the award space before you get it.

On the flip side, it’s also possible that new award space exists but Seats.Aero hasn’t yet picked it up on their data refresh cycle. That means if you’re searching for unicorn awards, it’s possible that they become available and someone else snags them before you ever know that they were once available. We can’t speak to the odds of that happening, but it’s entirely within the realm of possibility. You probably don’t want spend money on a Pro membership purely to search for these rare awards.

Additionally, most of the free version of the site is geared towards award seats for one passenger. That’s not to say that the site doesn’t tell you how many seats exist–you just need to hover over the rate to see the number of seats available. But if you want to filter on number of seats available, you’ll need to pay to get the functionality.

Seats.Aero pricing

There is one paid option available for you if you want to subscribe to Seats.Aero’s services.

Free service

Let’s first describe the free service available. Here’s what everyone gets by default:

  • Standard and Explore searches within 60 days of travel
  • Unlimited alerts for flights and hotels (via Rooms.Aero, which we will discuss separately)

If you’re someone who likes to book travel at the last minute, you might not need to ever pay. You actually get a lot of functionality for free, which is awesome! Of course, if you’re a planner or have specific needs, getting a Pro membership might be necessary.

Pro membership

Seats.Aero’s Pro membership costs $9.99/month or $99.99/year. What do you get with this membership?

  • Standard and Explore searches for any date, with advanced filters and functionality
  • Unlimited alerts for flights and hotels, with advanced filters and functionality
  • SMS availability alerts
  • Ability to request new routes to be tracked
  • Seat maps and fare class availability
  • No ads

It’s up to you on whether you feel the Pro membership is worth the payment. Personally, I’d play around with the free version first to gain familiarity. Then, if I know I have travel upcoming farther out than 60 days, I would consider getting a one month subscription. I’m not sure most of us would need membership for a full year unless alerts are that important to you (and see our prior warning about the alerts).

Closing thoughts

We like using Seats.Aero, especially for that last-minute travel strategy we like to employ as a compliment to our normal booking strategy. It’s awesome getting so much award availability knowledge at our fingertips for free. Yes, the warning is definitely there that the site cannot survive if everyone opts for the free version. But there is a justification to pay for a month if we ever need help looking for that elusive award space farther than 60 days out.

Happy hunting!

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