CheapOair vs Kayak, Expedia, and Google Flights

People say “OTA” as if it were one product. It is not. CheapOair and Expedia sell tickets. Kayak mostly points at sellers. Google Flights is a calendar and a map that often hands you to the airline. Treating them as four brands in one coupon race is how you buy the wrong object.

CheapOair — the default retailer on this lander

CheapOair is a Fareportal online travel agency. You search, you pick, you pay them (or their checkout), you get a ticket on an airline. That is the job. Our default is not “CheapOair always wins the dollar.” It is “start at a retailer whose checkout you can actually finish, then beat it.” The CJ program on this lander is 2515404. Park Week also lists CheapOair on Rakuten. This site is the dedicated URL for that relationship going forward.

Google Flights — the map, not the merchant

Google Flights is the honest first tab when you do not yet know the day or the airport. It shows a calendar, nearby airports, and a duration sort that OTAs bury. It is a weak default when you treat the tiled price as a ticket. Click through. The airline or an OTA still has to sell it. We do not have a Google hop. Mention is not an affiliate relationship.

For a park week, Google Flights is how you notice that flying into LAS Friday night is a different week than flying into LAS Thursday afternoon — before you let an OTA sort by “cheapest Friday.”

Kayak — meta-search, including other people’s checkouts

Kayak is useful as a second opinion on whether CheapOair’s shape of itinerary exists elsewhere. It is a poor place to stop thinking, because the click may land on a seller you did not choose. If you use Kayak, pick the seller on purpose: airline, CheapOair, or another retailer you recognize. We do not hop to Kayak.

Expedia — another retailer, same cluster of holding companies as Hotels.com and Vrbo

Expedia will sell you a flight, a hotel, a car, and a package. That package instinct is a feature for some city weekends and a fog machine for a park week that needed a named gateway hotel and a separately chosen cabin. If you already live in an Expedia account, it can win. It is not this lander’s default. Hotels.com lives on Park Stay. Vrbo lives on Park Cabin. Flights on this site start at CheapOair so the flight problem does not get swallowed by a bundle.

A sequence that does not require five “winners”

• Dates and airports: Google Flights (or any calendar you will actually look at).
• Buy the ticket: CheapOair first on this site, then the airline if you already know the flight or need the operator’s desk.
• Second opinion: Kayak, if you want to see whether another seller has the same flights.
• Do not let a package checkbox choose your Springdale hotel. That is Park Stay or Park Cabin.

None of these companies is an airline. None of them is the National Park Service. We may earn a commission from CheapOair. We do not invent a fare to make that click look cheaper than the other tabs.