CompareFlights helps US travelers find the best fares across 500+ airlines and booking sites. We're an independent flight-comparison service, founded in 2009 in the UK and expanded to the US market in 2026. This page explains who we are, how the site works, how we make money, and what we won't do.
What we do
We aggregate live fares from 500+ airlines and online travel agencies through the Travelpayouts API. When you search a route, we surface real-time pricing, flight schedules, layover details, and airport information so you can compare options in one place rather than checking each airline individually.
The site is free for travelers. We earn revenue from affiliate commissions when you complete a booking on a partner site after clicking through from our results — more on that below. You'll never pay extra by booking through our links; the commission comes out of the booking partner's margin, not your fare.
What we don't do
We've built CompareFlights deliberately around what we think of as "quiet" comparison — useful, fast, and unobtrusive. That means:
- No price alerts. We don't ask for your email, because we don't run an alert service. The major booking sites we send you to all offer their own alerts; use those.
- No personal-data hoarding. We don't build user profiles, we don't track you across sessions, and we don't ask you to register.
- No selling your data. There's no data product here, by design.
- No pop-up traps. No "wait! before you go" overlays, no email-gate before you can see prices.
The portfolio
We operate compareflights.co.uk (UK), compareflights.net (US), comparevols.fr (France), comparevoli.it (Italy), and comparevuelos.es (Spain) — covering five major flight markets in their native languages and currencies. Each site is run as its own property, with content, route data, and pricing tailored to travelers in that market rather than a single English-language site translated five ways.
Independence
We don't take editorial direction from airlines. Comparison results are ranked by price, duration, and number of stops — not by who pays us the most commission. Where a higher-commission booking partner appears in your results, it's because their fare and routing genuinely matched your search, not because they bought visibility.
Affiliate links throughout the site carry the standard rel="sponsored" attribute, in line with search-engine guidance and FTC affiliate-disclosure norms. Editorial articles in our advice section are written independently of partner relationships.
Data sources
Transparency about where our data comes from matters, so:
- Fares: Travelpayouts API, which aggregates Skyscanner, Kiwi, multiple OTAs, and direct airline feeds.
- Airport data: OurAirports, released into the public domain (CC0).
- Flight schedules: carrier-published timetables, refreshed regularly.
- Currency rates: openexchangerates.org.
Pricing is live at search time. Fares change frequently — sometimes within minutes — so a fare we display can move between the moment you click through and the moment you complete a booking on the partner site. We surface the price the partner reports to us; the partner displays the final bookable price.
How we operate
CompareFlights was founded in 2009. The site is part of a small portfolio of comparison properties — no venture capital, no growth team, no offshore content farm. Just careful editorial work and a focus on getting the basics right. Editorial direction is led by Louisa Lowe, a Cheshire-based writer with over twenty years of experience covering travel, consumer rights and lifestyle topics.
Editorial standards
Original copy on every page. We don't paste from Wikipedia or AI-generate boilerplate route descriptions at scale. Articles in our advice section carry author bylines, publication dates, and dates of last review. Where we make factual claims (about airline policies, baggage rules, passenger rights, airport facilities), we cite the source or link to the underlying carrier or regulator page.
Mistakes happen. If you spot one, email [email protected] and we'll correct it and note the correction.
Affiliate disclosure
We earn affiliate commissions when you book through links on our site. This commission is paid by the booking partner, not added to your fare. Affiliate links are marked with rel="sponsored" attributes. Commission rates do not influence the order in which results appear; that's driven by price, duration, and stops.
Trust signals. Founded 2009 · 17 years online · Original editorial · No personal data collection.
Thanks for reading. The fastest way to see what we do is to run a flight search — pick a route, see the comparison, click through to whichever booking partner has the deal. That's it. That's the whole product.