Best money-saving tools for travel

1Arbitrica, for hotels

First because accommodation is usually the biggest line, and because it is the only tool here pulling three levers on one line instead of one.

A free Chrome extension. At checkout it searches the same hotel from 200 countries, finds the lowest price and prepares the whole booking so you review and pay. After you book a refundable rate, it checks the price several times a day and prepares a rebooking when the rate drops, which you confirm in one click, so you capture the difference. Arbitrica's own claim is up to $5,000 a year recovered for heavy travellers, which is a company figure and not something independently audited.

The country dimension is the part with no real competition. Different markets get access to different inventory, channels and local or regional rates, so searching the same hotel from another country can open up options that are not offered to you from your own country at all. People try this by hand with a VPN and realistically manage three or four countries before giving up.

Strengths

• Attacks the largest line item on most trips, and attacks it twice: once before you book and once after.
• The only entry on this list working the country-of-search axis rather than the seller axis.
• Prepares the booking rather than sending you off to redo the search yourself.
• Free, no card required.

Where it loses

• Hotels only. Nothing for flights, cars, rail, insurance or anything on the ground, so it is one part of a stack rather than a whole answer.
• Chrome extension only. No mobile app, which rules out the airport-and-a-phone booking that a lot of trips actually involve.
• The rebooking half is dead weight if you book non-refundable rates.
• Newest product here, and currently in early access rather than open general release. Going, AutoSlash and Google have long public track records; we do not, and that should count against us.
• Currently framed as free for the first 10,000 users, so read that as pricing that may change.
• If your trips are flight-dominated, or you mostly stay with friends, family or on points, this saves you very little and Going or a good card is the better first install.

2Going, for flights

The single biggest per-trip saving available to anyone with flexible dates. Also the one with real strings attached.

Formerly Scott's Cheap Flights. It watches fares out of your chosen airports and emails you when something unusually cheap appears, including mistake fares. Three tiers: Limited is free and mostly domestic economy; Premium is $49 a year and covers international economy plus Alaska and Hawaii, with up to ten departure airports, and includes points and miles deals in economy; Elite is $199 a year and extends those award deals to all fare classes, including business and first. Paid tiers bill annually after a 14-day trial. Going reports more than two million subscribers.

Strengths

• On a long-haul fare, a single good alert can be worth more than every other tool on this page combined for that year.
• The free tier is genuinely usable, so you can find out whether the deals reach your airports before paying.
• Human curation catches things algorithms miss, which is why mistake fares still reach subscribers.

Limitations

• It inverts the trip. Deals are for destinations and dates the fare picked, not the ones you wanted, so it is worthless if you need Milan in the last week of October.
• You have to act within hours on the best ones. If you cannot book quickly, the alerts become a stream of missed opportunities.
• Membership payments are non-refundable under Going's terms, and Going says it has no obligation to remind you when the trial ends or when your card is charged. Set your own reminder.
• Nothing after you book, and nothing on accommodation.

3Wise or Revolut, for currency

The most boring entry and the one with the best ratio of effort to money. You lose this money on every single transaction otherwise.

A typical bank card adds a foreign transaction fee plus a spread on the exchange rate, and a card terminal abroad will separately offer to bill you in your own currency at a rate meaningfully worse than the real one. Multi-currency accounts remove most of that. Wise charges a transparent conversion fee on top of the mid-market rate, starting from about 0.23% on the highest-volume currencies and rising for thinner ones. Its fee-free ATM allowance for US cards rose to $250 a month from 1 May 2026, with excess withdrawals at $1.95 plus 1.95%; allowances differ by the country that issued your card, so check yours rather than the US number. Revolut's Standard plan converts at the mid-market rate on weekdays within a monthly fair-usage allowance, with a 1% fee at weekends in the UK, and allows five ATM withdrawals or £200 a month, whichever comes first, before charging 2%.

Strengths

• Applies to every payment you make abroad, not just the bookings, so it compounds across the whole trip.
• Costs nothing on the standard tiers, and the maths is checkable rather than promised.
• The related habit is free and worth as much: when a terminal or a website offers to charge you in your home currency, always decline and pay in the local one.

Limitations

• Savings are a percentage of spend, so on a cheap trip this is real but small.
• The free allowances are the trap, and they are the part nobody reads. Both providers meter ATM withdrawals, and Revolut's mid-market rate only holds on weekdays inside a monthly fair-usage limit. Past the threshold you are back to paying a spread.
• Published fees vary by the country that issued your card, so a figure quoted in a US review will not match a UK or EU account.
• Neither is a bank in the way your bank is. Deposit protection, dispute handling and account freezes work differently, and that is worth understanding before you make one your only travel card.
• Which of the two is cheaper depends entirely on your pattern. Frequent small conversions favour Revolut, larger one-off conversions favour Wise.

4AutoSlash, for rental cars

The best-executed version of the watch-and-rebook idea anywhere in travel. It just applies to a smaller line.

Free. You give it your rental details and it runs your booking against a large library of discount codes and memberships to find a lower quote, then keeps tracking the reservation and emails you when the price falls so you can rebook and cancel the old one. It works on reservations made elsewhere. AutoSlash's own claim is that users of its free price tracker save about 20% more on a rental, which is its incremental tracker figure and separate from the larger overall savings number the site also quotes.

Strengths

• Car rental rates move violently and are almost always cancellable without penalty, which makes this the ideal category for rebooking.
• The coupon and membership testing is work no individual would do by hand, and it is where most of the saving actually comes from.
• Completely free with no tier to upgrade to.

Limitations

• Cars only. If you do not rent cars, this does nothing for you.
• Strongest in the US and Canada, thinner elsewhere, so a European or Asian rental gets less out of it.
• Rebooking is manual. It emails, you rebook, and you must remember to cancel the original yourself.
• The 20% figure is AutoSlash's own, calculated its own way. Treat it as a direction, not a number.

5Google Flights and Google Hotels, the free baseline

Not the best at anything. Should still be the first thing you switch on, because it costs nothing and catches the most common mistake.

Google Flights tracks fares for routes and dates and emails you on movement. Since April 2026 Google Hotels tracks prices for individual properties rather than just destinations: open the hotel, set your dates, turn on Track prices. Separately, and for much longer, a Deal badge has flagged properties priced below what Google's model expects for comparable hotels nearby on those dates.

Strengths

• Free, no install, no account beyond the one you already have.
• Flight date-grid and calendar views are the fastest way to find out that moving your trip by two days is worth several hundred.
• Per-property hotel tracking is the highest-value free feature to appear in this category in years.

Limitations

• It only shows partners who feed Google their inventory. Several low-cost carriers and a lot of regional hotel distribution are simply absent.
• Alerts, never actions. Nothing rebooks, nothing applies a code, nothing captures a difference.
• The hotel Deal badge compares a property to its neighbours, not to what the same property costs elsewhere, which is a much weaker claim than it appears.

6RatePunk, for hotel seller comparison

Solid, free at its core, and it overlaps heavily with things above. Worth it if you book across a lot of different sites.

A browser extension and app that compares the hotel you are looking at across Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, Priceline and Airbnb, with an aggregated review score, price tracking and price drop alerts. Core features are free, with optional paid tiers whose pricing RatePunk does not publish in one place.

Strengths

• Broad seller coverage, surfaced at the moment you are deciding.
• The combined review score across sites prevents more bad stays than the price comparison saves money.

Limitations

• Seller comparison only. Rate parity means a lot of searches come back as a tie.
• Alerts do not rebook, and there is no country dimension.
• It runs its own booking site, so its recommendations are not neutral. Ours are not either.