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Using the new Google Flights, is it possible to track prices for certain routes (e.g. New York to Madrid), but without specific dates in mind?

For example, my schedule is flexible enough that I can take a 10 day trip sometime in July or August, so I want to find the cheapest flights within that time.

This gist of this question is the same as this one, but here I am specifically asking if this is possible to do within the revamped Google Flights site.

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It's definitely not possible right now -- the closest you can get is setting a ton of alerts covering the range of dates you want. As far as I know, no travel site allows setting super-flexible alerts right now since it requires making a lot of queries every day (which can get pretty expensive, especially if you're using a GDS (Apollo/Sabre) as your data source).

In the meantime, I'd recommend:

  • Setting lots of alerts (Google Flights is so fast that it doesn't take more than 5-10 minutes to set 30 alerts! It also helpfully groups alerts from/to the same places)
  • Setting one-way alerts in each direction (especially on shorter routes where the round trip price is almost always roughly equal) so that you have fewer combinations of alerts to check/set
  • Checking back regularly on the site

It's frustrating that there's no better solution right now, but I'm sure someone is working on it!

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  • What is "setting an alert", and how is that better than manually searching for all possible dates? – npst Oct 2 '18 at 14:48
  • @npst Setting an alert would mean you get emailed whenever the price changes for a certain flight or set of dates – incaren Nov 5 '18 at 18:21
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There is a website in Brazil that allows users to set price alerts regardless of dates (voopter.com.br). All you have to do is set a departure and destination airport and select the highest fare you would be willing to pay (be it a one-way or round trip). It's a collaborative platform, so the more people search flights on it, the higher are the chances to be alerted. Unfortunately, it's not a widespread website, but I still manage to receive alerts for popular destinations all the time. I love it because they use several other flight search platforms so you don't have to spend time looking around.

That's how I think Google should do, too. People are constantly searching for flights on Google Flights, so they could use these cheap flight results originating from other people to alert flexible travelers. It's quite easy to determine whether a flight is cheap or not based on its price history. Actually, your alerts would be based on the highest acceptable price you select on the platform.

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As far as I know, no travel site allows setting super-flexible alerts right now

Kiwi allows alerting through date period.

enter image description here

I do not know how good this function really works, but just for you to know. I set it up and received Kiwi notifications only occasionally, so have no idea if the prices didn't change or it's not working properly.

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EDIT: I missed the point that automatic tracking is needed, but this allows for manual check.

As described here - it is possible now

enter image description here

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  • This is an improvement, but still requires manually looking through many dates, and you'll have to do it every day if you want to track how the prices change. So it is still not possible to set an alert for a route and trip length. – spacetyper Oct 2 '18 at 15:47
  • Sorry, I missed the point that the tracking is needed – wojteo Oct 3 '18 at 18:59

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