Airfare is generally the most expensive part of a trip. If you’ve tried booking a flight before, you realize how frustrating it is to see the fare rise every time you search for the same flight. Airlines are trying their best to pull money out of our pockets, so we’ve to become smarter too. Here’s how you can find the cheapest flight possible:

Go incognito

Have you noticed a fare hike after searching for the same flight a few times?

The search engine matters

Using the right search engine is very important to find the cheapest flight to your destination. Although there’s no single flight search engine that can help you get great deals, Skyscanner, Momondo, and Google Flights are the three favorite search engines among travelers right now. That being said, there’s never a guarantee that they are showing you the lowest prices, so you should check out a couple of other websites before booking.

Pick the cheapest day to fly

You might have heard people saying that you can save money by flying on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but it’s not a consistent truth, and there is no “cheapest day of the week” to fly out. Instead, if you want to get an idea of which day(s) can be the least expensive to fly, you must get a quick visual of prices for a whole month. Flight search engines like Skyscanner, Kiwi.com, and Google Flights offer tools that can help you identify the cheapest days or months to fly to a particular destination.

Choose a budget airline

Flying via budget airlines is a great way to get a really cheap flight. Budget airlines mostly offer significantly lower rates than bigger airlines, but this comes with compromises like less legroom and no free food or drinks and movies. If you’re ready to lose these luxuries to get a cheap flight, budget airlines are an ideal option for you. A word of caution: always read the fine print before booking, and check the location of the airport where the flight lands, as some budget airline flights land on airports further out of town.

Subscribes to airlines’ newsletter

Sometimes, you can find the best deals directly on the airlines’ websites. You can access these deals by subscribing to their newsletter and receive promo codes and special offers that help you book a flight for cheap. If you sign up for the newsletters of multiple airlines, you can create a separate email ID or use filters that automatically move emails to a specific folder so that you find them easily.