How to Track Flight Prices Automatically Using Google Flights

Booking air travel is notoriously frustrating. Airline pricing algorithms are incredibly volatile, meaning the cost of a ticket from London to New York can fluctuate wildly from day to day, or even hour to hour. Trying to guess the perfect moment to buy your ticket often leads to overpaying.

Instead of manually checking airline websites every morning, you can use Google Flights to act as your personal travel agent. By setting up an automated price tracker, Google will monitor the specific route you are interested in and send you an email the moment the price drops significantly.

How to Set Up a Price Tracker

To use this feature, you must have a free Google account (such as a Gmail address) and be logged in, so Google knows where to send the alerts.

1. Open your web browser and navigate to Google.com/flights.
2. Enter your departure airport and your desired destination.
3. Select your specific travel dates using the calendar tool, and specify the number of passengers.
4. Click the blue Search button.

Google will generate a list of all available departing flights for those exact dates. Before you start analyzing the individual airlines, look at the top left area of the search results, directly above the list of flights.

You will see a toggle switch labelled Track prices. Click this toggle to turn it on (it will turn blue).

A small notification will appear at the bottom of the screen confirming that “You’ll receive an email when prices change.” Google is now silently monitoring the entire database of airlines for that specific itinerary.

Tracking Prices for Flexible Dates (Any Dates)

The standard tracker only monitors the exact departure and return dates you selected. If you are planning a holiday but do not care exactly which week you travel, you can track the general route instead. This is the best way to find massive bargains.

1. Perform your search as normal, selecting any random dates.
2. Look at the Track prices toggle area.
3. Directly beneath or next to the main toggle, you will see an option labelled Any dates. Click this toggle.

Google will now monitor the route for the next 3 to 6 months. If a specific airline drops its prices for a random week in October, you will receive an alert highlighting the cheap dates.

How to View and Manage Your Tracked Flights

Over time, you might set up trackers for multiple different holidays or business trips. You can view all your monitored flights in one central dashboard.

1. Navigate to Google.com/flights.
2. In the top left corner, click the three horizontal lines (the “hamburger” menu).
3. Select Tracked flight prices from the side menu.

This page displays a list of every route you are currently monitoring. For each route, Google provides a small graph showing how the price has trended over the past 60 days, allowing you to see if the current price is historically high, low, or typical.

If you have already booked your ticket or cancelled your trip, you can easily disable the tracker. Simply click the blue bell icon next to the relevant flight on this dashboard, and Google will stop sending you email alerts for that route.