The Best Award Travel Search Tool for 2026

Award travel search tools are apps that help simplify the process of redeeming points for trips, making what used to be a painstaking process of searching multiple travel websites for award space a breeze. As these tools become more popular, more travelers are wondering: What’s the best option?

For the first time, NerdWallet has named its pick for the best award travel search tool in 2026.

Our travel team tested and ranked four of these tools based on several factors, including ease of use, ability to set alerts, live search capabilities and other features. While some tools can be used for hotel award space searches, we focused on airline award space search capabilities, which are more common.

PointsYeah stands out as an easy-to-use award-search tool with an intuitive user interface and many useful filters, allowing you to find award flights using any major credit card or airline rewards currency.

Here’s why PointsYeah came out ahead of the competition.

Searches were faster with PointsYeah than any tool we tested, and results include live award space inventory so you’re not looking into the past for a seat that might no longer be available. Even complicated routings only took 15 to 20 seconds to generate a list of available award flights.

With the premium version, you can search for award space between a combination of two departure and two arrival airports, and there’s a clear breakdown of what frequent flyer programs and credit card points can be used to book a flight.

PointsYeah

Which loyalty programs does it track?

Which loyalty programs does it track?

Pros

• Makes it easy to compare cash and points rates.
• Allows you to search for hotel award stays.
• Daydream Explorer feature helps generate trip ideas.
• Alerts are easy to set up.

Cons

• Multi-city searches are limited to two flight segments.
• Premium product requires annual membership.
• Sometimes displays “phantom award space,” where spaces appear to be bookable but aren’t.

Pros

• Makes it easy to compare cash and points rates.
• Allows you to search for hotel award stays.
• Daydream Explorer feature helps generate trip ideas.
• Alerts are easy to set up.

Cons

• Multi-city searches are limited to two flight segments.
• Premium product requires annual membership.
• Sometimes displays “phantom award space,” where spaces appear to be bookable but aren’t.

The different types of alerts are my favorite feature of PointsYeah. Premium users can set up to 32 active alerts based on the price of a redemption or when award inventory becomes available. You can set alerts based on the miles you want to redeem, number of seats, and even max taxes to avoid airports with hefty surcharges. One of my favorite features is Explorer Alerts, which notify you when award space opens between a non-specific origin and destination, such as the northeastern United States and Western Europe.

Those alerts, in addition to unique features including a seat map linked to your search results, were among the reasons why PointsYeah got the top vote of Meghan Coyle, editor and content strategist with NerdWallet’s travel team.

“Those features are nice for advanced points users and provide context for beginners about which seats are the best,” says Coyle.

PointsYeah has a tool called Daydream Explorer that I’ve used for countless hours to find different places my miles can take me. And it’s not just me — every member of the travel team cited Daydream Explorer as a reason to rank PointsYeah so highly.

“I love the Daydream Explorer tool — it’s a great way to get ideas for trips,” says Claire Tsosie, assigning editor for NerdWallet’s travel team.

Daydream explorer searches can be specific (between defined airports) or broad (flights to “anywhere”), and the results display different places that your miles can take you on an interactive map. For example, you can search for any flight with two business class seats using United MileagePlus miles. Even better, you can apply any of the filters available to a normal search, including cabin class, price and number of seats.

We loved the Seats.aero power-user capabilities geared toward travelers looking for specific redemptions, such as Japan Airlines first class and Qatar Airways Q-Suites. Search results include a side-by-side view of pricing for different fare classes across a wide range of dates, including price history.

However, the user interface is dated and alerts aren’t as robust or easy to set up as PointsYeah. Additionally, Seats.aero doesn’t show which bank points can be transferred to complete a redemption, and we found multiple results with broken links to the airline websites where you’d complete the redemption.

Roame took a close third place. It earned high marks for its sleek user interface and SkyView tool, which allows users to quickly find award availability on the most popular global routes across a 60-day window. However, searching different cabin classes requires multiple searches, there are a lot of pop-ups and there is no multi-airport live search capability.

NerdWallet’s travel experts selected tools based on their knowledge of the publicly available award search tools. To qualify, the tool must be capable of searching for airline award space at a minimum of 180 days from the day of the search and include results for the major transferable credit card currencies. Finalists included PointsYeah, Roame, Seats.aero, and Point.me.

NerdWallet travel experts tested the capabilities of each tool and rated them with a score of 0 to 5. The following factors were considered:

We independently spot-checked data collected to ensure accuracy.