A Requiem for Hipmunk (And a Few Alternatives)
Joe Cortez January 24, 2020
Now is a time for mourning: Hipmunk is no longer available for frequent flyers to search for future trips. With such a solid tool gone but not forgotten, how are you coping? What tools will you use next?
Hipmunk, you were too beautiful for this world. Effective Jan. 23, 2020, Hipmunk has shut down for good. The original domain now redirects to a blog post saying goodbye to the world. After SAP Concur purchased the website in 2016, it’s future days were quickly numbered.
“As a travel metasearch, we helped travelers take the agony out of travel planning and gave SAP Concur a deeper understanding of how to develop innovations that meet the needs of today’s traveler,” the blog reads. “We are grateful to all the travelers and partners that have joined us on this journey.” While bookings will remain valid, all user data – along with their trip information – is gone to the ether.
ITA Matrix
What Are the Good Alternatives for Hipmunk?
Although the Hipmunk will no longer fly, there are still a few good search engines that offer a solid alternative to Hipmunk. The two primary tools that come to play. The first is ITA Matrix. This is a great search engine for flights. Although, it’s slightly less user-friendly than Hipmunk. We recommend searching for your flights through ITA Matrix. And then, when you’re ready to book, just copy your results from ITA Matrix and paste them into Book With Matrix. For more tips, head to this FlyerTalk forum thread about The ITA Matrix Help Thread.
Flights From
Another site that’s good for a deep dive is Flights From it allows you to search the departure times of every non-stop flight from a particular airport. And, this search includes low-cost carriers that some third-party search sites do not.
But, if you want a slightly more user-friendly option that will serve most of your purposes, try Google Flights or one of these other alternatives:
- Skyscanner.com: A full-service travel search engine that provides inspiration and ideas based on popular locations and pricing.
- Flystein.com: For those who need a little help, Flystein.com is a human-powered search tool. If they can’t beat your fare, you won’t pay for their services.
- Sebogo.co.uk: A big data search option that allows you to customize your trip based to every detail – including how you plan to pay!
What alternatives are you using now that Hipmunk is no longer? Share them in the FlyerTalk forum thread where we’re all saying goodbye to Hipmunk and trying our best to move on.
Muy triste! Do you remember in the early days of Hipmunk how it would autobook UA econ itns in FULL Y?! LOL! Many GPU-upgrades sectors made 1K easy and comfortable to achieve. But nobody can remember this it was from the RGN era which was the last of the golden age. There seem to be many of what gringos call rubes on this site now.