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A popular TikTok travel hack recommends using VPNs to find cheaper flights, but other strategies work better
18.11.2024 - 22:27 / insider.com
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There are countless rumors on social media about the best ways to book flights for less. With the winter holidays approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, you can be sure that the more persistent among them will pop up in your feeds.
In particular, someone may tell you that the trick to finding cheap airfare is to use a VPN when you book. On the face of it, this makes sense. A VPN, or virtual private network, encrypts your data and masks your IP address, which ties your internet connection to a specific location. By using a VPN, you can appear to be in a different country from where you actually are.
A VPN is great for eluding government censors, keeping safe from eavesdroppers, and viewing or streaming content from locations where it would be blocked. But would appearing to be in a different country result in cheaper airfare?
We tested the premise against five of the best VPNs, and the results are pretty unequivocal: Flights aren't cheaper when you shop through a VPN.
We picked two popular routes in the United States at two popular travel times, using Google Flights to look up prices.
We first searched flight prices via a regular connection to an Internet service provider in the US. Then we switched to a VPN, using five of the most popular services, and repeated the searches while appearing to be in a different country.
The routes and times we picked were:
Here's what we found for each VPN provider.
Express VPN has proven its worth with its ease of use, clean interface, and straightforward installation on multiple devices. We've used it on the road, without a hitch, in dozens of different countries including China, where it bypassed the Great Firewall easily.
Original flight price, Chicago to Seattle: $361
ExpressVPN price: $361
Original flight price, Nashville to New York: $99
ExpressVPN price: $99
The prices were the same, with or without VPN.
Learn more at the Express VPN website.
NordVPN stands out for the number of servers around the world it can use, and for its speed and reliability when streaming and gaming.
But when it came to flight booking, using NordVPN yielded the exact same prices for our sample flights as using a regular connection:
Original flight price, Chicago to Seattle: $361
NordVPN price: $361
Original flight price, Nashville to New York: $99
NordVPN price: $99
Learn more at the NordVPN website.
Surfshark can use more than 3,200 servers across 100 countries, and has a wider
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