Do VPNs really get you cheaper flights? Does the subscription price offset the the fare difference?
Some airlines do price differently by “point of sale”. This means that even after factoring in the exchange rate a plane ticket can cost more or less depending on the country you’re having the ticket be issued from. However, you don’t need a VPN for this. You can just set the airline website to a different country. However, airlines like American will require you to pay with a credit card issued in the country you’re issuing the ticket from if you book direct. IF you can afford to lose the ticket if something goes wrong, it can be worth it to go with an online travel agency like Expedia that can force a ticket to be issued in a country different from the one your credit card is from if you find a better price this way.
Plane tickets don’t work like that anymore.
The savings you may have are almost never worth the price of the VPN itself and those adverts they get YouTubers to spurt are complete nonsense 95% of the time.
However…there are occasions when there are differences, this is mostly due to currency conversion. You might see a flight for US $300, then airlines might make it a round number in another currency, say GBP £250. But the savings here are going to be small.
The only other times you will see a difference is for sales of a particular airline, which may occur around certain festivals or school holidays, but this requires good timing so probably not worth it.
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Not necessarily a VPN, but you use the Language/country setting on the website you can sometimes. book tickets in the currency of the country vs USD. But that usually only works for domestic flights.
Booking on Aeromexico USA/English, Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City prices at $146, book on Mexican/Spanish and it is 2645 pesos ($128).
But booking from Austin to Mexico City is $275.95 and 5682 ($274.75) on Mexico site. So that’s just conversion differences. Likely when your credit card converts it there won’t be any savings (or it will be slightly more).
Sometimes those fares are only for residents of the country though so you have to check the fine print.
Occasionally made a BIG difference in prices, but it was rare.
I don’t know if they do or not but I think I understand the theory behind it. If I understand it correctly you shouldn’t have to pay for a vpn, just opening a private window in your browser to search for the flights/deals should have the same effect without the cost.
I can confirm that this works. I was looking at the flights starting $1300 through Google Flights and it periodically refreshes the page and adds +$200< for the same flight at random intervals (30min~1hr,) whereas going to the airline website for the same flight is $2400<
It worked for me. I tried changing website language and currency but it kept reverting me back and I had to vpn. Saved 60$ on a one way.
Can anyone recommend a VPN to use?
Seems like a scam to make you purchase VPN…
Only use a third party if the person paying isn’t flying with the travel party. When booking direct, situations like this can happen, while with a third party booking agency, since the agency is the one with the credit card info, the airlines have nothing to check against.
I had a similar thing happen when booking a flight earlier. On the spanish version of the website the flight was about $20 cheaper but when I went to enter my card information it said I needed to use a card from the that country.
Would depend the level of tracking they are using. Private browsing can help hide if they are using cookies, but your network number will still be the same. If you were serious about trying it and didn’t want to pay, Opera has a built in free VPN.
What currencry/language gave you cheap prices?
Mullvad
The thing with most VPN is that they want to keep you locked in as long as possible. It’s crazy expensive (+$12/m) if you pay by the month, while they usually charge much lower (~$3/m) if you pay two years upfront. However, you don’t really need a vpn for daily browsing. Especially because of the slower speeds.
Mullvad on the other hand allows you to pay ONLY month by month (€5/m). It’s a little more expensive but worth it in the long run. Also it’s much more private
Here’s a “secret”: If you have an American Express credit card, you can sometimes use it as if it was a credit card from any of the countries they offer credit cards in by putting in your card details and a random street address from that country. I’ve done this fairly often when shopping on Japanese websites. Some places will still refuse you, at which point you have to decide if it’s worth it to go with a third party agency (they can force the ticket to be issued anyway even if you use a credit card from a different country, but then you have to deal with the agency if anything goes wrong) or not.
Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Thailand is what worked for me