Is Google Flights price tracking free?

Yes, entirely. You search a route, toggle tracking on, and Google emails you when the price for that search changes. There is no paid tier and no limit worth worrying about.

Does Google Flights alert you when prices go up?

Yes. Its tracking reports price movement in both directions, which is what it is designed to do. Whether that is useful depends on whether you want to be told about increases.

Do Google Flights alerts expire?

Tracking is attached to the dates you searched, so once those dates pass the alert stops being meaningful. Nothing announces this, which is why people find they have been watching nothing for months.

Can Google Flights track a whole city rather than one airport?

You can search multiple airports in one query, and tracking follows that search. Coverage of every airport in a metro area across a flexible window is where the per-search model starts to strain.

Should I use both Google Flights and Flydar?

That is a sensible setup. Google Flights tracking suits a trip you have already committed to on known dates. A route watcher suits the trips you would otherwise never remember to check.

Flydar vs Google Flights price alerts: what's different

Google Flights tells you a price changed. Flydar tells you a price dropped below what the route normally costs. Same category, different jobs.

Worth saying at the top, because comparisons like this usually will not: Google’s tracking is free, it works, and for a lot of travellers it is enough. If you take one or two trips a year on dates you already know, you can stop reading after the next section and be fine.

The alert itself

Turn on Google Flights tracking and you will hear about price movement on that search, including movement upward. That is the stated function rather than a flaw, and there are people who want it. If you are timing a purchase you have already decided on, knowing the fare just rose $80 is real information.

The problem is what it does to your attention over time. A “price increased $8” email arrives in the same shape, from the same sender, as a “price dropped $200” email. Two weeks of that and the reader stops distinguishing between them. The alert has not failed at its job; it has succeeded at its job in a way that makes you stop reading it.

Flydar starts from a narrower question. Not “did this price move,” but “is this fare clearly below what this route normally costs.” A fare has to clear that bar before it reaches anyone. If the price rises, nothing happens and you never learn about it.

That difference sounds small and is not. One is a change log. The other is a judgement, and judgement is the part that takes work when you do it yourself.

Side by side

	Google Flights tracking	Flydar
Cost	Free	Subscription (pricing)
Alert trigger	Any price move on the tracked search, including increases	A fare that drops clearly below the route’s normal price
What is tracked	One search: route plus fixed dates or a date grid	A route and a travel window, set once
When your dates pass	The tracked search stops being meaningful	Nothing to rebuild; the route stays watched
Whole-city coverage	Multiple airports per search, managed by you	Pick a city, every airport in it is included
Cabin	Any	Economy
Mistake fares	Not called out separately	Flagged as soon as they are caught
The judgement call	Yours	Made before the email is sent
Booking	You book elsewhere	You book elsewhere

Neither books anything. Both send you off to buy the fare where it lives, which for Flydar users is frequently Google Flights itself.

When Google Flights is the better choice

A comparison that never reaches this section is an advertisement, so here it is.

You have one trip and you know the dates. This is the case Google’s tracking was built for, and paying for anything else is waste. Set it, watch it, book when the number suits you.

You need a cabin above economy. Flydar tracks economy fares. If you are watching business class, this is not a close call.

You want to see the mechanics yourself. The date grid and price graph are the best free tools available for working out what a route normally costs, and that is the foundation of judging any fare. Even committed users of paid tools should be using them.

You do not want another subscription. Entirely reasonable. Free tracking plus ten minutes of manual research beats a paid tool you never configure properly.

When a route watcher fits better

The gap Flydar was built for is the trip you have not committed to. The “I would go to Lisbon if it were ever properly cheap” plan that never becomes a search, because there are no dates to search with and no particular day on which you would think to check.

Nobody watches those routes by hand for six months. The fare arrives, sits for a day, and leaves, and you find out never. That is the failure mode a per-search alert cannot fix, because a per-search alert needs a search, and the whole problem is that you were never going to run one.

It also fits when the administration defeats you: three airports at your end, two at the other, a window three months wide. As separate tracked searches that is a spreadsheet. As one described route it is a sentence.

The short version

Committed trip, known dates, any cabin, no budget for tools: Google Flights, and you are done.

Routes you would fly if the price ever justified it, watched for as long as it takes, with your inbox left alone in the meantime: that is the gap, and it is the one we built for.