After SeatGuru was shut down six months ago, another tool has now met the same fate. On AwardHacker.com, it was previously possible to determine the miles required for an award flight with just a few clicks. Only the departure airport, destination airport, and cabin class were required.
That was the theory, at least. Similar to SeatGuru, the site had not been maintained for many years and was increasingly less useful in practice. The website relied on years-old award charts; moreover, numerous frequent flyer programs were missing. But another problem became even more serious: more and more programs have switched to dynamic mileage pricing. As a result, the price of an award ticket could only be determined live through a booking system – a (large) database in the background is no longer sufficient.
Anyone visiting Awardhacker.com now encounters only the following message:
AwardHacker Has Been Shut Down
AwardHacker is no longer available due to significant changes in the award flight landscape. Many airlines have shifted to dynamic pricing, and award availability has become increasingly limited.
For those who’d like to take a trip down memory lane: in one of our 2020 guides, the following screenshot appeared.
Alternatives to AwardHacker
Those who valued exact mileage amounts had not been satisfied with AwardHacker for many years. Additionally, information on taxes & fees was missing—these can range from a few euros to three-digit amounts depending on the program. However, the site was a good initial point of contact before checking with the frequent flyer program of choice.
There are still similar tools that offer exactly this functionality. Like AwardHacker, these are several years old, but sufficient for a first glance:
- Award Maximizer by Travel Codex
- Calculator from Miles.biz (limited to 15 requests/month)
Modern tools go much further today. They fetch live prices directly from frequent flyer programs and help spot real award availability. With that in mind, here are our top recommendations:
These tools display live prices, and you immediately learn which options are available for your desired date. However, fewer frequent flyer programs are supported than AwardHacker previously offered.
Here is an example search for Madrid – New York on Points.yeah:
Since these tools are significantly more computationally intensive and dependent on APIs, functionality in the basic version is limited. From my perspective, the free version of Points.yeah is somewhat more usable, while Seats.aero shines primarily with its paid version.
We introduced both tools in the following article. Although the focus there is on Miles&More, the functionality is similar for all supported frequent flyer programs.
Source: Reddit