Alternatives to Going for Canadian travellers
Going's free tier only covers US domestic flights. Here are the options that genuinely help when you fly out of Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.
Going's problem seen from Canada is not its price, it is its centre of gravity. The service is built around US departures: coverage there is the broadest on the market, and its free tier is limited to US domestic flights — so it is of no use at all if you fly out of YUL, YYZ or YVR.
That does not make Going bad. It means that from Canada, you need to look at what sits alongside it. Here are the options, by need.
The comparison in one table
The prices below are the ones publicly listed as of 9 September 2026. Going and Hopper bill in US dollars, Kestrelia in Canadian dollars: the conversion is part of the comparison, not a presentation detail.
| Going Premium | Google Flights | Hopper | Kestrelia | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | US$49 / year | Free | Free | C$99.96 / year or C$29.97 / 3 months |
| Currency shown | US$ | Local | US$ | C$ |
| Model | Subscription + affiliate | Ads and referrals | Agency + financial products | Pure subscription |
| Free tier useful from Canada | No, US domestic only | Yes | Yes | 1 alert, 3 months |
| Criteria kept inside the alert | Departure airports | Route and dates | Route and dates | 31 |
| Checked baggage as a criterion | No | No | No | Yes |
| Maximum layovers | No | At search time only | No | Yes |
| Departure time window | No | At search time only | No | Yes |
| Required airline or alliance | No | At search time only | No | Yes |
| Individual alert | No, same send to everyone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Booking built in | No, hands off | No, hands off | Yes | No, hands off |
The "at search time only" note deserves an explanation, because it is the most common misunderstanding. Google Flights can filter by layovers, times and airline at search time. But once you turn on the price alert, it tracks the route and the dates, not the filters you had just applied. So you get notified about flights you had explicitly ruled out. That is documented behaviour, not a defect.
If you want inspiration without configuring anything
This is the need Going serves best, and it holds up from Canada too — provided you take Premium, since the free tier does not apply to you.
On the Quebec side, deal blogs and newsletters cover Montreal departures specifically, such as Les Vols d'Alexi. The selection is narrower than a US service, but it is relevant to your airports, which matters more than raw volume.
If you are watching one specific route
This is the most common case, and the one curation services serve worst.
Google Flights is the obvious starting point: free, reliable, with a flexible-dates mode that follows the lowest fare over three to six months. Its limits are known — it tells you a price changed, not that it is good — and we cover them in what they do, and where they stop.
Hopper suits you if you book from your phone and its price-freeze products appeal. Its alerts stay deliberately simple: they feed its booking funnel.
Kestrelia is designed for exactly this case: you describe the acceptable flight — route, budget, layovers, baggage, time windows, airlines — and the alert only fires for that.
If your constraints are real
Fixed dates, checked bag required, no overnight layover, one airline to avoid: no curation service can answer that, by construction. It sends the same offer to everyone.
That is the clean line between the two families of tools. A curation service optimises the destination. A monitoring engine optimises your constraint. If the trip is already decided, only the second can help.
The criterion people forget: currency and point of sale
A detail that costs money in Canada. Many US services think in US dollars and US departures, which produces two effects: prices that look better than they are once converted, and itineraries that assume you first get yourself to Boston or New York.
Always check which currency the offer is quoted in, and which airport it actually departs from.
How do you choose, in one sentence?
Looking for where to go? A curation service, Going first among them if you accept Premium. Know what you want? A monitoring engine.
Plenty of travellers run both, and that is sensible: one opens up ideas, the other executes the trip already decided. To set up the second properly, start with how to set up an alert that only pings you when it matters, and read our detailed review of the Going subscription if you are still weighing whether to pay.
Method and disclosure
Who is writing this. Kestrelia is one of the tools compared. We hold no affiliate relationship with Going, Hopper or Google: we earn nothing if you pick one of them, and nothing if you book a flight either. Our revenue is the subscription, full stop.
Where the numbers come from. Going's tiers and prices come from its public pages (going.com/flights, going.com/elite), checked on 9 September 2026. Hopper sells no subscription for its alerts: its revenue comes from booking and from its flexibility products. The capabilities described are the ones each service documents publicly.
What can go stale. Prices change, and first-year promotions are common at Going. Check the service's own page before paying. If you spot an error in this table, tell us: we would rather fix it than leave it standing.