Going vs Hopper vs Kestrelia: which one fits you?
These three tools answer different questions. Here is which one each handles, what each refuses to do — us included — and how to decide.
Comparing Going, Hopper and Kestrelia on price makes no sense: they do not solve the same problem. One tells you where to go, one gets you booked, one watches a specific flight. Choosing starts with knowing which of those three sentences describes your situation.
Going answers: "where can I go cheaply?"
Going, formerly Scott's Cheap Flights, is a curation service. A human team spots good fares, an algorithm assists, and subscribers receive a selection based on their departure airports.
It is excellent for a flexible traveller willing to let the deal choose the destination. US departure coverage is the broadest on the market, and one well-caught fare pays for the year.
What Going does not do: answer a specific plan. The same offer goes to every subscriber on a given airport; you do not describe the flight you want. From Canada, coverage is thinner, and the free tier is useless — it is limited to US domestic flights. The detail is in our review of the subscription.
Hopper answers: "how do I book from my phone?"
Hopper is first a mobile travel agency, with financial products attached: price freeze, cancel for any reason, disruption cover. Those products carry a large share of its revenue.
The booking flow is among the most polished in the sector, and the flexibility it sells has real value when a trip is uncertain.
What Hopper does not do: fine-grained monitoring. Its alerts stay deliberately simple because they feed its booking funnel — the full analysis is in why Hopper's alerts are deliberately simple. A tool whose revenue depends on your booking cannot be neutral about when you book.
Kestrelia answers: "when will the flight I want hit my price?"
Kestrelia is a pure-subscription monitoring tool. You describe the acceptable flight — route, budget, layovers, baggage, time windows, airlines, several airports — and the alert fires only for that, when the price drops below its route's usual level.
It is the tool for the trip already decided, or the route you fly every year.
What Kestrelia does not do, and we may as well write it ourselves:
- No inspiration. If you do not know where to go, a curation service serves you better.
- No mistake fares. They last hours; no email alert wins that race.
- No booking. We watch, you book elsewhere. It is a choice, but it is one more step.
- No prediction. We give price context, not the future.
The three side by side
Prices checked on 9 September 2026 on each service's public pages. Going bills in US dollars, Kestrelia in Canadian dollars: at current rates the real gap is smaller than it looks.
| Going | Hopper | Kestrelia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Where can I go cheaply? | How do I book? | When will my flight hit my price? |
| Price | Free, US$49/yr, US$199/yr | Free | C$99.96/yr or C$29.97/3 months |
| Business model | Subscription + affiliate | Booking + financial products | Pure subscription |
| Who picks the destination | The service | You | You |
| Criteria per alert | Departure airports | Route and dates | 31 |
| Same send to every subscriber | Yes | Not applicable | No |
| Books on your behalf | No | Yes | No |
| Interest in you buying soon | Moderate (affiliate) | Strong (direct revenue) | None |
| Mistake fares | Yes, its strength | No | No |
| Price prediction | No | Yes | No, historical context only |
| Canadian departures | Thin coverage | Yes | Built for them |
The line that matters most is "interest in you buying soon". A tool whose revenue depends on your booking cannot be perfectly neutral about when to book. That is not an accusation, it is an incentive structure — and it cuts the other way for us too: our revenue does not move whether you book or not, which is why we carry no booking link and take no commission.
How to decide, concretely
Take Going if you fly several times a year, if you accept letting the deal choose the destination, and if a weekly inspiration email suits you.
Take Hopper if you book from your phone, if your trip's uncertainty makes a price freeze worthwhile, and if your criteria fit into one route and two dates.
Take Kestrelia if your constraints are real — mandatory checked bag, imposed times, layovers refused — if you watch several routes at once, or if you want a tool with no stake in whether you buy today or in a month.
The common case: run two of them
Plenty of travellers use curation for ideas and monitoring for execution. That is coherent: the two do not compete for the same moment.
Inspiration opens possibilities when nothing is decided. Monitoring executes a plan already made. Wanting one tool to do both is asking a service to send you many offers and very few.
To go further: how a flight alert app works explains the mechanics common to all three, and alternatives to Going for Canadian travellers widens the picture for Canadian departures.
Method and disclosure
Where we stand. Kestrelia is one of the three tools compared, and we are the ones writing. We hold no affiliate relationship with Going or Hopper: we gain nothing if you choose them. The "what Kestrelia does not do" section above exists for the same reason — a comparison that concedes nothing does not deserve to be read.
Sources. Going's tiers and prices checked on going.com/flights and going.com/elite on 9 September 2026. Hopper sells no subscription for its alerts; its model rests on booking and on its flexibility products (price freeze, cancel for any reason). The capabilities described are the ones each service documents publicly.
Shelf life. Prices and tiers change. Check the service's own page before paying, and tell us about any error you spot here.