Triptally vs Skyscanner
Skyscanner is the first thing most travelers open. It is genuinely great at finding the cheapest published airfare, and it surfaces nearby airports on the fly. Triptally starts from a different question — what does the whole trip actually cost when you fold in the drive, the baggage, the rail to the destination, the FX spread, and the award-side of the wallet? The matrix below lines the two up across six axes trip-research nerds actually fight over. Read the Skyscanner column for what they really do well today; read the verdict row by row for where a total-trip lens changes the answer.
Why this pageAirfare-first metasearch vs total-trip ranking.
| Dimension | Triptally | Skyscanner |
|---|---|---|
| Total-cost ranking | Triptally Ranks the cheapest realistic itinerary — primary airfare plus the alt-origin cost, drive, parking, fuel, baggage, ground transit at the destination, and FX. A $229 fare from a regional hub can win over a $199 fare from the big hub once the wallet math is honest. | Ranks strictly on published airfare, ascending. The headline number is the headline number; nothing else folds into the sort order. Alt-airport fares are surfaced alongside, but the ranking itself stays fare-only. |
| Alt-airport comparison | Triptally Compares your home airport against up to two nearby hubs (e.g. DCA vs BWI vs IAD), each ranked on the wallet-total for the same destination and date pair. Drives, parking, and overnight hub-hotel nights are line items in the rank. | Shows fares from "nearby airports" as additional result rows, derived from your origin. Lets you add or remove them, but the comparison does not price the drive or the parking between them. |
| Rail / ground inclusion | Triptally Ground transit is a first-class line item: drive, parking, fuel, rail, and bus at both ends each fold into the ranking. A 3-hour rail leg can beat a 1-hour flight once the airport time, baggage, and city-to-city transfer are priced in. | Flights-only product surface. Rail and bus are not priced, ranked, or surfaced as alternative result rows. Search inputs and result rows are both anchored on the airfare. |
| Baggage & currency awareness | Triptally Checked-bag fees are a line item on every fare card; multi-currency trips normalize against a single wallet currency and surface the FX spread explicitly, so an off-ramp like a London layover does not silently inflate the apparent savings. | Baggage is called out per fare class in the result details, and the UI ships in Euro / Pound / USD / etc. — but it does not carry FX-spread awareness into the rank. A weaker-pound moment in your home currency shows up as the same headline price. |
| Award-seat handling | Triptally Treats an award redemption as a live alternative to cash and values it against the same wallet total. A 60k-mile seat plus $5.60 wins over a $189 cash fare when the redemption math is honest. | Public product handles cash fares cleanly; award availability surfaces through carrier sites but is not in the core airfare ranking. Award + cash trade-offs require manual cross-checking. |
| Price-drop watching | Even Pro members set price-drop alerts on trips already on the books and on trips they are still weighing. Alerts fire against live bookable inventory so the window from drop-to-action stays tight. | App-level price alerts on routes you have searched or saved — a real feature, well-loved by travelers. Useful for fare moves on what you already looked up. |
Run the comparison on the trip you’re actually planning.
Two IATA codes and your dates are enough to rank your home airport against the nearby alternatives on total trip cost — no login, no signup. Already have a trip on the books? Sign in and watch the prices.