Kiwi.com Nomad alternatives: PanFlights, Stopover, Google Flights multi-city, and by hand

Kiwi.com’s own description: Nomad “allows you to input multiple destinations and your desired duration of stay in each of them, before it calculates the cheapest possible route,” and it “shuffles the destinations you input and finds you the most cost-effective itinerary.” You set a departure city and date, the nights away, the places and the nights in each; three or more destinations. You book on Kiwi.com, and the page describes the Kiwi.com Guarantee for a connection missed because of a delay. It is the right tool when you want the route and the booking in one place.

What people look for an alternative for: a window of dates rather than one departure date, trains where they beat the plane, seeing the orders that came close and what each would cost, and booking with the airline rather than through an agency.

A flexible flight search with a fare calendar and a map, launched in July 2016 by its own account. Its home page describes the mode this way: “With ‘Optimized tour’ you can enter multiple places. This is enough. When you’re planning to visit multiple places, the city order, the travel dates, and even which cities to visit is often not important,” and “with your requirements set, PanFlights calculates route suggestions for you. You may adjust one suggested route by clicking ‘Customize’.” The same page says it can “combine flight with train or bus” and sort by carbon emissions.

On booking and price, its FAQ: “Is PanFlights an online travel agency? No. We are a travel planner and price comparison service. You can make bookings on external websites via given links.” The right tool when you are flexible about which cities as well as their order, and when the carbon figure matters to you.

Stopover is a free multi-city trip planner: give it your home airport, the cities you want to visit and a date window, and it prices every order the cities could go in, on dates that fit together, and gives you the cheapest one, with a link to book each flight.

You give a home airport, up to 7 cities in any order, a window of dates, a range of nights per city and the travelers. It prices every order on dates that fit together inside the window, recommends one, shows the orders that came close and what each would cost, and prices a train or bus on the legs where it beats the plane. It does not sell tickets: each leg links to Google Flights, Kiwi.com, Skyscanner or the airline, at their price. Free, no account, up to 3 trips a day; a free account adds live prices on every leg.

Across the 72 routes measured on this site, the order people type costs a median of $189 a person more than the cheapest order, and the gap grows with the number of cities. The right tool when the order and the dates are open and you want to book each leg yourself.

Try it on Chicago, London, Paris and Rome in June

One of three ticket types beside round trip and one way. In Google’s words you “choose a flight for each part of your trip,” one row per flight with its own date. It prices the order you typed, so comparing orders is one search per order on one set of dates each: six searches for three cities, 120 for five.

The right tool once the order is decided and you want one ticket on one airline or alliance, with the airline responsible for the connections. Whatever found your order, this is a good place to book it.