Which airport should I fly into?
Tell it where in Europe you want to be and where you are flying from. It checks a nearby city plus a train, the airports within the city, and who flies it cheapest, against 1,037 fares we priced ourselves.
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Across every US gateway we price
Fly into Florence
No neighboring city saves $100 or more on median once you count the hours on the ground. Land where you are going.
What Florence costs
$764 median round trip across the US gateways we price. Pick your airport for your own figure. Florence is the 28th-cheapest of 40 European cities we rank.
Land nearby instead
| Fly into | Fare | Saving | On the ground | Per hour | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rome | $669 | $95 | 1.5 h by train | $63 | marginal |
Hours are the scheduled time on the fastest regular service, airport transfers excluded. The ground ticket is not priced; $100 is the saving below which it rarely survives one.
Who flies it cheapest
Pick your US airport to see which airline sold it cheapest from there.
The cheapest US gateway for Florence in our grid is Boston at $594.
What it checks, and in what order
A neighboring city and a train. Our grid prices 41 European cities, and 16 of them sit within about five hours of a cheaper neighbor by scheduled train, coach or ferry. The picker prices the neighbor from your own airport, subtracts, and divides by the hours on the ground, because ranked by raw saving Santorini looks like the best swap in Europe and Edinburgh a waste of time, and ranked by what each hour actually buys they trade places. A swap is worth pricing at $100 or more; below that the ground ticket usually eats it.
The airports within the city. London, Paris, Milan and Rome each have more than one airport, and our arrival-airports dataset prices every one of them from every US gateway. The picker shows them from your airport, cheapest first, and marks an airport with no US itinerary as absent rather than expensive. Stansted and Bergamo are cheap from inside Europe. From here they are a connection with a budget-airline brand attached.
Who flies it cheapest, and from where. The carrier grid names the airline that sold your route cheapest in the week we priced and whether it connects, so you know whether the floor is a nonstop or a Keflavik layover. The city grid names the cheapest US gateway for the city, and the picker states the gap to yours; at $200 or more it is worth pricing a positioning flight against, on a separate ticket with a real buffer.
Why it is not a list of budget airports
Every guide to cheap European airports is written for people already in Europe. Fly from Stansted, Beauvais, Bergamo. From the US, those are the most expensive places in our data to reach, because almost nothing flies to them from here and the itinerary that does has two stops. The picker only ever suggests a city we have actually priced from your gateway, and it will tell you to land where you are going far more often than not, because that is what the data says.
What it cannot tell you
The city grid is a snapshot, collected in one sitting so that no two fares in it are compared across different weeks; the carrier line comes from a separate grid priced for one fixed travel week, so the two figures on the panel are two answers, not one. Neither is a bookable price. The ground ticket is not priced at all. And a swap is only suggested where a declared surface link exists: if the tool shows no alternative, it means we have not found one worth declaring, not that none exists.
The full method and the two grids behind it are downloadable on the open data page, and the written version of the swap argument, with every pair ranked, is Fly Into a Different City.
The picker tells you where to land. It cannot tell you when the fare to land there drops, and that is the half of the problem that needs someone watching the route.
Common questions
- How does the picker decide which airport to fly into?
- Three checks against our own fare data, in order. First, whether a neighboring city with a scheduled train, coach or ferry link under about five hours was cheaper from your airport by at least $100, measured per hour on the ground. Second, where the city has more than one airport with US service, which airport was cheapest from your airport. Third, which airline sold the route cheapest from your airport and which US gateway was cheapest for the city, so you can see what a positioning flight would have to beat.
- Why does it only know 16 nearby-city swaps?
- Because the pairs are chosen by geography before any fare is looked at: a city in our grid, a cheaper neighbor also in our grid, and a scheduled surface connection under about five hours. They are deliberately not chosen by how much they save, which would manufacture the finding. Several of the 16 save nothing, and the tool shows them and says so.
- My city is not in the list. Why?
- The picker prices 41 European cities, the ones in our fare grid, from 26 US gateway metros. A city outside the grid has no observed fare, and we do not estimate one from a neighbor. If your destination is not listed, the nearest listed city is usually the right place to start, and the swaps table will tell you whether it is worth landing there.
- Does the saving include the train or ferry ticket?
- No. The saving is the difference between two airfares from your airport, and the hours are the scheduled time on the fastest regular service. Ground tickets vary too much by date and booking window to price honestly in a grid, so the $100 threshold is the saving below which a swap rarely survives one. Price the ground leg before you book the flight.
- Why does the answer change when I pick my airport?
- Because the swap that saves $200 from the median can save nothing from your airport, and the reverse. Every departure city prices Europe differently, so the picker recomputes every figure against your own gateway's fares the moment you choose it. Without a gateway it uses the median across all of them, which is a fact about the city rather than about you.
Written by
Jon Miksis
Jon Miksis has run travel businesses since 2017 and spends 3–6 months a year traveling, two to three of them in Europe. He has taken 250+ flights and booked every one himself, and regularly flies Boston to Europe for under $300 round trip. Every “Flown” review is from his own seat.
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