Here is how most of us buy flights. Open Google Flights, see the first price, worry it will go up tomorrow, book. Then checkout adds the bag, the seat, the card fee, and the final number looks nothing like the one you clicked on.
This kind of digging is usually done by the one friend who enjoys comparing sites for hours. Now that friend can be Claude. The prompt below gives it the role of a travel hacker and a clear list: what to check, what to be suspicious of and how to present the result.
The result is not text. Claude builds an interactive dashboard: your best pick on top, every site's price in one chart, a filterable table, a ±3 day price grid and a discounts panel. One look and you know where it is actually cheap and where it is just a pretty number.
The Prompt
Copy the whole thing and change only what is in brackets.
Travel Hacker Fare Dashboard
Adopt the role of a travel hacker who's never paid the first fare they saw.
Route: [FROM] → [TO]
Dates: [DEPART] (return [RETURN] or one way)
Passengers: [X adults]
Flexibility: [exact dates / ±3 days / any weekend in month]
Bags: [cabin only / 1 checked]
Research:
→ every site selling this route (airline direct, Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak, Kiwi, Momondo), with today's fare and flight times
→ the total I'd actually pay at each one after bags, seat selection, card fees and currency conversion
→ any working promo code, cashback portal, resident discount or airline price-match, with the link
→ who's actually issuing the ticket: the airline, a major OTA or a third-party reseller
→ cheaper alternatives: nearby airports, two one ways, shifting a day, a hidden stopover
→ a fare-drop alert on the best route
Flag resellers with bad refund records, fares that look too low to be real, and OTAs that add card fees at checkout. Don't book anything.
OUTPUT: do not answer in text or tables. Build one interactive HTML artifact, a fare dashboard, with:
Hero card at the top: my best pick, total price in large type, one line on why, and a "Book on [site]" button that opens the exact search URL for those flights and dates (not the site's homepage).
Three summary cards side by side: Cheapest real, Cheapest any risk, Headline bait. Each with price, issuer badge (Airline / OTA / Reseller, color coded green / amber / red) and the catch.
Price comparison bar chart: every site, same flights, total for all passengers, sorted low to high. Bars colored by issuer type. Hovering a bar shows the breakdown: base fare, bags, seats, card fee.
Filterable fare table below the chart: columns Site, Price, Issuer, Bags included, Change fee, Refund record, Link. Toggles for "hide resellers", "include checked bag", "show only direct flights". Column headers sort on click. Every site name is a live link to that site's results page for this route.
Flexibility strip: a small date grid (±3 days each way) showing the cheapest total per combination, with the chosen dates highlighted.
Alternatives panel: nearby airports and split tickets as cards, each with the saving versus my best pick and a link.
Discounts panel: each promo, cashback or price-match offer as a card with the code, a copy button and the link. Mark the ones you verified today.
Footer: date and time of the price check, and a note that fares move.
Design: clean, mobile friendly, dark mode aware, no stock colors. Use real numbers only; where you could not verify a price, show it greyed with "unverified" rather than inventing it.
Works in Claude with web search turned on. Without web access the model cannot see live fares and the dashboard will be mostly "unverified".
How to Use It
Step 1
Fill in the brackets
Route, dates, passengers, flexibility, bags. The more specific you are, the better the result. If your dates are open, write ±3 days. That is where the biggest savings usually hide.
Step 2
Paste it into Claude with web search on
The prompt only works when the model can open websites. Turn on web search in Claude, paste the full text and send. Give it a few minutes. This is research, not a chat.
Step 3
Check the numbers
Grey "unverified" prices in the dashboard mean Claude could not confirm them. Before you pay, open the link and see the fare with your own eyes. AI is your assistant, not your cashier.
Step 4
Book from the source
If the airline and a reseller are a few euros apart, go with the airline. The moment a flight changes or gets cancelled, those few euros save you far more.
Claude · Prompt