The Hopper Travel App

A new mobile app is aiming to take some of the stress and uncertainty out of the process of shopping for plane tickets. The app is called Hopper, and it’s available on iTunes for free.

The app synthesizes data from multiple sources to determine when travelers should fly and when they should buy tickets, to ensure the best prices are obtained. The company says they can save you as much as 40 percent on plane tickets and that 95 percent of the time you’ll end up with a flight that’s cheaper — or at least the same price — as if you’d bought on Expedia or Kayak or directly from the airline.

Hopper dispenses with the idea that there is a “best day to buy,” and instead has a Watch a Trip feature which helps you snag the lowest fare as soon as it’s released. The app sends a push notification letting you know about a low fare and also tells you if fares are likely to go down again or climb. The other aspect of the app is the When to Fly feature that detects the best dates for cheap fares and displays them with a color-coded calendar. It also shows cheaper airports to fly into.