Skip Hopper if you wanted a price from the website. On October 31, 2026 hopper.com returned the marketing title and a reCAPTCHA challenge. The HTML did not restate Price Freeze, a rise-or-fall prediction, or a dollar fee. The October 30 listing saw the same shell. The October 18 listing is still the one that described free search and paid extras. Do not treat that older listing as a fee you can quote today.
Read the FTC release before you buy an add-on. On July 2, 2026 the Commission said Hopper Inc. and Hopper (USA) Inc. agreed to pay $35 million and would be prohibited from deceiving consumers about fees. The release calls the order a proposed order. It says the complaint alleges Tip and VIP Support fees were optional, pre-selected, and easy to miss, including on a screen that appeared only if you scrolled. It says that since 2023 Hopper still failed to disclose that Tip fees were optional. It says VIP Support was described as reaching a person instantly or within a few minutes, and that many buyers could not reach an agent or waited a long time. It says Price Freeze, also called Hold the Room, was sold as a way to hold a price and to apply the fee to the booking. The complaint alleges the price is protected only up to a cap, only if the booking is still available, and that the fee was not applied to the booking as promised. Those are the FTC's allegations, as printed in the release. They are the reason to read the cap, the dates, and whether the fee counts toward the trip.
Use Google Flights when you want a cash fare and a notification without that add-on. This guide did not reload it. On October 21 the page showed a date grid and a price graph, said price insights use history, and said you can track a route or a flight and get notified when the price drops. It listed no search fee. The alert does not freeze the fare. You buy the ticket on the next site.
If the currency is points, neither of those pages is the award search. Use the award-flight guide for seats.aero, PointsYeah, point.me, and Roame. A Hopper prediction, on the last listing that described one, is not a promise the cash fare will drop.