KAYAK Flights, Hotels & Cars for iOS

The five-star Kayak for iPhone app helps you search for and book the top flight, hotel, and rental car deals.

Pros

Three ways to sign in: In this era of concern over Facebook's privacy practices, it's comforting to know that we can sign in to Kayak using not only a Facebook account but also a Google or Kayak account. If you're new to Kayak, it's easy to create an account.

Searches hundreds of travel sites for the best deals: Kayak searches top flight, hotel, and rental car deals and serves them to you. You'll also find mobile-only rates and Private Deals for added savings, within the app.

Robust hotel pages: Tap any hotel and see beautiful photos, detailed descriptions and info, and helpful reviews.

Explore: Use the Explore feature to set your airfare budget and Kayak will show you all the places you can travel to without breaking your bank.

Enables you to book via the app: In Kayak, you're able to book via the app, so there's no need to re-enter your traveler and payment info on partner sites.

Price Alerts: If any airfare or hotel price is still too expensive for you, you can set a price alert and get notified when the cost drops.

Trips: Kayak's Trips feature allows you to organize your travel itinerary -- flight status updates, airport terminal maps with step-by-step directions, security wait times, gate changes, baggage claim notifications, and more -- all in one place. If you didn't originally book on Kayak, you can still use this feature by auto-importing bookings from your Gmail account or forwarding emailed confirmations to trips@kayak.com. Then you can refer to your itinerary whenever you need to -- online or off.

Flight Tracker: The Flight Tracker feature enables you to track your real-time departure and arrival times and also monitor your flight's progress, once you're on the plane, in the map view.

Cons

More photos needed: The Kayak app is definitely more text heavy than, say, TripAdvisor's, which is brimming with beautiful photography. This makes it less appealing to the eye.

Bottom Line

Kayak is an indispensable iPhone app for those looking to book travel on a budget.

• Headed to a show and want to stay close bykwscnmrk Search hotels using a specific address to find one near you.

• Want a hotel that's on the waterkwscnmrk Close to shoppingkwscnmrk Away from nightlifekwscnmrk We redesigned our hotel maps so it's easier to see if you're by the hot spots.

• Nobody likes hidden fees. That's why we're calling out Basic Economy fares in flight search results.

• Found the flight option you want but looking to upgradekwscnmrk See different fare options on select flights.

• Bug fixes and improvements ... making things faster and better (all day, every day).