seats.aero is an award availability search engine that scans roughly two dozen frequent flyer programs at once, Qantas Frequent Flyer and Velocity among them. Seats.aero shows where the reward seats are across routes, dates and cabins in a single view. It answers a key question for points collectors: not how many points a seat costs, but where a bookable seat exists. It does this at a scale that would be difficult to match with manual searches. The free tier looks two months ahead. The Pro subscription, priced at AU$12.99 a month or AU$129.99 a year as of September 2026, extends the view across the full booking horizon and adds alerts. Here is what seats.aero searches and how its free tier works. We’ll also cover what Pro adds and the limitations Australian users should know before using a tool for a reward seat search.
What seats.aero is and which programs it searches
seats.aero, at seats.aero, works by collecting the award availability that frequent flyer programs display on their own websites and making it searchable in bulk. You pick a route or a region and the tool returns the reward seats it has seen, program by program, cabin by cabin, with the points price each program attaches. The program list covers roughly two dozen programs, and spans the currencies Australian collectors hold or reach, including Qantas Frequent Flyer and Velocity. The list also covers partner programs that Australian bank points feed. This lets you check where a Membership Rewards or Velocity balance could be used before making a transfer.
That before-the-transfer stage is where the tool can be particularly useful for Australian points collectors. Transferable points are committed to an airline program once you transfer them. The right order of operations is seat first, transfer second. A bulk availability search can find the seat without opening six program sites.
The free search and its two month window
The free tier runs the same search engine with one large restriction. It only shows departures within roughly the next two months. For a near-term trip, especially in economy, where availability can be broader, that window may not be enough. The free tier costs nothing to keep in the rotation alongside the airline sites themselves.
The restriction matters most when you are planning premium cabin trips well in advance. Premium cabin reward seats on popular routes can be released about eleven months out and may disappear quickly. Additional availability can also appear later. As a result, many seats worth planning a year ahead will fall outside the free search window.
- Warning: the free tier sees only two months ahead, and the premium cabin seats on marquee routes are often released and taken well outside that window. This gap is what the Pro tier’s longer search window and alerts are designed to address.
What Pro adds: the long view, alerts and fare class searches
Pro, at AU$12.99 a month or AU$129.99 a year, removes the time restriction and adds alerts. Route and date-range alerts notify you when a seat appears, so you can monitor availability instead of checking manually. For premium cabin travellers, alerts are a key part of the product. A business class reward seat can disappear within minutes of being released.
Pro also offers fare-bucket searching. It surfaces the underlying availability classes that determine what a program can book. This once required a separate specialist subscription. Point Hacks’ reward seat testing found the capability strong enough to potentially replace a dedicated fare class tool for some users, which says a lot about how far general-purpose searchers have come.
The Australian angle and the gaps to know
Used from Australia, the tool’s coverage comes with edges worth knowing before relying on it. It shows what each program’s own website displays, nothing more. Availability that a program holds but does not display online will not appear. Partner seats that a program can book by phone but not display online will not appear. A Velocity search, for example, reflects what Velocity’s site displays rather than every seat Velocity could theoretically ticket. Coverage of Qantas domestic routes is limited, so the tool may be more useful for international searches than for a Sydney to Melbourne reward search. Some seats are released only to its program’s elite tiers, so a status holder can find seats the tool cannot.
Within those edges, it pairs naturally with the Australian built tools rather than replacing them. Gyoza Flights approaches the same hunt from the Qantas and Velocity side, with flight loads attached. Seats.aero’s breadth suits the question of which program to transfer points to. Both tools sit within the broader toolkit covered in the Point Hacks reward seat search guide. It is the next read once you find a seat and need to book it.
Frequently asked questions
The free tier is genuinely free and searches departures within about two months. Pro costs AU$12.99 a month or AU$129.99 a year as of September 2026, billed in Australian dollars. It removes the time restriction and adds alerts and fare-class searching.
Yes, both are searchable directly, with the caveats that Qantas domestic coverage is thin and each program’s results reflect only what that program’s own website displays.
For a transferable points balance shopping across programs, or a premium cabin hunt beyond the next two months, Pro’s long view and alerts are the difference between finding the seat and reading about it. For near-term economy trips, the free tier plus the airline sites usually suffices.
They serve the same hunt with different program coverage and pricing models. The comparison comes down to which programs your points live in. For an Australian collector, the deciding question is usually direct Qantas and Velocity coverage, which seats.aero carries.
Fees, rates and figures quoted are correct at the time of publication and should be verified directly with each provider before acting on them.
This article is general in nature and does not constitute personal financial advice. Consider your own financial situation before applying for any credit product. Point Hacks may receive a commission from card issuers for applications made through this site.
