Hopper
AI price prediction for flights, hotels, and car rentals with book-now-or-wait advice.
About
Hopper is a travel app founded in 2015 by Frederic Lalonde, a former Expedia vice president, with offices in Montreal and Boston. Its core is predictive AI that watches billions of fares and tells you whether to book now or wait, with claimed accuracy above 95%, alongside color-coded price calendars, push alerts when a watched route hits its predicted floor, and a Price Freeze feature that holds a fare for a small fee. The company claims average savings of $50 on domestic and $120 on international flights, and the app has passed 20 million downloads with a 4.8 rating from over 1.2 million App Store reviews, ranking as the #1 travel app in 35+ countries.
The honest weaknesses are well documented. Predictions are probabilistic: a fuel-price spike or schedule cut can blow up the forecast, Reddit users report inaccurate predictions, and Trustpilot reviews skew strongly negative at around 1.3/5 with complaints about refunds and support. Independent roundups advise the same playbook: use Hopper for the forecast, then book directly with the airline, since booking through the app adds a middleman between you and the carrier when disruptions hit.
What it can do
- AI flight and hotel price prediction with book-now-or-wait signals
- Price alerts and color-coded fare calendars
- Price Freeze to hold fares for a fee
- Flights, hotels, and car rental booking
- Carrot Cash rewards and loyalty perks
- Travel disruption protection add-ons
Setup
- Download Hopper on iOS or Android and create a free account.
- Search a route and watch the price calendar's book-now-or-wait guidance.
- Set price alerts on trips you are considering.
- Book through Hopper or take the forecast to the airline directly.
Prerequisites
iOS or Android device; a free Hopper account.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (TIER verified, metrics-v1). Evidence: founded 2015 by ex-Expedia VP, 20M+ downloads, 4.8/5 from 1.2M+ App Store ratings, #1 travel app in 35+ countries per vendor, price-prediction mechanism covered by multiple independent roundups. Strengths: largest independent prediction dataset in consumer travel, genuinely useful forecast UI, free core product. Docked for: (1) prediction accuracy claims are vendor-stated and criticized on Reddit; (2) Trustpilot ~1.3/5 with refund and support complaints, so booking through the app carries service risk. License: proprietary (free app, paid extras).
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 10.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 2.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 7.0/10
- · founded 2015 by ex-Expedia VP Frederic Lalonde; Montreal/Boston
- · 20M+ downloads; 4.8/5 from 1.2M+ App Store ratings; #1 travel app in 35+ countries
- · 95% prediction accuracy is a vendor claim; criticized on Reddit
- · Trustpilot ~1.3/5 with refund/support complaints
- · independent advice: use for forecasts, book with the airline
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.