Guide to Buying Round the World Tickets: A Cost Comparison

Last updated on January 13, 2023

Should you buy a round the world plane ticket or book as you go? This is the biggie question for many RTW travelers. Well, which one costs more? That answer depends on the logistics of every single trip and every type of traveler. Even something as simple as traveling with carry on luggage can affect which option is more cost-effective for your trip. The other thing new travelers seldom fully grasp are the complex rules associated with an actual round the world ticket (RTW ticket) from an airline alliance (the three available being Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam).

Instead of drilling only into costs of a round-the-world ticket (which while valid really eclipses some of the other major pros and cons), a better question is: Which flight ticketing option fits my travel style and trip goals? Let’s look at an overview of what it takes to buy an around-the-world plane ticket (the rules, restrictions, and costs), and then the granular details of flights and country-level restrictions when booking long-term round the world travel.

Buying Around the World Plane Tickets Through an Airline Alliance

Round the world tickets have a few key advantages that makes this an attractive option for certain types of trips. But there are drawbacks too. Really, it’s a specific decision that appeals to some travelers. If you’re keen to fly on a formal RTW ticket, your two primary options are Star Alliance and OneWorld. These two around the world ticket providers are also the two largest airline alliances in the world. Between the two, they represent the vast majority of the world’s major airline carriers. The third alliance is too small to be a viable option for most round the world trips, but for clarity’s sake that one is SkyTeam. None of these alliances include the many budget airlines that have cropped up on nearly every continent.

When you book a RTW ticket through an airline alliance, there are a few conventions of the industry and rules you will have to follow.

How Oneworld and Star Alliance Plans Work

With both airlines, you are offered total flexibility on which destinations you add to your itinerary—it’s completely customizable. That said, the rules start in how many, the order of countries you visit, how many overland segments you add, and the number of continents along your route. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s offered by the two airline alliances you may be considering for your RTW tickets:

Star Alliance

A Star Alliance standard RTW flight package consists of 15 stops and 39,000 miles (that means 16 flights), all of your flights must be on Star Alliance airlines. You are also offered five overland segments in your trip—so you can land in Rome and fly out of London (doing overland bit via Eurorail or budget flights). Notable, however, is that the mileage on overland segments still counts against your total miles. The other Star Alliance is a RTW-adjacent ticket called “Circle Pacific,” which only allows you a route around countries that border the Pacific—while it’s likely your trip will include more than these countries, there is a fair bit on offer so it’s worth investigating!

Oneworld

Oneworld‘s offerings are a bit different—you can have a continent-based ticket (called oneworld Explorer) or a mileage-based one (called Global Explorer). A continent-based oneworld Explorer ticket allows you to price out based on the number of continents visited (three, four, or six) and then you can use up to 16 flight segments, which includes connecting flights. In this way, overland travel would not count against your RTW ticket. Obviously, the more continents you add to this segment-based itinerary, the more the ticket costs. The Global Explorer, on the other hand, prices the RTW ticket by total mileage (26,000; 29,000; 34,000; or 39,000). If you’re planning to skip a couple of continents (I skipped three!), this can really work out in your favor and give you a lot of flexibility for the rest of your route. Like Star Alliance, Oneworld offers a Circle Pacific fare, which does not require you to cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.

Pros of Buying RTW Tickets Through an Alliance

• RTW tickets can be a cost-effective option if you are planning to visit multiple destinations around the world.
• RTW tickets often include stopovers at no additional cost, which can be a great way to add extra destinations to your trip.
• RTW tickets can provide peace of mind, as all of your flights are booked in advance and you don’t have to worry about finding and booking flights as you go.

For the sake of ease, I will just list the most relevant rules you will have to follow if you choose to buy your flights on a round the world ticket through an alliance.

Cons of Buying RTW Tickets Through an Alliance

• RTW tickets may be more expensive upfront than booking flights individually.
• RTW tickets may have restrictions and fees, such as change fees or blackout dates.
• RTW tickets may not offer as much flexibility as booking flights individually, as you are committed to a specific route and may not be able to make last-minute changes.

Alliances Rules for Around the World Tickets

• Because you bulk-buy your tickets at the beginning, you can sometimes find that there are real cost benefits—you are never buying last-minute tickets and scrambling on oversold flights at a busy time of year.
• They last a year.
• You’re booking with an alliance and can sometimes redeem miles you may have earned through travel hacking. You do, however, earn miles along your route.
• You are limited to airlines within the alliance that you select.
• You cannot backtrack on your route. While you can move around a continent freely, your flights can never backtrack from the direction you choose around the world. (Here’s why I think picking a world travel itinerary that flies West is the best option for most.)
• You must start and end in the same country.
• You have to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
• You eliminate a potential source of stress. You won’t need to spend a day searching flights and considering possible routes, you decided all of that before you left.

Buying Piecemeal Flights Through an Airline Aggregator

Airline aggregators are how most of us book our flights. If you use Expedia, Skyscanner, or Kayak to book your vacations, then you know that these aggregators list the prices for a range of airlines flying your desired route. For RTW tickets, there are a couple of specific search engines designed to accommodate multi-stop trips. I suggest starting your search with Indie and Airtreks.

RTW tickets on the flight aggregators do not use the formal rules of a typical round the world ticket, so you also lose the benefits that come with the airline alliance tickets. Aggregators mix and match airlines and airline alliances to find the best flight prices for every segment of your trip. These tickets come in at a much lower price than Alliance tickets, but offer few of the perks. The only thing you really gain is that you have your flights pre-booked, which is ideal for trips up to six months. For longer trips, I find that booking a year’s worth of flights is impractical for most people. It locks you into a rigidly fixed route and timeline around the world.

Pros of Booking Round the World Flights As You Go

• Booking flights as you go allows for more flexibility, as you can make changes or adjust your itinerary as needed.
• You may actually find better deals on flights if you book closer to the travel date.
• You will have more control over your route and the airlines you fly with—this can be good if you’re travel hacking on certain airlines to offset some of the cost of your round the world trip.

Cons of Booking Round the World Flights As You Go

Booking flights as you go can be more time-consuming, as you will need to research and book each flight. This is the main drawback—but if you’re on a long trip of six months or more, really you will have down time to research flights.

RTW Tickets vs. Booking As You Go Showdown

• Many RTW ticket aggregators use only major airlines, so you may find better deals for segments of that trip on regional budget airlines.
• If you book through these aggregator companies, what you will have is a series of separate tickets. If you want to move your dates, you will pay the traditional fees associated with each airline impacted by your change.
• Your route and trip is pre-planned so you are relieved of the stress of planning as you travel.
• Both companies, AirTreks and Indie, offer guidance as you plan, which is a nice benefit if the flight planning part is high-stress for you.
• Budget airlines charge for a lot of “extras” that mainstream airlines do not, and many also arrive into alternative airports (those that may be far outside of your destination city and require hefty taxi fees or long bus rides after your flight).

In the years since my first long-term trip, I have used Indie for even just multi-stop tickets. The Indie search engine found a great deal for my Africa flights that I booked from the U.S. into South Africa and out of Kenya. The BootsnAll crew is responsive and helpful and the search tool is intuitive.

How to Book Flights as You Travel Around the World

On my round the world trip, I tracked every single dollar spent on my round the world trip. And after it was over, I estimate that booking tickets as I traveled totaled out to slightly more than having purchased a piecemeal ticket before I left. And it was significantly less (by about $2,000) than a RTW ticket through an airline alliance. I flew on one-way tickets around the world, and I booked many puddle jumpers on smaller, low-cost airlines too. Take a look at my route around the world. I visited 15 countries and several were grouped in regions of the world that facilitated overland travel. On my route, I valued the flexibility of my trip far more than the idea that I could have saved a couple hundred dollars by having booked a pre-set route through one of the aggregators.

Booking as the year progressed also allowed me to take suggestions from other travelers and to adapt my RTW Itinerary to suit my evolving goals as I traveled (which embraced slow travel toward the end). Also, to be honest, I didn’t have the money to spring for a ticket up front, and in the end I was grateful not to have to align myself with the rules and requirements and strict timetable of a RTW ticket. That said, some travelers rave about their RTW ticket experience.

Warning: Piecemeal Flights Mean You Have No Proof of Onward Travel

One big heads up—and it’s very important for anyone using this style of travel—some countries require that you have an outbound ticket before you can board the flight or enter the country. In my more than 13 years of travel, this has cropped up twice as a big issue. I was not allowed to board my flight from Melbourne to Bangkok until I had proof that I was leaving Thailand within 30-days of my arrival (North Americans are given a free 30-day visa on arrival in Thailand). This is not a rule that Thailand immigration enforces, but it was a random rule for the airline I had unwittingly booked. Australian airlines are notoriously strict about checking outbound flights. Then, the same thing happened traveling from Mexico to Costa Rica—this is a hard and fast rule that is widely enforced for Costa Rica-bound travelers. I say this so that you are aware of the possibility. Many long-term travelers fly on one-way tickets and show up with fingers crossed that they won’t have their outbound flights checked. You can mitigate this by planning the next stage of your trip, by booking a refundable plane or bus ticket to another country, or by arriving to the airport early and booking a ticket over wifi/cellular data if it’s required.

To my mind, booking airline tickets as you travel affords the most flexibility for your trip, but the biggest benefits manifest on round the world trips that will last longer than six months. If you decide to book your flights along the way, or to book each one independently, below I list my favorite flight search engines and route planning tools.

The Core Pros & Cons of Around the World Tickets

If you’re in a hurry, here are the five core points within the “Buy RTW Ticket” debate:

1. Flexibility. With the RTW plane ticket, you are locked into a firm route and you know the cost of your flights before you leave. If you book as you go, prices might rise as you travel but you’ll have the ability to change your route mid-trip.
2. Type of Flights. You will use the world’s major airline alliances on an around the world ticket. Booking as you go means you’ll likely spend more time flying on budget, low-cost, no-frills airlines.
3. Planning Stress. You either face the stress of spotty wifi on the on the road or you bite the bullet beforehand and add route planning into the madness of preparing for your round-the-world trip.
4. Cost Comparison. How do the airfare costs really stack up at the end of a trip? Since every person’s dream trip is different, you really have to price out the tickets yourself and see if the round-the-world ticket falls within your flight budget and goals.
5. Amenities. Decide the style of travel you prefer and then compare which type of planet ticket will offer the best all around—service, cost, and product—for your specific goals.

Are Around-the-World Tickets Worth It?

BootsnAll put together a free downloadable comparison guide for RTW tickets, and it has a sample of the different prices all of the various alliances would charge on sample routes—it’s a useful read! It’s older but still gives a good idea of what you’re facing when you buy an around the world plane ticket.

That comparison report has good average costs for round-the-world tickets. For your own trip, to budget for the expense, I recommend that you use the airline aggregators as a rough estimate of what you should save before travel. Use Indie/ Airtreks to price out your route at the time of year you will travel (even if you’ll actually be booking flights in a couple years, try to align your search to a rough timeline of when you would be taking these flights). Be generous with your estimates here. If there is one outlier flight route that comes up far cheaper than the others, go with an anticipated cost that sits in the median of those that come up in the search engine.

Pricing out daily travel budgets for various countries is easier than flights in many ways. Accommodation averages tend to stay steady over the years—the percent of increase year over year doesn’t noticeably affect a travel budget. Airline prices, on the other hand, fluctuate on everything from current route competition to the global price of oil. If you’re creating an anticipated budget for future travel then budget high for the flights and you can adjust it as your trip nears and the flight prices become more indicative of the actual costs you will encounter as you travel.

If you’re undecided about which choice is best, know that there is no right answer here. They both work for different reasons. My best advice is to plan just enough of your trip to stave off the panic attacks. Leave the bulk of your trip planning to your actual trip. This works particularly well for trips that are longer than six months. That may sound crazy, but disassembling your life is enough work. Once you are on the road, you will quickly learn how you want to travel and what you prioritize. I suggest that you book a hostel/hotel for the first week you land at the first stop on your around-the-world itinerary—then, I swear that the rest will work out. You don’t have to plan the sights, the transport, the nitty-gritty details. That will all happen organically once you land and start talking to other travelers. Once I was actually on the road, I was amazed by how much I had over-stressed in the weeks leading up to my round the world trip.

And from a travel-hacking perspective on flights, if you’re keen to use airline miles and that sort of thing, Chris Guillebeau shared his RTW ticket buying strategies and there are also programs online that teach you how to accrue miles and how to best redeem them for great flight deals. I only lightly dabble in travel hacking (I own a Chase Sapphire Reserve card—arguably the best travel credit card—and use it exclusively when I am paying for anything and everything. I earn about one $800 flight each year, and I could do far better if I invested time in the travel hacking techniques that many friends successfully employ).

How to Research Tickets and Prices

If you’re not completely sure which option works best for your trip, dive into the links below to price out various routes and options. Also, this post shares my exact process for finding great flight deals.

Search Engines for Regular Flights:

• Kayak: I usually start here for my flight searches to get a baseline on the costs, then I move on to a search engine that pulls in more of the low-cost carriers.
• Skyscanner: Use this as your first source for booking flights to or within Asia; the search engine pulls in a lot of the low-cost airlines too and can offer up some great fares you won’t find on the other aggregators.
• Expedia: I have been surprised by some of the great flights I find on here leaving from the US, particularly if you book in advance and have some of the major hub cities as stopping points.
• Google Flights: You know it’s good if it’s from Google, the king of search. This is a nice place to get a baseline for price estimates at the time of year you’ll be traveling.
• Matrix.itasoftware.com: Access to the backend that many travel agents use to find flight deals. It’s not in my regular lineup, but I always have this one in my back pocket.
• Research online: I found many tiny airlines in Africa that are not listed in any aggregator, so checking a guidebook or online for local low-cost airlines in some regions is a good idea.
• Amazing List of Low-Cost Flight Routes: This is a google map with flight routes all the world’s low-cost airlines fly.

Best Search Engines for RTW Flights:

• Indie from Bootsnall
• Airtreks
• STA Travel for students
• Flight Centre

Best Airline Alliances for RTW Tickets:

• Star Alliance
• OneWorld