Why the Same Flight Costs a Different Amount on MakeMyTrip, Ixigo and the Airline's Own Site

You find a Bengaluru to Goa flight for ₹4,212 on one site. You open another and the same IndiGo flight, same date, same seat, is ₹4,589. The airline's own site says ₹4,350. A friend swears Goibibo had it for less yesterday.

Nobody is lying to you. But nobody is showing you the whole picture either. Here is what's actually happening, and how to stop losing forty minutes to it every time you fly.

Same seat, five prices: where the difference comes from

An airline sells a seat at a base fare. Every site that resells that seat then does four things to it, and each site does them differently.

Convenience fees. Every online travel agency adds a per-passenger fee at checkout, typically somewhere between ₹200 and ₹400 per person on domestic flights, and it appears only on the final payment screen. A fare that looks ₹150 cheaper on the search page can end up ₹200 dearer once the fee lands. The airline's own site usually has no convenience fee, which is why it's sometimes the cheapest option even when its headline fare looks higher.

Coupons and bank offers. Each platform runs its own discounts: a flat ₹300 off with a particular credit card, a first-booking coupon, a wallet cashback that arrives a week later. These are real, but they're conditional, and the search results page usually shows the price as if you'll qualify. Half the time you don't.

Fare buckets. Airlines release seats in price tiers. When one tier sells out, the price steps up. Different sites cache fares at slightly different moments, so one may still show a tier that's already gone, which is why a fare can vanish between the results page and the payment page.

Add-on defaults. Some sites pre-select a seat, a meal or travel insurance. The base fare is identical; the total isn't, until you uncheck three boxes.

None of these individually is large. Together, on a family of four, they routinely add up to ₹1,000 or more between the cheapest and the most expensive way to buy the same four seats.

Why "which site is cheapest?" has no fixed answer

People want a rule. "Always book on the airline site." "Ixigo is cheapest for IndiGo." "Use MakeMyTrip for hotels but never flights."

The uncomfortable truth is that the cheapest provider changes by route, by day, by time of departure, and sometimes by the hour, because each platform's fees, offers and fare cache move independently. The site that was cheapest for your morning flight last month may not be cheapest for the evening one today.

That's why the tab-sprawl habit exists. Opening six sites isn't paranoia; it's the rational response to a market where the same product has six prices. The problem is only that it's slow, and that by the time you've checked the sixth tab the first has moved.

The honest way to compare

If you're doing it by hand, three rules keep it fair.

Compare the final price, not the search price. Go to the payment screen on each site before you decide. That's where the convenience fee and the add-ons appear.

Compare the same flight, not the same route. "Cheapest BLR–GOI" on two sites may be two different departures. Pick the exact flight number and time first, then compare.

Ignore coupons you can't actually use. If the discount needs a card you don't have, mentally remove it before comparing.

Done properly, this takes ten to fifteen minutes per flight. For a return trip with two options each way, it's most of an hour.

Or let something do the comparison for you

This is the specific problem Bookkr was built for. Tell it the trip in plain English ("Bengaluru to Goa, 10th to 13th October, two of us, nothing before 9am") and it returns the actual flights you can book, with the price from each provider shown side by side for the same departure. You see which one is cheapest today, and you choose where to book. If the airline's own site wins, that's what it shows.

That last part matters. Most travel apps with a chat interface can only show you one company's price, because they're owned by that company. MakeMyTrip's assistant sells MakeMyTrip. Expedia's assistant sells Expedia. Bookkr isn't attached to any of them, which is the only reason it can put their prices next to each other.

We don't claim to always find the lowest fare in India. We claim to show you the fares that exist, side by side, so you can stop guessing.

The short version

The seat is the same; the fees, offers, fare timing and add-ons aren't. There is no permanently cheapest site. Compare the payment-page price for the exact same flight, or use a tool that compares providers for you. Either way, stop trusting the headline fare.