I’ve tried the popular VPN travel trick to get cheaper hotels and flights

There is a VPN Travel hack Doing the tours again – mostly thanks X viral post. Supposedly, if you set your VPN to a cheaper country, flight and hotel prices become cheaper.

So I tried it. Correctly.

I used a VPN to switch my location to Brazil, Vietnam, Taipei, and India. I’ve used three of them Best VPN Providers — ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Proton VPN – I made sure not to log into any accounts. Every search was in a new incognito tab, and I made sure that the websites I visited, including Google Flights and Skyscanner, correctly detected my spoofed location and showed the appropriate local currency.

My findings may surprise you: I didn’t actually see flights that were significantly cheaper, although they were performing better on another front.

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How I tried to find cheaper flights using a VPN

Over several sessions, I looked across multiple avenues. These flights included LHR to NYC, MAN to HKG, HKG to AMS, and SFO to LAX. It has mixed local and international, short and long term.

In most cases, the prices were within $1 of each other. The biggest savings I saw was on a flight from San Francisco to Japan, where it was $63 (about 7%) cheaper when using a VPN to Brazil. Sometimes, it was strange to have the VPN version more More expensive than just booking from home.

But I’ve never, not once, seen anything close to the huge savings that people swear by online. There are no jackpot prices, no hidden deals, and no half price prices hiding behind virtual limits.

Let’s compare the lowest prices I could find on reasonable routes (not ridiculous 30+ hour flights with multiple stops) for a five-day return trip. I chose dates exactly two months before and after the date I was looking at during the holidays to try to get unbiased prices. Here’s what I found:

Flight path	Lowest price without VPN	Lowest price with VPN
London to New York (LHR to NYC)	$636	$635
Manchester to Hong Kong (MAN to HKG)	710 dollars	$709
Hong Kong to Amsterdam (HKG to AMS)	$566	$566
San Francisco to Los Angeles (SFO to LAX)	$74	$73
Los Angeles to New York (LAX to NYC)	$183	$183
San Francisco to Tokyo (SFO to HND)	$876	$813

This is where a VPN may actually save you some money

When comparing hotel prices, there was an even bigger difference. I’ve seen savings of $100-$200 when looking at hotels in Manhattan, New York, for the same January trip as flights. This is from 19 January to 23 January 2026 – so a total stay of four nights.

On Booking.com, I compared a reservation at the Westin Times Square. The best savings I found with the VPN was when I connected to the Brazil servers, where the price was $815. With no VPN, the reservation itself was $976.

Most people would probably be happy to save $100 on a hotel. However, I haven’t found the amazing half-price deals that the internet would lead you to believe a VPN would provide.

So why doesn’t the VPN travel workaround work anymore?

To find out why this technique doesn’t work anymore, I spoke to Michael Nizich, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation at NYIT. He emphasized that while this trick may have worked once upon a time, the industry has caught on.

“It was very possible to pretend to buy from another country and take advantage of the region’s prices,” he told me. But now, vendors are using techniques like deep packet inspection and browser fingerprinting to figure out where you actually came from. This means that brands don’t just look at what your VPN says – they dig deeper and apply pricing based on that.

So, even if the website shows you’re browsing from Hanoi, the site may still know you’re sitting in Cleveland, looking for cheap airfare.

This whole idea persists because every so often, someone somewhere sees a little discount — or a bug — and screams about it on social media. But airlines and travel companies have largely filled the gaps.

What is the benefit of a VPN?

a lot. VPNs are still one of the best ways to keep your activity private, especially when connecting to public Wi-Fi at an airport or at a coffee shop. A VPN hides your browsing activity from your service provider and any network administrators.

It is also useful to avoid site censorship or Access streaming services on vacation Or banned in your country. Want to stream BBC iPlayer from the US or watch HBO Max from the UK? VPNs can help you.

VPNs are also essential for remote workers. Nezic stressed that VPNs are still “a great and recommended way to secure your traffic over the Internet and more specifically directly to your organization.”

But — and this is the important part — they are not magical cloaks of invisibility. No service can keep you completely anonymous online, although many will tell you they can. And remember, your VPN is only as good as its maintenance. If you’re using an outdated version or skipping software updates, you’re leaving the digital door wide open.

“Cybercriminals exploit these vulnerabilities, and once they are identified, they become a target until you fix your system by applying these patches and updates,” Nesic warned.

So use a VPN, keep it updated, and pair it with good habits. While you may be able to save a few bucks, don’t expect a VPN to offer a 5-star hotel in Tokyo for the price of a hostel in Mumbai.