Last modified August 5, 2026

Yes, Going.com is legitimate. Going, formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, is a Colorado travel-technology company founded in 2013 that emails and pushes curated cheap flights to more than two million subscribers and helps them save on airfare they were not looking for. Premium costs $49 a year and Elite costs $199 a year, both after a 14-day free trial. The part almost no other Going review states plainly: every membership payment is non-refundable under Going’s own Terms of Use, refund exceptions close 30 days after the charge, and Going says it has no obligation to tell you when the trial ends or when your card is billed.

That single policy explains most of the angry reviews you will find. This page verifies the 2026 pricing, quotes Going’s refund and dispute rules from Going’s own help center, and covers the consumer-protection question every subscription review skips.

Affiliate disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That does not change the pricing, the policy quotes, or the verdict below.

Going.com cheap flights membership at a glance

Is Going.com legit, or is it a scam?

Going is a real, established company, not a scam. The service began in December 2013 when journalist Scott Keyes booked a $130 roundtrip mistake fare from New York City to Milan and emailed the details to friends. That list became a paid subscription in August 2015 under the name Scott’s Cheap Flights, and Brian Kidwell joined later that year as co-founder and chief executive. The company is headquartered in Colorado in the United States, rebranded to Going in January 2023, added points-and-miles deals in June 2023, and shipped its first mobile app in March 2024.

Going is a subscription business, not a travel agency. It never holds your ticket, never takes your passport details, and never becomes the merchant on your airline booking. That structure removes the whole category of risk that makes people nervous about a booking site: there is no ticket for Going to fail to issue. What you are buying is information, and the only money at risk is the membership fee itself.

The legitimate criticism sits elsewhere, in the billing terms. Read the next three sections before you start a trial.

What is Going.com and how do its flight expert alerts work?

Going watches airfare to more than 900 destinations around the world and alerts you when a price drops, using deal-scoring software plus human review by its flight expert team. You pick your departure airports at signup, then stop searching for flight deals yourself. When a fare clears Going’s bar, a flight alert lands in your inbox and on your phone with the route, the price, sample dates and a booking link. It is a subscription service built on a simple subscription business model: you pay for the watching, not for the ticket.

Three details matter more than the marketing:

• You book the flight, not Going. The alert hands you off to the airline or a booking site. Going takes no commission from airlines and never touches your reservation.
• Most deals are for travel two to nine months out. Going says its alerts are not last-minute fares, and a typical deal survives a day or two before the fare moves. A mistake fare can vanish in hours.
• Alerts cover roundtrip fares, not one-way scraps. Deals arrive as round trip tickets with a stated date window, which is what makes the low fares comparable to what you would price yourself on search engines.
• The curation includes routing quality. Going says it screens for sensible routing, a reasonable layover and airlines with decent ratings rather than pushing the lowest number on the screen. That is the actual product: the filter, not the search.

How much does Going cost in 2026?

Going has three tiers: Limited at $0, Premium at $49 a year, and Elite at $199 a year. Both paid plans bill annually and both start with a 14-day free trial. Going advertises Premium as $4.08 a month and Elite as $16.58 a month, but neither is billed monthly. You pay the full year up front.

Discount codes for a first year are common, so check for a current promotion before paying list price. Renewals are charged at the standard rate, which is where a lot of the surprise-charge complaints start.

Going Premium vs Elite: which membership is worth it?

Premium is the right plan for almost everyone; Elite only pays for itself if you would genuinely book a premium cabin on international travel. The two tiers get identical deal sourcing, identical mistake fares and identical alerts. The single difference is fare class: Elite members get access to premium economy, business and first class on top of everything Premium already sends.

Going publishes the business-class prices Elite members should expect to see: roughly the $500s to Mexico and the Caribbean, around $1,200 to Latin America, around $1,700 to Europe and around $2,200 to Asia. Do the arithmetic against a paid business fare on your route. If one Europe business deal at $1,700 replaces a $4,000 ticket you were actually going to buy, the $199 is trivial. If you were always going to fly economy, Elite is $150 of deals you will not use.

Upgrading mid-year is not punitive: Going applies your remaining Premium balance as prorated credit toward Elite, so six months into a $49 Premium year you carry about $24 across. Downgrading is a different story, covered next.

Can you get a refund from Going.com?

No. Going’s published policy is that all membership payments are non-refundable, and the only escape hatch closes 30 days after the charge. This is the most important paragraph on this page and the one that reconciles Going’s strong app ratings with a steady stream of furious billing reviews.

Taken directly from Going’s refund policy and help center:

Two practical consequences follow. First, the app-store route is a genuine trap: people cancel inside Going’s website, assume they are done, and stay subscribed through Apple. If you signed up in the app, cancel in the App Store or Google Play, then confirm. Second, Going’s Terms state the company has no obligation to notify you when your free trial ends or when your account is charged. A calendar reminder on day 12 of the trial is not paranoia, it is the only warning you will get.

Going’s own help center quantifies how well this lands with readers. Its Refund Requests article is marked helpful by 15 of 83 people, and the Disputing a Charge article by 8 of 52. Those are the company’s own numbers on its own pages.

What happens if you dispute a Going charge with your bank?

Do not file a chargeback as a shortcut. Going says a dispute cancels your membership immediately and freezes the money for 60 to 75 days while the banks settle it. This is the single most expensive mistake available on this page, and Going describes the mechanics openly.

What Going states happens the moment you dispute:

• Your paid membership is canceled at once and downgraded to the free Limited tier, so you lose the alerts you paid for while the money is still frozen.
• The funds are frozen for what Going describes as generally 60 to 75 days until your bank reaches a final decision. Going cannot act on your account during that window, which means it cannot refund you either.
• Going’s payment processor sends your bank a documentation package. Going lists what is in it: the membership tier you chose, previous payments, your Going website usage, your email opening behavior, any messages with the support team, and the Terms of Use you agreed to at signup.
• If the dispute resolves in Going’s favor, the membership is reinstated and runs to its original expiry.

That third point deserves a beat. If your argument to the bank is that you never used the service, Going will hand your bank a record of the emails you opened. Anyone who skimmed a few deal alerts before deciding to cancel is arguing against their own data. Request the refund exception inside the 30-day window instead, in writing, and keep the reply.

Does any consumer-protection rule cover a Going auto-renewal?

Less than you think. The federal “click-to-cancel” rule that would have governed subscriptions like this was struck down in July 2025 and has not been replaced. Almost every Going review published since then still assumes it is in force.

The timeline, from law-firm reporting on the decision and the Federal Trade Commission’s own rulemaking notices:

None of this makes Going’s policy unusual or improper. It makes it ordinary, which is the point: an annual auto-renewing subscription with a non-refundable term is enforceable, and the safety net most people assume exists was removed a year ago.

How do you cancel Going before you get charged?

Cancel from the Membership and Billing page in your account, and do it before the renewal date rather than after. Cancelling does not cut off what you already paid for: Going says you keep receiving deals until the end of the paid period and simply are not billed again.

1. Work out where you subscribed. Website signup is managed by Going. App signup is managed by Apple or Google and Going cannot touch it.
2. For a website signup, open Membership and Billing in your Going account and cancel the upcoming renewal. For an app signup, cancel the subscription in your App Store or Google Play account settings.
3. To end a free trial, use “Cancel Trial” on the billing page. Your account drops to the free Limited tier and no charge is made.
4. Set a calendar reminder for day 12 of a 14-day trial and for a week before each renewal date. Going has no obligation to warn you.
5. If you were already charged and it has been under 30 days, look for “View Options” on the billing page to request a refund exception. After 30 days that route is closed.

Which destinations and airlines do Going deals cover?

Going tracks more than 900 destinations worldwide, and every paid tier gets international flights rather than a US-only feed. Limited members see continental US economy deals only. Premium and Elite add Alaska, Hawaii, US territories and the full international list, which is where the savings that justify a membership actually live.

In practice the recurring long-haul deals cluster where airline competition is heaviest: western Europe, with Dublin, Amsterdam and Spain appearing often; east Asia, where flights to Japan and Tokyo are a perennial member favorite; and Latin America out of the southern US. There is no published list of guaranteed routes, and no service can promise your exact city pair, which is the honest limit of every flight deal subscription.

On the airline side, Going says it screens out carriers with poor customer ratings rather than pushing whatever is cheapest, so a low-cost carrier with a bad on-time record is less likely to reach your inbox than the raw fare would suggest. Expect a mix of full-service and hybrid airlines, with nonstop options flagged where they exist.

Is a Going deal worth booking, or will the layover and airport ruin it?

The fares are real and often excellent, but you follow a limited set of departure airports and cannot filter much beyond that, so a large share of alerts will never suit you. This is the most common substantive complaint about the service and it is a design choice rather than a defect.

What to expect before you pay:

• Deals chase the fare, not your calendar. The cheap flights Going finds come with specific date windows. If you can only travel one fixed week, most alerts are noise.
• You will not get deals on every route you want. Going surfaces fares from your home airport when they exist, but nobody can guarantee many airfare deals on one specific city pair, and no amount of paying more changes that.
• Elite mistake fares deliberately come from every US airport. Going’s argument is that a $63 roundtrip to Chile justifies a positioning flight. That is true and also useless if you cannot leave on 48 hours’ notice.
• Read the fare rules in the alert. Many headline fares are basic economy with no checked bag and no seat selection, so compare the all-in price, not the teaser.
• Speed matters. A fare can move between the alert landing and you reaching checkout. Going tells you roughly how long it expects each deal to last.
• Cheap fares rarely include insurance or changes. Budget the cost of travel insurance separately if the trip is far enough out to be worth protecting.

Going’s own advice here is the best travel tips in the product, and it costs nothing: book directly with the airline so the US 24-hour rule applies, then use that day to decide whether you actually want the trip. Grab the fare, sleep on it, cancel free if the answer is no. If you want the mechanics of that rule and where it does not apply, our Gotogate review and Kiwi.com review cover why booking through an agency instead can forfeit it.

How does Going compare to other flight deal services and free ways to get cheap flights?

Going is the broadest curated alert service; Google Flights is the better tool if you already know your route and dates. The two solve opposite problems, and paying for the wrong one is the usual reason a membership feels like a waste.

Run Going alongside free Google Flights alerts rather than instead of them. The subscription earns its keep on trips you had not planned; the free alert wins on the trip you already committed to.

Does Going have an app for flight alerts?

Yes. Going launched iOS and Android apps in March 2024, and older reviews saying it is email-only are out of date. This page previously said the same thing and was wrong; it is corrected here.

The app added an interactive map for browsing live deals at launch, and in March 2025 gained flight alerts tuned to a member’s stated trip preferences. It carries a strong rating on the App Store. It is also where the app-store billing trap lives: subscribe in the app and your cancellation runs through Apple or Google, not Going.

How do real users rate Going?

Ratings split sharply by what is being rated: the deal experience scores well, the billing scores badly. Trustpilot’s own listing describes Going as “Excellent” at 4.5 out of 5, and the mobile app carries a rating in the mid-4s across several thousand reviews. Forum and community threads are more mixed, and complaint-led channels skew low because people rarely file a complaint about a subscription that worked.

Excluded from this review as unverifiable: a precise live Trustpilot review count, because published totals disagree across sources and the profile could not be read directly; and any Better Business Bureau rating or complaint total, because the profile could not be retrieved at the time of writing.

What travel tips get the most from a Going membership?

Treat it as a trigger for trips you had not planned, and pair it with travel credit cards and a wide airport radius. Members who get value out of it change one habit: they decide where to go after the deal arrives, not before.

• Add every airport you can reasonably reach. A second airport two hours away roughly doubles your alert volume and is the cheapest upgrade available if you are looking to save more per trip.
• Use the Watchlist for the trip you actually want. Custom destination alerts turn a broad newsletter into a targeted price watch on one route.
• Pay with travel credit cards that cover the fare category. Points deals are only useful if you hold transferable points, so line the card up before a good award fare appears.
• Check the layover before you celebrate the price. A nine-hour connection on a cheap ticket is a full day of your trip.
• Book direct and use the 24-hour rule. It converts a fare that expires tonight into a decision you can make tomorrow.
• Put a reminder on the renewal the day you join. Given the refund policy, this is worth more than any deal-hunting trick on the list.

For the wider picture on when fares move and why, see our guides on why flights are so expensive right now and vacation budget tips.

Do travel credit cards make a Going membership more useful?

Yes, and the pairing matters most on Going’s points deals, which are useless without the right balance already banked. Going sends award-fare alerts as well as cash fares, and an award alert is a countdown: the seats are there now and gone in a day.

The practical sequence is to hold transferable points with a program that partners with the airlines flying your regions, before a deal appears rather than after. Premium membership gets economy points deals; Elite extends them to every fare class, which is where the money-saving arithmetic gets dramatic. Transfers between a card program and an airline can take minutes or days depending on the pair, so check your transfer times once, in advance, and note them somewhere. A points deal you cannot fund in time is not a deal.

Who should skip Going.com?

Skip it if your travel is fixed. The service cannot help someone who must fly a named route on named dates from one airport, and paying $49 to be reminded of that is the most common way this membership disappoints.

• You travel for work on set dates and routes.
• You have one airport and cannot drive to another.
• You book fewer than one or two flights a year, where a single mediocre deal will not clear the fee.
• You want a booking service with customer support for your ticket. That is an airline or an agency, not Going. Compare our FlightNetwork review or BudgetAir review if that is what you are shopping for.
• You dislike auto-renewing subscriptions on principle. This one is annual, non-refundable, and does not warn you.

If none of that applies and you can be flexible, the free Limited tier and the 14-day trial let you test the deal quality against your own airports before any money moves. Start there rather than at Elite. You can try Going free for 14 days and cancel from the billing page before day 15 if the alerts do not suit your airports.

Sources and what changed in this update

Last updated 4 August 2026. This review was rebuilt from primary sources rather than refreshed at the edges. Pricing, tier contents and the business-class price bands were taken from Going’s Premium and Elite pages. The refund, cancellation and dispute rules, including the 30-day exception window, the no-proration statement, the app-store split and the 60-to-75-day dispute freeze, are quoted from Going’s published refund policy and help center articles. Company history and the March 2024 app launch come from Going’s corporate record. The regulatory status of the FTC negative-option rule comes from law-firm analyses of the Eighth Circuit decision of 8 July 2025 and the FTC’s March 2026 rulemaking notice.

Corrections made in this update: the previous version stated that Going had no dedicated app, which stopped being true in March 2024. Unverifiable first-person claims about using the service have been removed. Prices, tier contents and the refund policy have been re-verified for 2026. Flight prices, promotional codes and membership terms change, so confirm current pricing on Going’s own site before subscribing.

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