About AwardLocker
Real-time award flight search, built with obsessive performance and honest recommendations. We're the tool we wanted and couldn't find.
What we do
AwardLocker searches live award availability across the major US carriers and key international partners — Alaska, American, Delta, United, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Qantas, Turkish, Etihad, Iberia, and Aeromexico — plus every partner award you can book through them. Our backend hits airline systems on every search, so the space we show is the space that's actually bookable right now, not a cached snapshot.
Beyond search, we publish the most thorough programmatic database of award travel information online: per-program award charts, per-card points guides, per-route landing pages for thousands of city pairs, sweet-spot deep dives, and practical tools for measuring redemption value.
Our principles
- Real-time over cached: Award space moves in real time. We built our infrastructure around that truth.
- Performance is our product: Sub-100ms backend responses aren't a nice-to-have; they're how we deliver better search than cached competitors.
- Honest recommendations: On our comparison pages, we point out when a competitor is the better choice. On our credit card pages, we note the drawbacks alongside the benefits. Bad redemptions get called bad.
- Accessible pricing: Pro tier at $4.99/month. We run lean so we can charge less. No mysterious "enterprise" tier.
Technology
Under the hood, AwardLocker is built with performance-first infrastructure:
- C++23 backend on baremetal OVHCloud — no cloud markup, no abstraction tax
- libcurl-impersonate scrapers for each airline, running live on every search
- Redis caching for short-lived fast paths; no long-cached stale data
- WebSocket + Protocol Buffers for low-latency frontend communication
- Static React frontend on Cloudflare Pages for global fast first-paint
We're boring with the stack so we can be fast with the product.
Who we're not
- Not a card affiliate-first site. Content drives product, not the reverse.
- Not venture-funded or scaling-at-all-costs. We're profitable, independent, and growing at a sustainable pace.
- Not a cached aggregator. Every search hits live airline systems.
Try it free
60-day search horizon across every program we cover, no credit card required.
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