"Which AI is best for travel planning" is a question people now ask the assistants themselves, and each one answers in its own favour. This is the version with receipts: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude compared on the things that decide whether a chat becomes a trip. Does it see live prices? Does it know where places are? Can it book, or hand you to someone who can? Does it show its sources? What does the free plan leave out, and where in the world does any of it work?
Every fact below is taken from the four companies' own pricing pages, help centres and announcements, read on 30 September 2026, with the sources at the end. We did not run a bake-off on a single prompt; assistants change weekly and a one-day test proves little. What does not change weekly is what each product is built to do. One disclosure first: MonkeyTravel is our product, and it appears at the end, where the general assistants stop.
The short version
- Perplexity is the best free research desk: every answer carries citations, and it can search hotels with dates, budgets and live prices on its own pages. The free plan caps Pro Searches at three a day.
- Gemini is the best if your trip already lives in Google: it pulls "real-time flight info" and hotel search from Google Flights and Hotels, reads Google Maps for opening hours and directions, and exports the plan to Docs. Booking happens only in Google's AI Mode, and only in the US.
- Claude is the best for getting from plan to booking without leaving Europe: on the free plan it connects to Expedia, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Viator and lastminute.com for live prices, and it is "designed to check with you first" before any purchase.
- ChatGPT is the most integrated for Americans: Expedia and Booking.com apps inside the chat, maps and restaurant availability in search, group chats for planning with friends. The travel apps are not available in the EU, and the old agent mode has been retired.
- None of them checks a day for you: whether the museum is open on Monday, whether three stops fit before lunch. That is what a dedicated planner adds, and why the last section exists.
| Free plan | Paid from | Live prices | Booking | Maps and hours | Sources shown | Works in the EU | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes; 3 file uploads a day; limited memory | Go $8, Plus $20, Pro from $100 a month | Via Expedia and Booking.com apps | Hand-off to Expedia or Booking.com | Map in mobile search results | Links in search answers | Search yes; travel apps no |
| Gemini | Yes; 3.6 Flash, some 3.1 Pro | AI Plus $4.99, AI Pro $19.99 a month | Google Flights and Hotels data | Only in AI Mode, US, hotels | Google Maps details, directions, saved lists | Links to sources | Yes; personal-data features no |
| Perplexity | Yes; 3 Pro Searches a day | Pro $20, Max $200 a month | Hotel prices on its pages | Hotels in-app; restaurants via OpenTable | Map on web and iOS | Citations in every answer | Yes; Pro Perks US only |
| Claude | Yes; web search, connectors, memory | Pro $17 a month billed annually | Expedia and Booking.com connectors | Prepares it, checks with you first | Not built in | Citations in search answers | Yes |
ChatGPT: the most apps, the biggest map of where it does not work
The free plan gives "unlimited everyday text chats" with GPT-5.6 Luna, three file uploads a day, limited image and voice use, and limited memory; OpenAI notes that "ads may appear in the Free tier in certain countries". Go is $8 a month and "may include ads"; Plus is $20 a month, billed monthly; Pro starts at $100 a month with $200 and $500 tiers, monthly only. Web search is on for everyone, including people who are not signed in, and on iOS and Android "relevant results may also include a map"; for restaurants "it may show availability from OpenTable, Resy, or Yelp". Memory can hold "location or dietary preferences" to refine a restaurant search, and group chats let several people plan a weekend in one thread on every plan.
The travel-specific piece is apps: since 6 October 2025 you can type "Expedia find me a hotel room in New York for under $400 in November" and get rooms, flights and maps with "dynamic prices and availability" in the chat, and the Booking.com app does the same for stays and, since May 2026, rental cars. Both hand you to their own site to pay, and both are "available to all logged-in ChatGPT users outside of the EU". If you are in Europe, ChatGPT plans your trip with search alone.
What ChatGPT no longer has is the agent that browsed and booked for you: OpenAI's help page now reads "ChatGPT agent is no longer available." Its successor, a cloud browser inside ChatGPT Work, runs "on paid ChatGPT plans in supported regions, excluding Free and Go", asks before "confirming a booking or making a payment", and answers its own FAQ "Can the cloud browser finish every task or transaction?" with "No."
Gemini: Google's data, on Google's terms
Gemini's free plan includes the 3.6 Flash model, "varying access to 3.1 Pro", Deep Research, Gems and Canvas; Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month, AI Pro $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, and Ultra starts at $99.99. Usage limits "refresh every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit", and Google publishes no numbers for the free tier.
For a trip the value is the plumbing. Google's own description, from August 2026: "Gemini gets real-time information — think locations, reviews, prices, and more — from Google Maps, Flights, and Hotels." The Maps connection returns "addresses, descriptions, websites, ratings, and opening hours", gives directions by mode of transport, and can "save all pinned places on a map to a custom Google Maps list"; it works for signed-in adults asking about places in English. Flights and Hotels pull "real-time flight info" and hotel search, and the help page is precise about the edge: Gemini cannot "book a flight or hotel for you", cancel or update a reservation, or check you in. Export to Docs turns the chat into a document, and the August 2026 connected apps add Fever, GetYourGuide, OpenTable in the UK and Ticketmaster for tables, experiences and tickets.
Booking lives next door, in AI Mode inside Google Search: hotels "in the U.S. in English" for "select properties", paid through Google Pay with the partner processing the payment; restaurants in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Singapore and a few others; flights not bookable at all. Europe gets the planning and not the booking, and Gemini's "Personal Intelligence" features (your Photos, Wallet and Workspace as context) are "not available in the European Economic Area, Nigeria, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom".
Perplexity: citations by default, hotels on its own pages
Perplexity is the assistant built around sources: "every answer includes inline citations that show exactly where each claim comes from", on the free plan too. The free plan allows "practically unlimited basic searches" but only three Pro Searches a day, one research query a month, limited uploads and no advanced models; Pro is $20 a month and Max $200 a month or $2,000 a year. The hotel side is native: "quickly search and reserve your hotel right from your phone", with dates and budgets that "see prices directly in the results", loyalty programmes supported since September 2025, and Tripadvisor reviews on the hotel pages. Restaurants book through OpenTable, and hotels, restaurants and destinations show on a map on web and iOS. There is no flight search of its own; flights appear only as prompts for its Comet browser assistant ("find me the cheapest flight from San Francisco to New York next Monday"), which is free to download and "will ask you first" before acting, with assistant queries limited on the free plan.
The perks are American: Pro subscribers with a US-based subscription get "10% off direct hotel bookings on Perplexity, powered by Selfbook" and 12% off Viator experiences, capped at $200 per booking. Everyone else gets the research. For a trip you are still deciding, Perplexity's Deep Research use case describes the output well: it "pulls together travel guides, local tourism data, and recent visitor reports to create a practical day-by-day plan". Read the citations before you trust the plan; Perplexity's own terms say output may contain "incorrect, biased, or incomplete information".
Claude: the free plan with the travel connectors
Claude's free plan is unusually complete for this job: web search with citations, memory on by default, Artifacts, file uploads and, since April 2026, connectors "available on all plans". The travel ones need no separate sign-in: Expedia for "real-time pricing and availability" on hotels and flights, Booking.com for stays, Tripadvisor for reviews, Viator for experiences and lastminute.com for flights and packages, plus Kiwi.com, Trivago, AllTrails, Uber and Resy in the same directory. Anthropic's rule for all of them: "before it books or purchases something on your behalf, it's designed to check with you first." Pro is $17 a month billed annually or $20 monthly and adds Research and Claude in Chrome, which fills forms on booking sites while "purchases, financial actions, and other one-way doors wait for you". Max starts at $100.
The gaps are maps and limits. Claude has no Google Maps connector, so opening hours and distances come from web search rather than a live map, and the free plan's usage is a session limit that "will reset every five hours" rather than a published message count. Anthropic's own itinerary guide tells you to keep web search enabled so Claude "can find current travel information, reviews, and operating hours", and its caveat applies to all four tools: "Travel information changes constantly—prices fluctuate, attractions update hours, conditions vary." Sharing is the cleanest of the group: public links to a chat need no account to open, and Claude can write the plan out as a Word, Excel or PDF file on any plan.
The test none of them pass by default
Ask any of the four for a five-day plan and you get a good read. Then check it. In the TravelPlanner benchmark (Xie et al., ICML 2024), GPT-4 produced a plan that met every stated constraint 0.6% of the time, and the failures were the ones travellers know: an opening time, a distance, a budget that did not add up. That is what the vendors' own disclaimers are about. OpenAI: ChatGPT "can produce incorrect or misleading outputs. Sometimes, it might sound confident—even when it's wrong." Google: "Gemini can hallucinate and present inaccurate information as factual." Anthropic: Claude "can occasionally produce responses that are incorrect or misleading." Perplexity: "it's crucial to validate information by referencing the sources linked in your answer."
The assistants with live data are better at prices than at days. Expedia's app in ChatGPT and Claude's Expedia connector will not invent a fare; nothing in any of the four checks that Tuesday's museum is shut or that your three stops before lunch are forty minutes apart. We went through this failure mode line by line in ChatGPT vs AI trip planners and in Can you trust an AI travel itinerary?.
How to get the most out of whichever one you use
- Ask for sources and hours in the prompt. "Include the opening hours and the official website for each place" turns a story into something you can check. Perplexity does this by default; Claude and ChatGPT do it when web search is on; Gemini's Maps connection returns hours directly.
- Let the connectors fetch the prices. In Claude, name the connector ("use Expedia to find a hotel under 150 euros"); in ChatGPT outside the EU, start the message with "Expedia" or "Booking.com".
- Export before you travel. Gemini to Docs, Claude to a PDF or shared link, ChatGPT and Perplexity to a shared link. A plan that lives only in a chat is a plan you cannot open on a plane.
- Do not ask an assistant to pay. Claude and Perplexity's Comet stop and ask; ChatGPT's cloud browser is paid-only and stops too; Gemini books only in AI Mode in the US. Confirm on the provider's site and keep the provider's email.
When to use a dedicated planner instead
If you have dates and a destination and nothing else, the general assistants make you do the sequencing. A dedicated planner does the sequencing first. MonkeyTravel builds a day-by-day itinerary with real places, opening hours and costs in about thirty seconds, with no account: five free plans a day signed out, a free account for more. Across the 558 live trips on the platform at the end of September 2026, 86% of days carry three to five activities, which is the density a day can hold. You then edit by chatting, let friends vote on the days, and export the plan; for what to book and where prices are best, go back to whichever assistant above you like. We compare the dedicated tools in Best AI trip planners 2026 and the booking-capable ones in Best AI travel agents 2026.
FAQ
Which AI is best for travel planning? For research with sources, Perplexity. For a trip inside Google Maps, Flights and Hotels, Gemini. For live prices and a booking prepared on the free plan, including in Europe, Claude. For the most travel apps in one chat, ChatGPT, outside the EU. For a walkable day-by-day plan, a dedicated planner.
Is ChatGPT good for planning a trip? Good for ideas, routes and a first draft, and in the US, Canada and other non-EU markets its Expedia and Booking.com apps add live prices. It does not book, and its plans need the hours and distances checked.
Can Gemini book flights or hotels? Not in the Gemini app: its help page lists booking, cancelling and check-in as unsupported. Google's AI Mode books hotels in the US, in English, for select properties; flights are not bookable.
Is Perplexity free for travel planning? The free plan includes basic searches with citations and the hotel search, but only three Pro Searches a day and one research query a month. Pro is $20 a month; the hotel and Viator discounts need a US subscription.
Does Claude have travel apps? Yes, as connectors on all plans: Expedia, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Viator, lastminute.com, Kiwi.com, Trivago and others. Claude checks with you before anything is booked or bought.
Which of these works in Europe? Claude's connectors and Perplexity's search and hotel pages work in the EU. ChatGPT's travel apps and Gemini's booking and personal-data features do not, though both plan trips from search there.
Want the day-by-day plan first and the assistant second? Plan a trip on MonkeyTravel: no account, no card, about thirty seconds.
Data: MonkeyTravel figures are our own, counted on 30 September 2026 across 558 live trips, 3,862 days and 14,684 activities; no personal data involved.
Sources
- ChatGPT pricing; ChatGPT Free tier FAQ; What is ChatGPT Plus?; About ChatGPT Pro tiers; File uploads FAQ; ChatGPT search; Apps in ChatGPT and Introducing apps in ChatGPT, 6 October 2025; ChatGPT agent; Using cloud browser in ChatGPT; Memory FAQ; ChatGPT accuracy and limitations; Group chats in ChatGPT, 13 November 2025
- Expedia app in ChatGPT, 6 October 2025; Booking.com car rentals in ChatGPT, 20 May 2026
- Gemini plans and Google AI plans; Gemini usage limits; Maps in Gemini; Flights and hotels in Gemini; Connected apps and new connected apps, August 2026; How Gemini plans trips, 6 August 2026; Book hotels in AI Mode, 27 August 2026; Hotel booking in AI Mode help; Personal Intelligence availability; Gemini can make mistakes
- Perplexity pricing; Which Perplexity plan is right for you?; Perplexity Max; Pro Search; hotel booking on mobile, dates, prices and OpenTable, loyalty programmes, maps; Pro Perks and terms; Comet and the new Comet Assistant, 6 November 2025; planning a trip with specific constraints; terms of service
- Claude pricing; What is the Pro plan?; Get started with Claude; Web search; Connectors for everyday life, 23 April 2026; Expedia connector; Claude in Chrome; Public links for shared chats; Create and edit files with Claude; Create a daily travel itinerary; Claude is providing incorrect or misleading responses
- Xie et al., TravelPlanner: A Benchmark for Real-World Planning with Language Agents, ICML 2024
