Google’s ITA Matrix is the world’s most powerful airfare search engine. Google has thrown their support behind Google Flights, which is a good search engine for beginners or for tracking flight prices. But ITA offers many more features.
ITA Matrix 3.0 runs on technology which is being deprecated and all Google products running on it will shortly be turned off, meaning 3.0 is now on life support.
Enjoy the end of Matrix 3.0 while it lasts:
The good news is that although Google isn’t funding further development on ITA Matrix, Googlers have been using their 20% time to come with a replacement in ITA Matrix 5.0.
What happened to 4.0? I guess it never saw the light of day.
But after a quick glance, 5.0 seems to retain most of the beloved features of ITA, including the ability to use advanced controls as described in this DDF thread and wiki. With it you can do things that can’t be done in Google Flights, such as limit searches to a specific plane type, a specific flight number, to exclude basic economy fares, or much more.
Also still available is the ability to search for hidden city tickets, as described in this post and in this DDF thread and wiki.
But there are some glaring deficiencies in Matrix 5.0.
If you click “Modify search” it brings you back to the search home page without your search parameters. It’s not ideal to have to type that all in again to make a small change!
It also no longer remembers your recent searches as Matrix 3.0 did. I submitted feedback to get those features restored and you should do the same. The Matrix team says that they read all feedback and bug reports.
But beggars can’t be choosers, so I’m thrilled to see that ITA Matrix lives to see another day!
What do you think of Matrix 5.0?
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14 Comments On "Goodbye To ITA Matrix 3.0, Hello Matrix 5.0!"
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Those actually sound like bugs, not deliberately left out features due to complexity, etc. so they would likely be happy to fix those.
We can certainly hope!
Wow, great news! I was dreading the day that it’ll end
Dont say Goodbye yet. Was just using the Matrix tonight.
Never said it was gone. Just said to say your goodbyes.
Maybe I’m late to the party, but worlds just got opened up to me!!
Seems like a dumbed down version.
I hate these kind of so called upgrades, that add nothing other than cosmetics, and take away useful features.
also BookWithMatrix needs to update their service now. It doesn’t work with the new 1.
@Dan
Is there any control key to see Low-Cost flights?
I can’t find Wizzair or Ryanair flights on Matrix but they appear on Google flights.
I did the same search on ITA 3 and ITA 5: ITA 3 came up with $2186 RT EWR-TLV for my dates. ITA 5 came up with $3441 for the EXACT FLIGHTS!!!
Might want to post an update. Migration is underway according to the site. Thanks
Hi, I’m getting an error when entering multiple airports in the destination field “Please enter valid airport codes separated by a space or one of the following character: ,;|” i never had this error with the old ita. any idea how to fix?
Thanks
Baruch
I’m having the same issue
Looks like matrix 3.0 is OVER!!