SeatGuru Is Dead: Here Are Your Best Bets

One of our favorite tools for information about the best airline seats is dead. SeatGuru was acquired by Tripadvisor back in 2007, in part because of its popularity with frequent flyers, who rely on the site for seat details on most major airlines.

But Tripadvisor stopped investing in the site several years ago, and its usefulness has declined over time. Still, it’s my go-to tool when trying to pick a seat in business class on an upcoming flight, or at least find a seat in economy class that’s not too bad.

So I was shocked when I found this notification on one of my last searches a few weeks ago.

Without any notice, Tripadvisor and its parent company Expedia shut down the site entirely, redirecting users to Tripadvisor (without the interactive seat map).

I love all of SeatGuru’s features, including the ability to find seat maps for various versions of most airplanes and even obscure airlines, the ability to see problem seats (such as those that are missing windows or don’t recline), and the colorful map that shows seats and areas to avoid or select.

Unfortunately, Tripadvisor stopped investing in the site about five years ago, and the last new seat map was produced in 2020. “She was on her last legs for a long time,” TPG founder Brian Kelly told me while discussing the news in a TPG group chat.

But there’s some good news: There are several other contenders that can help you research airline seats.

In my opinion, SeatMaps is the best of them all. Of course, TPG has its own tool for finding seating maps. ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG parent company Red Ventures) is great and the company is investing heavily in it right now.

Other TPGers swear by AeroLopa, although I find it less intuitive to use. There is also a new competitor, SeatCompare.ai.

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So what is the best option for you? Below is a brief guide to each tool.

Seating chart

For me, the best new contender is SeatMaps, which has some of the same features as SeatGuru (RIP). This is a map showing business class on Swiss A330 flights. As you can see, it shows that the business class seats – 9K – have partial or missing window views, but come with USB and AC power plugs as well as Wi-Fi.

It also shows how many seats there are in each cabin as well as seat pitch, width and recline.

The image below shows a search for seat details on an Etihad Airways Airbus A380. It’s very simple (and helpful).

I also liked some of the notes I got through SeatMaps, such as the one for Premium Economy Seat 31K, which warned of drafts and the possibility of getting cold during the flight.

There are also sections where you can submit your own ratings and you can see how many stars the site has given.

Finally, there are links to websites that provide product reviews.

All in all, this is my new favorite tool to help decide on seats and even choose which planes I want to fly on in the future.

Aviation Lopa

Many of us at The Points Guy swear by AeroLopa’s seating charts. While I agree that there are many interesting aspects to the site, I personally found it very challenging to find what I was looking for – especially the seating map.

You usually have to click on the airline you’re looking for and then search for the model of aircraft you want to fly. You then have to navigate to the actual model of the aircraft. As you can see, there are eight potential types of A380. You need to compare the map in AeroLopa with the actual aircraft you fly.

Here is an example of the seating plan I was looking for and it makes me comfortable. I’m trying to figure out the seat map for an upcoming Emirates flight. I clicked into Emirates and looked up the aircraft model through my records locator. Then I had to choose from six different types of 777-300s.

After I clicked on all six and compared the seat map to my actual flight, I was finally able to find a seat map that matched my upcoming flight. However, as you can see below, there are no color-coded notes to mark whether business class seats are good or bad. This is a very simple seating chart.

This was a frustrating user experience for me, but your situation may be different.

I do like the bottom of the screen, where AeroLopa provides more information about the cabin.

But the site doesn’t do a good job of searching for seats. For me, this is a deal breaker.

Expert flyer

I’m a huge fan of ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG parent company Red Ventures). To be honest, I mostly use it to find award availability for business class seats. You can even set flight reminders so you’ll be the first to know when new rewards become available. I’ve used it to get rare business class upgrades on airlines like American Airlines.

But ExpertFlyer also has a seat map. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can search by airline and flight number and it will bring up an interactive map.

As you can see, ExpertFlyer also has a cool feature when you click on a note. It will warn you if the seat is not a good choice. In this case, seat 20L is a poor choice because the protrusion of the exit door reduces legroom.

Here’s another example: You might want to avoid seat 5H because of its proximity to the kitchen and bathroom.

But ExpertFlyer will also tell you when a particular seat is a good choice!

ExpertFlyer gets even better: it notifies you when the seats you care about open, even those with extra legroom in economy class or those in bulkheads. You can set up alerts to be notified when a specific seat, any exit row seat, any window seat, any aisle seat or even two seats together. As you can see below, I set up an alarm to monitor two specific seats in the bulkhead row.

ExpertFlyer is best known for finding available seats, but it’s also a great resource for evaluating seat quality.

seat comparison.ai

SeatCompare.ai is the latest entrant in this seat selection war, and as the name suggests, it uses artificial intelligence to help you find a good seat. SeatCompare.ai is currently in beta testing, but says “we’ll be adding more cabin data every week.”

There’s a lot this tool can’t do, but it able Find your flight, tell you which seats to avoid and help you find the best seat. Features like cabin configuration comparisons are interesting. I’m also interested in the ability to receive notifications if your aircraft is switched (which could lead to an unfortunate cabin downgrade).

This tool is still not thorough enough to be my first choice, but it will be interesting to see how it evolves over time.

seat master

I also checked out SeatMaestro which has some interesting features like seat reviews. The problem is that I found the site to be buggy and had so many pop-up ads and loading screens that I found it almost unusable. The search function doesn’t work, you can only search by model.

Once you finally find the seat map, there are color-coded indications of good or bad seats as well as user reviews, but it’s the most annoying site I’ve ever tried.

Maybe you’ll have better luck than me, but this is my least favorite of all the sites I’ve explored.

bottom line

There are some great alternatives to the now-gone SeatGuru. I particularly like ExpertFlyer and SeatMaps. It will be interesting to see how this space develops over time.

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