VacaScope compares 8 destinations side-by-side with AI cost estimates for your dates, group size, and travel style. Directional pricing — perfect for deciding where to go before you book.
You spend hours bouncing between Google Flights, Booking.com, and travel blogs that all say "depends." Meanwhile, your group chat is at "we should just decide already."
Eight destinations, your exact dates, your group size, your travel style — all priced and sorted cheapest to most expensive. No more spreadsheets.
Pick any two destinations and see the exact line items: flights, hotels, food, activities. Winner highlighted. Savings shown to the dollar.
Every destination shows the breakdown: flights vs. hotels vs. food vs. activities. Spot the lever you can actually pull.
After the comparison, keep talking. Follow-up chat that knows your trip context — destinations, dates, budget, the works.
Some people start with a destination. Others start with a budget. Some are planning a group trip; others want a one-line vibe to pick from. Pick your starting point.
AI-priced cost breakdown across 8 destinations side-by-side, with currency switching and saved trips.
Enter a budget. Get every destination labeled Possible, Tight, or Out of Reach with specifics.
Want a destination but it's over budget? Get the exact levers to pull, ranked by savings impact.
Describe your dream trip in plain English. Get a perfect match, a cheaper alternative, and a hidden gem.
Different budgets per person. Find a destination that works for everyone — and avoid the awkward money talk.
Specific hotels, flights, restaurants, and experiences — with one-click search links to Booking.com, Skyscanner, and more.
Save trips, refresh prices later, export to your calendar (.ics), see price shifts since you saved.
No login. No paywall. Just open it and see what your dream trip would actually look like.
Open VacaScope →The basics are in every travel tool. We obsessed over the small stuff that makes planning a real trip click into place.
Spent 20 minutes on VacaScope. Saved a weekend of arguing with my partner about where to go.
Origin, dates, group size, travel style. Takes 30 seconds. Skip the dates if you're just exploring; we'll use typical pricing.
Tap one button. We fetch realistic 2025 prices for all 8 destinations comparatively — flights, hotels, food, activities — so the numbers actually differ.
Rank, pick two for a head-to-head, ask follow-ups, save the trip, export to calendar. When you're ready, take the data to your favorite booking site.
If your question isn't here, the answer is probably "yes, and it's free." But here are the specific ones.
Yes. No signup, no paywall, no trial expiring next Tuesday. There are zero ads. We're not selling your data.
It works in your browser, runs on your device, and saves your trips locally. You don't have an account because there isn't one.
Honest answer: ±15% on a good day. The numbers are AI-generated estimates from Claude, based on travel pricing patterns it learned during training. We do not query Skyscanner, Booking.com, or any live booking system in real time.
What's most reliable: the relative ranking of destinations (Cancun cheaper than Paris) and the order of magnitude (this is a $2-3k trip, not a $5k trip). What's least reliable: the exact dollar figure.
Use VacaScope to decide where to go and roughly what to budget. Use Booking.com or Skyscanner to decide which exact thing to book.
No. VacaScope is the planning step before booking. Once you've decided on a destination and dates, head to your booking site of choice — we don't take commissions or push you toward any particular service.
That's why we can stay neutral: the cheapest destination really is the cheapest, not just the one that pays us the most.
Those tools are great when you already know where you're going — they search for the cheapest flights or hotels for a specific route. VacaScope helps you decide where to go in the first place.
Compare 8 destinations in one screen with all-in costs (flights + hotels + food + activities). Once you've narrowed it down, take your shortlist to the booking sites.
Cost estimates come from Claude (Anthropic's AI), which has been trained on travel pricing patterns through 2025. We send it your trip parameters and ask for realistic comparative pricing across all destinations at once.
Weather forecasts come from Open-Meteo, a free open-source weather API. Carbon footprint is calculated from great-circle distance using IPCC-aligned emission factors.
Yes — saved trips are stored in your browser's local storage. You can save as many as you want, refresh the prices later to see if anything changed, export the dates as an .ics file for your calendar, and re-open any saved comparison.
Because it's local, your data stays on your device. The downside: if you clear your browser storage, your saved trips go with it. We'd rather have that tradeoff than ask for an account.
USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, JPY, MXN, and INR. Switch via the picker in the nav bar — every price across the app reformats instantly. Conversion rates are baked in (no live FX needed) and updated periodically.
Different people start trip planning differently. Some have a destination in mind. Some have only a budget. Some just want a vibe ("warm beaches, cheap food, not too touristy"). Some are coordinating a group with mismatched budgets.
One mode would force everyone into the same path. Seven modes lets you start where it makes sense for your trip.
Not yet — VacaScope is browser-first and works great on mobile (the layout adapts for small screens). You can also "Add to Home Screen" from your phone's browser to get an app-like icon.
A native app is on the wishlist if there's enough demand. Until then, the web app does basically everything an app would.
Once you've decided where to go, switch to Ready to Book mode. AI suggests specific hotels, airlines, restaurants, and experiences for that destination — each one a clickable link that opens a real search on Booking.com, Skyscanner, Google Maps, or Airbnb with your dates and party size pre-filled.
It's the bridge between "we should go to Tokyo" and actually putting a credit card down.
Only if you say yes. On first load, VacaScope politely asks if you want to use your location to suggest the nearest origin city. It uses your browser's standard geolocation prompt, never stores the coordinates anywhere, and only asks once.
Decline and nothing changes — you'll just need to type your origin city manually.
For each destination, we calculate the great-circle distance from your origin city using a Haversine formula, then multiply by industry-standard emission factors (0.255 kg CO₂/km for short-haul flights, 0.195 for long-haul) plus a 1.9× radiative forcing multiplier to account for high-altitude effects. The result is multiplied by 2 for round-trip and by your traveler count.
It's an estimate, not an audited carbon ledger — but it's directionally correct for comparing one destination to another.
It's free, has no signup, and works in your browser. The hardest part of using VacaScope is closing the tab when you're done.
Open VacaScope →