Stardrift is a free AI-powered travel assistant that plans personalized trips through natural conversation. Chat with it like you would an executive assistant, and it finds flights, hotels, and train options that match your schedule and preferences.
The AI tool pulls live pricing data, connects to your calendar, and learns what matters most to you, including preferred airlines, seating choices, and travel times. So every trip recommendation actually fits your needs.
Most people delay booking trips because the process feels overwhelming. You need to cross-reference your calendar, compare dozens of price and time combinations, and coordinate every leg of travel to avoid botched connections.
Stardrift handles this complexity in the background. The founder, Leila Clark (former software engineer at Jane Street), built this Y Combinator-backed AI tool specifically for frequent travelers who want trip planning to feel less like a chore and more like having someone competent handle it for them.
Features
- Live Travel Data: Pulls real-time prices and availability for flights, hotels, and Amtrak routes.
- Calendar Integration: Connects to your Google Calendar so it can arrange travel around your existing meetings and commitments.
- Preference Learning: Remembers your travel habits after you use it a few times. Your preferred airlines, seat types, departure time windows, and hotel proximity requirements get factored into every search automatically.
- Multi-Leg Trip Planning: Helps construct complete itineraries by pricing out and comparing each segment.
- Side-by-Side Comparison: Shows different itinerary options next to each other so you can evaluate trade-offs between price, timing, and convenience before deciding.
Use Cases
- Business Trip Planning: You need a flight to a conference that lands before a 4 p.m. welcome reception. You tell Stardrift your destination and time constraint. It finds flights, checks your calendar for other calls, and suggests hotels near the venue.
- Complex Multi-City Travel: You are planning a vacation with stops in three cities over ten days. Instead of searching each segment alone, you ask Stardrift to “plan a 10-day trip from Chicago to Seattle, Portland, and back.” The AI proposes a logical route with synchronized flights and hotels.
- Avoiding Last-Minute Premiums: You put off booking a family visit. A week before, you ask Stardrift for options. It quickly finds the best remaining prices and suggests itineraries that work with your work schedule.
- Preference-Based Filtering: You dislike red-eye flights and prefer aisle seats. You set these preferences once. Stardrift subsequently excludes overnight flights and prioritizes itineraries where aisle seats are available.
How to Use It
1. Sign up for a free account at stardrift.ai.
2. Set your travel preferences in the profile section. Add your preferred airlines and the ones you want to avoid, specify your typical seat preferences (aisle, window, extra legroom), and note your usual travel time windows (like avoiding red-eyes unless necessary). Stardrift remembers these details and applies them to future searches automatically.
3. Connect your Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook app if you want Stardrift to factor in your schedule. Go to your profile settings and authorize calendar access.
4. Start a conversation in Stardrift’s AI chatbox. Describe your trip using natural language. Examples: “Find me a flight to New York that gets me in by 3 p.m. and avoids LaGuardia” or “I need to get from Boston to Chicago next Thursday for a 10 a.m. meeting.” The more specific you are about your constraints and preferences, the better the initial results.
5. Review the options Stardrift presents. It will show you flights, hotels, or train options based on your request. You can view different itinerary combinations side by side and see how they stack up on price, timing, and convenience.
6. Refine your search through follow-up messages. If the first batch of results doesn’t quite work, tell Stardrift what to adjust. You might say “show me options that arrive an hour earlier” or “find cheaper hotels within walking distance.” The conversation flows naturally as you narrow down the right option.
7. Book directly through the platform, or use the information Stardrift provides to book through your preferred channel.
Pros
- Context Awareness: The tool understands the reason behind a trip and plans around existing commitments.
- Live Availability: The system checks real-time inventory for accurate pricing.
- Genuinely Personalized: Learns your actual preferences rather than making you set filters every single time. After a few trips, it knows what you typically want.
Cons
- Booking Limitations: The tool currently focuses on planning and search.
- Limited to Specific Markets: Focuses primarily on U.S. domestic travel, Amtrak routes, and major international destinations.
FAQs
Q: How does Stardrift compare to Google Flights or Kayak?
A: Traditional flight search tools force you to set filters repeatedly and don’t understand your schedule or personal preferences. Stardrift learns what you typically want after a few uses and factors in your calendar automatically.
Q: How does Stardrift know my schedule?
A: You must grant Stardrift permission to access your calendar during the setup phase. It reads your events to ensure travel plans do not overlap with existing meetings.
Q: Can I filter by specific airlines?
A: Yes. You can tell Stardrift which airlines you trust and which ones you want to avoid. The AI remembers these preferences for future searches.
