New search engine CleverLayover will save you a lot of money on plane tickets (but your flight won't be great)

If budget tops your list of concerns when planning trips abroad, a new search engine founded by six students at Harvard Business School may provide a bit more ammunition for savings.

To get travelers even cheaper flights than usual, CleverLayover analyzes dozens of potential routes on non-partner airlines to find the cheapest combination. So, if heading to Morocco for Christmas from New York, a direct flight on a major carrier will run you north of $1,000. But if you are willing to take a less expensive airline, like Iberia, to Madrid, wait three hours, and hop on another low-cost airline south, the price drops by a couple hundred dollars.

Founder, Phil Hu, who will become the company's CEO after Harvard transfers the intellectual property at the end of the semester, came up with the idea with his co-founders while pursuing his own travel passion. Combining several "graph-search and machine-learning algorithms," the team put together the search engine that can run through thousands flights at once.

The works seems to be bearing fruit. During CleverLayover’s soft launch, it discovered cheaper options on 33 percent of all searches, saving an average of $300. On the best deals, savings reached up to 20 percent, or about $400.

However, drawbacks are plenty, primarily the greater inconveniences, be it long layovers, few flight amenities, more customs checks, passport controls, and security (if needing to change airports). Considering that a recent survey by JD Power showed fliers by and large prefer good service over low costs, convincing users to book through CleverLayover may be a challenge.

Furthermore, if delays with the first flight make you miss the second, it can end up costing you more unless the second airline — which is under no obligation to help you — decides to be merciful (which airlines are oh so famous for).

To be fare, the concept is not entirely new, with an almost identical approach at Skypicker, which also pulls data from dozens of airlines to find cheaper combinations of routes to destinations. The difference appears to be more in the algorithm, with different results showing up on both sites for the same route, albeit with similar prices.

Nonetheless, if you’re flexible in mind, body, spirit, and schedule, CleverLayover (and Skypicker) does appear to reward enough to make it worth a spin when planning your next trip. But unless the savings is significant, it’s probably not with the extra hassle.