Route brief · CHI → HOU
Chicago → Houston
$140
−30% vs typical
seasonal median $200 · difference $60
Sep 17 – Sep 18 · 1 night
Frontier AirlinesNonstop
- Usual monthly lows
- $146–$266
- Board rank
- Stronger than 78%
- Route sample
- 5 observed months
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefHOUHoustonUnited’s Latin America gateway, the best Vietnamese food in the country, and NASA on the edge of town.Best windowMar–May · Oct–NovAirportsBush (IAH) · Hobby (HOU)All routes into HoustonWhen this route gets cheap.
Cached-fare history: across 5 months, Sep is the cheapest for CHI → HOU. Best time to be there: Mar–May · Oct–Nov.
Fares bottom out in September around $140 and peak in March near $405 — a $265 spread across the 5 months we track. The cheapest itinerary we are tracking flies Frontier Airlines nonstop and takes about 3 hours outbound, on a 1-night trip. At $140 for 1,516 km each way, that works out to about $46 per 1,000 km flown. That is about the $41 typical of short-haul fares here. Of the 3 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Houston, this is the cheapest right now — 20% under the next one, Miami.
The 6 days we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 25% higher than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $165 then versus $207 now, across 7 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $138, on Oct 21.
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Cheapest in Sep · around $140
30% below the $200 typical fare
Cheapest round-trip fare found per month · Chicago → Houston · cached-price history
Route facts
- Airports
- O’Hare (ORD) · Midway (MDW) ↔ Bush (IAH) · Hobby (HOU)
- Flight time
- ~3 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~1,516 km each way
- Typical price
- $200 round-trip (seasonal median)
- Airlines on the board
- Frontier Airlines
- Itineraries
- Nonstop available
- Best months to visit
- Mar–May · Oct–Nov
CHI → HOU, answered.
Is $140 a good price for Chicago to Houston?
Yes — the seasonal median for this route is around $200 round-trip. At $140 you're 30% below that, saving about $60, which we rate great for this route.
What is the cheapest month to fly from Chicago to Houston?
Across 5 months of cached-fare history, Sep comes out cheapest on this route. The best months to actually be in Houston are Mar–May · Oct–Nov — when those overlap, that's your window.
How far in advance should I book CHI → Houston?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. What we can measure is which month is cheap: across 5 months of cached fares, Sep comes out lowest on this route. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for what does move a fare.
Are there nonstop flights from Chicago to Houston?
Yes — the current board includes nonstop fares (Frontier Airlines). The outbound leg runs around 3 hours.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Houston?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Sep 17 – Sep 18 · 1 night.
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Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next CHI → HOU drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
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