You've probably heard that Tuesday is the magic day for cheap flights. It's half right. The day you book barely matters anymore. The day you fly matters a lot, and the day you fly home matters most.
We looked at 68,000 one-way fares on 172 routes out of Toronto Pearson, covering departures from this fall through next summer. For every route, we compared each day's price with that route's typical price, so a cheap Winnipeg fare and an expensive Tokyo fare count the same way. Then we took the average for each day of the week.
The short answer
- Cheapest day to leave: Tuesday, followed closely by Monday and Wednesday.
- Most expensive day to leave: Friday, around 6% more than Tuesday.
- Cheapest day to fly back to Toronto: Wednesday, followed by Tuesday.
- Most expensive day to fly home: Saturday, which costs about 11% more than Wednesday. Sunday isn't very far behind.
Leaving Toronto: every day ranked
| Day you leave | Price vs. the route's typical fare |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | +2.4% |
| Monday | +3.1% |
| Wednesday | +3.4% |
| Sunday | +5.0% |
| Thursday | +5.5% |
| Saturday | +7.5% |
| Friday | +8.2% |
Every day sits a little above the "typical" line because a handful of very expensive dates, such as the days before Christmas, pull the averages up. What counts is the gap between the days, and that gap is real: leaving on a Friday instead of a Tuesday costs about 6% more on the same route.
Coming home is where the money is
| Return day | Price vs. the route's typical fare |
|---|---|
| Wednesday | +3.5% |
| Tuesday | +4.0% |
| Thursday | +4.5% |
| Monday | +7.8% |
| Friday | +9.0% |
| Sunday | +12.1% |
| Saturday | +15.3% |
This is the part that surprised us. The spread on the way home is almost twice as wide as the spread on the way out. Everybody wants to squeeze in the whole weekend and land Saturday or Sunday, and airlines price accordingly. Flying home on a Wednesday instead of a Saturday saves about 11% on that half of the trip.
What that looks like on a real trip
Take a week somewhere warm. The classic plan is out Friday, back the following Sunday. Shift it to out Tuesday, back Wednesday, and our numbers put that trip about 7% cheaper. On a $600 round trip, that's roughly $40 back in your pocket for moving just two dates, and even more on pricier routes or when you're booking for a family of four.
It won't always work out so neatly. Some routes only fly a few days a week, and one sale can flip the pattern for a month. But as a default, it's the easiest saving there is.
Is the "book on Tuesday" rule dead?
Pretty much. That advice dates from a time when airlines loaded fare sales into their systems early in the week, and travel agents saw them first. Today prices change constantly, many times a day, and the day of the week you hit "buy" makes very little difference. The day of the week you actually board the plane is another story, as the tables above show.
How to use this
- Start with flexible dates. Most airline sites and search engines have a calendar view. Look at Tuesday and Wednesday first.
- Protect the return. If you can only move one date, move the flight home. That's where Saturday and Sunday cost the most.
- Don't fight the calendar for a few dollars. If a Friday departure is $15 more and saves you a vacation day, take the Friday.
How we got these numbers. OddFare continuously tracks fares out of Toronto Pearson. For this piece, we used one-way economy fares for 172 routes with at least 60 days of prices each, 34,457 fares leaving Toronto and 33,488 coming back, recorded in September 2026 for departures up to August 2027. Each fare is compared with its own route's median, so no single destination dominates. Fares change all the time; treat these as patterns, not promises.
Want the flexible-date work done for you? OddFare's deals page lists round trips from Toronto that are well below their usual price, with the exact dates.