Back to Portfolio

WildAF

Frontier GoWild™ Fare Radar — compare pass fares against cash on any route

Live product — a first-party Howarth Tech Solutions SaaS, subscriptions active
Visit wildaf.travel
wildaf.travel
WildAF.travel light-theme homepage screenshot

Overview

WildAF is a live subscription SaaS built and operated by Howarth Tech Solutions. It's a fare radar for Frontier Airlines' GoWild™ all-you-can-fly pass: for any route and date, it puts the GoWild fare side by side with the standard, Discount Den, and bundle cash fares — so a pass holder can instantly see whether a given flight is worth burning a GoWild booking on, or whether cash is the better play.

Beyond the head-to-head fare comparison, WildAF surfaces the details that decide a trip: full itineraries with legs, layovers, and distance; a seat-fullness meter derived from Frontier's own per-fare-class bookable-seat counts; a ±3-day fare strip; and an “Anywhere” mode that scans every destination Frontier serves from your home airport at once. It's free to use, with an optional Pro plan at $4.99/mo that unlocks fare-watch push alerts and the deeper trip-planning tools.

Live
Shipped Product
$4.99
Pro / month
~10 min
Fare Refresh
PWA
Installable

Not affiliated with Frontier Airlines. GoWild™ is a trademark of Frontier Airlines. WildAF reads Frontier's public booking data and is an independent tool.

Tech Stack

A lean, self-contained full-stack build — everything from the fare parser to billing runs in a single stateless-friendly container.

Next.js 15
App Router, standalone output
TypeScript
End-to-end type safety
Tailwind CSS 4
Utility-first styling
SQLite
better-sqlite3 — fare/seat history
Web Push
Self-hosted VAPID alerts
Square
Pro subscriptions + webhooks
Resend
Transactional + newsletter email
Docker + Caddy
CI/CD via GitHub Actions → GHCR
Architecture Highlight

There is no official Frontier API. WildAF fetches Frontier's public booking endpoints server-side, follows their cookie-aware redirects, and extracts the embedded flight-data JSON with a purpose-built parser. Results are cached with date-tiered TTLs (minutes for near-term dates, hours for far-out), persisted to SQLite so restarts stay warm, and kept fresh by a jittered pre-warm sweep of the most-searched routes. The parser is isolated so an upstream shape change is a contained, fixable break — not an outage across the app.

Key Features

Everything a GoWild pass holder needs to decide when to fly, where, and on which fare.

GoWild vs. Cash

  • GoWild fare beside standard, Discount Den & bundle
  • Any Frontier route and date
  • One-way and round-trip search
  • Running GoWild savings tally
💼

Full Itinerary Detail

  • Legs, layovers & connection times
  • Distance and routing
  • Bundle breakdown per fare
  • Days-of-service schedule lookup
🚨

Seat-Fullness Meter

  • Derived from Frontier's per-fare-class seat counts
  • Near-sellout “X seats left” signals
  • Seat-trend history sparklines
  • Read a flight's fullness at a glance
🌎

Anywhere Mode

  • Scan every destination from your airport
  • Surfaces the cheapest GoWild options
  • Home-airport quick launch
  • Great for “where can I go this weekend?”
📅

Fare Calendar & Trips

  • Month view of lowest fares
  • ±3-day fare strip on every search
  • Weekender trip finder
  • Anywhere calendar fed by snapshot history
🔔

Fare-Watch Alerts Pro

  • Web-push alerts when a watched fare drops
  • Self-contained VAPID, in-process checker
  • Stranded-o-meter — escape options
  • Installable PWA for phone home screens

Technical Highlights

The engineering that turns an unofficial data source into a dependable product.

📡

Resilient, Unofficial-Data Pipeline

With no public API to rely on, WildAF fetches Frontier's live booking endpoints server-side, follows their cookie-aware redirect chain, and extracts the embedded flight-data JSON. The parser lives behind a single normalization layer, so when Frontier changes its response shape the fix is one localized change — the rest of the app keeps running on cached data in the meantime.

Date-Tiered Caching & Warm Restarts

Fare freshness is tuned to how volatile a date is: near-term searches refresh in minutes, far-out ones cache for hours. Snapshots persist to SQLite so a container restart stays warm instead of cold-starting, and a jittered ~15-minute pre-warm sweep keeps the most-searched routes hot — which also feeds the Anywhere calendar's historical view.

🔔

Self-Hosted Push Alerts

Fare-watch notifications run on self-contained Web Push (VAPID) with an in-process checker — no third-party notification service. Users subscribe from any device, and the stranded-o-meter reuses the same data to surface escape options when a route is booked solid.

💳

Freemium Billing on Square

The Pro tier runs on Square subscriptions, verified end-to-end in production (checkout → webhook → automatic account flip), with a real cancellation flow — countdown, days-left, and no-recharge state. Because the HTS Square account is shared across products, all subscription handling is scoped by plan variation so account-wide webhooks are routed to the right product.

📄

File-Based Content & SEO

Guides and blog posts are plain markdown that go live on push — no CMS. The system generates the sitemap, canonicals, an OG image, and Article/FAQ structured data, and ships a consent-first GA4 conversion funnel (CTA → sign-up → upgrade → checkout). Layover guides for every Frontier base drive organic discovery.

🚀

Production Ops from Day One

WildAF ships as a CI-built container image deployed to a DigitalOcean droplet behind Caddy (apex + www, automatic TLS), with resource limits, a GET /healthz check, a SQLite backup drop-in, an installable PWA manifest, and a security.txt at the edge. The deployed commit hash shows in the site footer.

What This Product Demonstrates

WildAF is Howarth Tech Solutions shipping and running its own SaaS end to end — not a demo.

📡
Reverse-Engineered Data
Turning an undocumented, unofficial source into reliable, cached product data
💳
Live Subscription Billing
Freemium on Square — checkout, webhooks, cancellation, all in production
🔊
Self-Hosted Push
Web-push fare alerts with no third-party notification dependency
📈
Growth & SEO
File-based content, structured data, and a measured GA4 conversion funnel
📱
Installable PWA
Add-to-home-screen app experience, verified on real devices
🚀
Own the Full Lifecycle
Build, deploy, monetize, and operate a product we run ourselves

Want a product like this built?

WildAF is what it looks like when we build, ship, and run a SaaS end to end — data pipeline, billing, alerts, growth, and ops. If you have a product idea that needs the same treatment, let's talk. Or go kick the tires on the live app.

Get In Touch Try WildAF

Frequently asked questions

What is WildAF?

WildAF is a Frontier GoWild™ fare radar built and run by Howarth Tech Solutions. It compares GoWild pass fares against cash fares on any Frontier route, with seat-fullness signals, an Anywhere destination scan, fare-watch alerts, and a fare calendar. It's free to use with an optional $4.99/mo Pro plan.

Is WildAF affiliated with Frontier Airlines?

No. WildAF is an independent tool that reads Frontier's public booking data. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Frontier Airlines, and GoWild™ is a trademark of Frontier Airlines.

Can you build a SaaS product like this for my business?

Yes — from idea to a live, billed product. See our software development service.

Related services & work

Have a product idea?

Tell us what you have in mind and we'll come back with an approach and a flat quote — no obligation.

Get a free quote See more work