AirHelp vs Skycop vs Flightright: EU261 Flight Compensation Services Compared 2026 (and What Happened to ClaimCompass)

AirHelp is the clear market leader in flight compensation services by claim volume. Founded in 2013 in Berlin, the company has processed roughly 16 million claims cumulatively — an order of magnitude more than Skycop and meaningfully more than Flightright. The brand-recognition advantage matters: AirHelp's name is the answer most travellers reach for first when researching flight compensation, which produces the inbound claim volume that supports its operational scale. That scale also explains the 2024 acquisition of ClaimCompass — AirHelp has consolidated a fragmented market.

The fee structure is the highest of the field at a 35% success fee (including VAT) for out-of-court settlements, plus an additional 15% legal-action fee — totalling 50% of the recovered compensation — for claims requiring court enforcement. On a €600 long-haul claim, AirHelp's standard fee is €210 (35%); if court enforcement is required, the deduction rises to €300 (50%). AirHelp's own published price list, most recently updated in 2026, confirms these figures.

What AirHelp earns the premium for: scale and jurisdictional reach. The 30+ country operational footprint exceeds competitor coverage — AirHelp pursues claims against US carriers (which fall outside EU261 but may be covered under DOT regulations or the Montreal Convention), Canadian carriers (under APPR), and most major Asian and Middle Eastern carriers. Skycop and Flightright operate with narrower jurisdictional focus.

AirHelp+ is the company's annual membership, and it has changed substantially. Pricing now starts from around €90 per year on the Global plan and rises to $179.99 per year for the US Complete plan — well above the €39–49 the membership cost in earlier years. In return, membership waives the success fee entirely (you keep 100% of any airline compensation), and adds flat insurance payouts for qualifying disruptions (commonly cited at around €100 for a 3-hour-plus delay, €100 for delayed or lost luggage, and €200 for a missed connection), lounge access at 1,300+ airports during delays, and security fast-track at selected airports. For travellers with several short-connection trips a year, the membership maths can work out in their favour; for occasional non-stop flyers, it usually does not. Our honest AirHelp review 2026 works through the membership economics in detail.

For years, ClaimCompass was the obvious value pick in this category — a Bulgarian-founded service with a transparent flat fee and strong Eastern European jurisdictional fluency. That changed in late 2024, when AirHelp acquired the company. claimcompass.eu now redirects to AirHelp, and ClaimCompass no longer files claims under its own name. If you are comparing flight-compensation services in 2026, ClaimCompass is not a separate option — choosing it means choosing AirHelp.

Over its lifetime, ClaimCompass helped roughly 500,000 travellers and processed more than $110 million in compensation, working under EU Regulation 261/2004. Co-founded in 2015 by Tatyana Mitkova, Alexander Sumin and Velizar Shulev, it had earlier acquired the US claims app Service in 2020 in an attempt to crack the American market. The founders have said the two companies had been in contact almost since ClaimCompass's inception, and that consolidation — rather than continued head-to-head competition in an increasingly crowded market — was the logical outcome.

The practical implication for a claimant: there is no longer a fee or service difference to weigh between ClaimCompass and AirHelp, because they are the same operation. The genuine independent alternatives to AirHelp are now Skycop and Flightright, covered next.

Skycop is the Eastern European specialist among the major compensation services. Founded in 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania, the company has built strong jurisdictional depth in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Ukraine — markets where Western European competitors operate with less local courtroom experience and weaker airline relationships. It also offers the widest language coverage in the category (30+ on its site) and a prepaid Skycop Care subscription that recovers compensation at 0% commission for members.

The base success fee sits around 30%, with a legal-action surcharge of roughly 10% on top for cases that go to court (note that VAT can raise the effective rate for EU residents — some aggregators quote Skycop's all-in figure closer to 44%). On a €600 contested claim, that places net recovery in the middle of the field: better than AirHelp's 50% deduction in most cases, but read the fee terms for your specific jurisdiction, as the headline number and the VAT-inclusive number differ.

What Skycop wins on for Eastern European routes or carriers: Skycop's local courtroom experience, language coverage (Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, plus standard EU languages) and direct relationships with regional civil aviation authorities. For claims against Air Baltic, LOT Polish Airlines or Ukraine International Airlines, or disruption at Vilnius, Warsaw, Riga or Kyiv airports, Skycop's regional depth produces measurable processing-speed advantages over Western European competitors.

The caveat is service consistency. Like every operator in this category, Skycop attracts public complaints about slow payouts and communication gaps once a claim is won — long waits between an airline paying out and the passenger receiving their share are a recurring theme in reviews. That is an industry-wide pattern rather than a Skycop-specific failing, but it reinforces the point that timelines on contested claims are measured in months, not weeks.

Flightright is the longest-operating major flight-compensation service, founded in 2010 in Potsdam — three years before AirHelp launched. The German market dominance is what Flightright is built around: Flightright has processed roughly 10 million claims cumulatively, with the deepest court-enforcement track record in German jurisdiction. For claims against Lufthansa, Eurowings or Condor, or disruption at Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin airports, Flightright's German courtroom experience produces measurable advantages.

The fee runs roughly 20–30% of compensation depending on case complexity, plus VAT for EU residents. Importantly, contrary to how Flightright is sometimes described, a separate court/legal surcharge can apply on cases that go to litigation (commonly cited at around 14%), which can push the all-in deduction toward 45–50% on litigated claims. On a €600 contested claim, that means net recovery is competitive with — but not dramatically better than — AirHelp once VAT and any court surcharge are counted. On straightforward settlements against cooperative carriers, the effective fee sits at the lower end of the range.

The trade-off is jurisdictional focus. Flightright operates effectively across the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and the broader EU, but with less depth than AirHelp's global coverage. For claims against US carriers, Asian carriers or non-EU route segments, AirHelp's broader infrastructure produces better outcomes.

What Flightright wins on is complexity within its home jurisdiction. The longest courtroom track record in Germany produces a real advantage on cases requiring legal escalation in DACH jurisdictions. For travellers whose German court-system experience is limited, Flightright's familiarity with regional case law, judge preferences and procedural detail produces better contested-case outcomes than newer entrants.