Short answer: yes — several specialist award-search engines and services are much better than airline sites for complex, across‑alliance itineraries. Which is best depends on the problem (multi‑city, region‑to‑region, calendar flexibility, or concierge booking). Below are the platforms that experienced award travelers use most, what they’re best at, and the main caveats.

Top platforms & what they’re good for

• Seats.aero — fast live searches, powerful alerts, region/airport-code searches and seatmaps; excellent for hunting partner award space and monitoring hard-to-find premium seats. Great for building multi‑leg itineraries by searching each leg and using alerts. (Note: you still search one‑way legs and verify on the carrier before transferring points). (seats.aero.)

• Roame (Roame.travel) — best for broad calendar/region discovery (their SkyView month/region searches). Use it when your dates and destinations are flexible and you want to spot “sweet spot” availability across alliances. Also offers smart transfer-recommendation logic. (roame.travel)

• AwardTool / Award Nexus — strong “mega” or multi‑search features (many origins/destinations/dates in one run). Useful when you need to brute‑force a complex multi‑airport or multi‑date search across many programs at once. These tools are built for complex, multi‑parameter searches. (frequentmiler.com)

• PointsYeah — very fast multi‑day searches and a very good free tier; handy for quick calendar sweeps and hotel award lookups. Good value if you want speed and simple multi‑date coverage. (thepointsparty.com)

• point.me (and other concierge services) — combines automated searching with a paid human concierge who can build and book complicated itineraries across alliances (helps when the routing/partner booking steps are tricky). Useful if you want someone to do the transfers/bookings for you — but expect fees and mixed user reviews on reliability. (point.me)

Important caveats (do not skip these)

• Phantom availability and scraping errors are common across tools. Always verify award space on the actual airline program’s website (or with the program’s phone agent) before transferring transferable points. The Wall Street Journal and multiple reviews warn that search engines can disagree and occasionally show seats that can’t be booked. (wsj.com)

• No single tool covers every airline/program perfectly. Many travelers use two or three tools (e.g., Roame or PointsYeah for calendar/region discovery + Seats.aero or AwardTool to pinpoint specific flights + a concierge or airline site to book). (thepointsparty.com)

• Legacy tools like ExpertFlyer remain useful for fare‑class and seat maps, but availability and alert coverage have been reduced for many carriers in recent years — check current support before relying on it. (onemileatatime.com)

A practical workflow for complex, cross‑alliance itineraries

1. Scoping/discovery: run a region/month view on Roame or a fast multi‑day sweep on PointsYeah to identify candidate date ranges and routings. (roame.travel)
2. Drill down: use Seats.aero or AwardTool to find exact flights and set alerts on each leg (search one‑way legs for complex itineraries). (seats.aero.)
3. Verify: confirm availability on the airline’s site or by calling the frequent‑flyer program — do not transfer points until you can confirm booking or the concierge will hold space. (wsj.com)
4. Book: either book directly with the program (or airline partner) yourself, or use a concierge service (point.me / paid experts) if the routing requires partner ticketing tricks or multiple transfers. (point.me)

If you want one simple recommendation

• For most complex, alliance‑spanning itineraries I’d start with Roame (for calendar/region discovery) + Seats.aero (to pinpoint and set alerts per leg), then verify and book through the airline program — or hire a concierge if you’d rather not manage transfers/phone calls. (roame.travel)

Would you like me to: (a) run a quick comparison for a specific route/dates you have, or (b) outline step‑by‑step how to verify and book a partner itinerary once you find availability? I can draft the exact checks you should perform before transferring points.