Farecompare vs Kayak

It seems that everyone swears by their favorite price comparison tool when it comes to digging up the lowest air and hotel rates. We've decided to put Farecompare.com and Kayak.com to the test to see how they perform.

We like Kayak's simple home page which gets right to the point. Type in your departure city and destination and click Search to get results. The navigation menu on the left is very intuitive as well, letting you quickly search for hotels, cruises and more.

Farecompare has a well-designed home page and fare search interface. When you start looking for a flight, the search window expands to give you more space.

We like the fact that pricing is visible immediately in the date selection window in Farecompare. When we looked for fares to Europe, for example, we were able to see the transition dates when prices start to get higher during the high season.

If you are flexible with your travel plans, you can adjust your schedule by a couple of days to get the lower fares.

Kayak has a similar feature: once you enter your travel details, a calendar window with pricing pops up on the right of the search box.

Both online tools find the airport codes for you when you enter the names of your departure and arrival cities.

We like Kayak's search results page which displays all the key information: price, number of stops, duration of the trip and departure and arrival times.

Farecompare only searches airfare, while Kayak lets you gather hotel, car rental and cruise pricing as well.

Kayak and Farecompare have very similar airfare comparison features, so in the end the choice is a personal one and may come down to your preference for how each looks. However, since both tools are so simple to use and free, why use them both next time you are shopping for a travel deal?