I’ve recently heard of three new services to find cheap airfare. The first is called Kayak (although as far as I can tell it has absolutely nothing to do with kayaking), the second is Yahoo’s Farechase and the third is Sidestep.

I searched for the same roundtrip fare with all three of them and Kayak’s lowest was $288, Farechase’s was $334 and the lowest on Sidestep was $375.

Incidentally, using some other popular sites for finding travel, I got the following results.

Orbitz $375
Yahoo Travel (Travelocity): $315
Expedia: $373

I find it odd that Yahoo Travel beat their farechase service. Very odd indeed.

Here’s another comparison of cheap airfare finders whose results indicate your best bet is to check all the sites you can, as well as using the airlines themselves (Delta, United, Southwest, etc.) to make sure you get the best deal.

And of course there’s always Priceline if you’re a gambling (wo)man.