UFly4Less

If you use the internet to track down cheap flights to exotic European locations, you'd be foolish not to give Ufly4less a try.

For £25 per year you can download a small program to your Desktop and use it to search for flights offered by 13 of the UK's low-cost airlines. If you prefer using just Ryanair, Easyjet and BMIbaby you can pay £15 per year but we reckon it's worth splashing out an extra £10 for the lot.

The search facility is simple: just select where you want to fly to and from, a range of dates (including the days of the week you prefer to travel on) and the number of people travelling.

Clicking on 'search' will then display all available prices between those dates, for all collaborating airlines that fly that route.

There are free internet-based search facilities, such as Skyscanner, but we found Ufly4less a lot clearer.

Because the software continuously updates itself you'll always see the exact fares at that very minute. This means you'll need to be connected to the internet every time you want to search.

Our query, which included flying from five different UK airports to three locations using 13 airlines over a period of two weeks, took about 10 seconds and retrieved hundreds of different permutations - much quicker than searching manually.

The result from each airport and airline is loaded across the results window. However, for a rapid breakdown, you can check the QuickView grid which highlights the cheapest flights found for each day.

If you want to reserve a flight, select your desired combination and click the book button. This will open up a new window linked to the airline you've decided to fly with. The dates are already selected, so you just need to confirm and follow the usual booking procedure.

Ufly4less is definitely worthwhile if you're looking for low-cost flights.