The travel season is in full swing, but finding a good rate for airline tickets isn't easy. Saving You Money wants to help you catch a break on rates so we took a look at some travel websites that claim to help you shop smarter.

While it's not easy to find them, travel deals are out there and now several new websites claim to make it easier to pin down these great rates. One of the sites, www.farecompare.com, sifts through past pricing trends to give you an idea of the best time to buy your ticket.

"You can actually go back and look and see how prices have changed over time," said FareCompare president Rick Seaney. "And by looking at it, it's pretty easy to tell in a graphical form."

www.farecast.com offers buying advice based on simulations and data mining. They say their technique can predict which way prices are going. It's kind of like getting advice from a stock broker on whether you should "buy" or "wait" on your vacation plans.

We decided to do a comparison and cross check the information the sites were giving us with the information on an airline's website. What we found was you can find slightly lower prices using an airline's website, but, the travel sites did give us a hand by offering a time frame in which we could find the cheaper rates.