i tend to use edreams (au.edreams.com) when looking for flights myself between most places to get a ball park figure, but in Europe often use Ryanair and Easyjet so go to their websites of course...
depends if you rule any airlines in or out like LCC's....
Cannot comment on edreams as a place to get a ballpark figure. As you suggest, they are quite likely very good for that purpose.
But based on the grief edreams gave friends of mine regarding a couple of European flights they had booked via edreams last year, I would not put my $$$ anywhere remotely near edreams!
They were mostly uncontactable, their Oz phone number was disconnected, when my friends finally got a response to e-mails where they detailed this and their issues, they were advised (via e-mail) to contact the disconnected number (which they had advised edreams was disconnected). Oh, and phone calls to edreams' main office (in Spain) resulted in a long and costly time on hold, for no sensible or helpful information in the end.
Type the words edreams scam into google search and see what is returned. :shock:
There is a
Budget travel forum over at FT, which has a sticky near the top titled 'Low Cost Carrier Reference Sites' which may have some useful info for the OP.
I booked flights on Olympic and Aegean last year via the airlines' websites without issue, and think I got reasonable prices. In fact the Aegean flight was cancelled due to those wacky Greeks staging a general strike that day - they refunded in full on the spot (no alternative flights available) and we went to Santorini the next morning on the ferry.