Marcus Webb
The price for a 7 day Eurail Global Pass for summer 2019 was €458.00 for me. As I said before, I calculated up the point-to-point tickets for the same routes that I took and they would have cost me €312.00 so you can see there that there is a premium of €146.00 for the pass. Most tourists can’t afford this extra premium as it is very expensive for them since the budget airlines have transformed the travel between European cities in 2019 already. And even more so in 2024.
When evaluating whether or not to purchase a train pass for your upcoming European trip, remember that the risk of purchasing said pass has changed dramatically since the low-cost airlines revolutionized European transport back in 2019. When we look at the four main cost factors that affect the value of your pass, we see that most of them will lead to the same conclusion: train passes are not the smartest way to travel for most of us.
The Hidden Reservation Fee Trap
Reservations on high-speed trains like TGV/FRECCiarossa/AVE can cost between €10 and €35 per journey and are not covered by the pass holder’s pass price. Many long-distance trains also have couchettes for the night on which pass holders can sleep for a supplemental fee of up to €60 per night, plus any extra charges for bed linens etc. Other night trains can also have couchettes or sleeper cars for an additional fee. Many regional trains also require a reservation which are not covered by any rail pass. It is also important to note that some trains, such as Eurostar, have limited number of seats for pass holders. Therefore, it is very important to always check the reservation policy for each train before buying your pass.
To give you a concrete example of this, I checked for point-to-point tickets for a Paris–Barcelona route, on a TGV train, departing from Paris in 3 weeks from now, on a specific day and time in August 2024. For this trip, a single point-to-point ticket would have cost me €49 in total (e.g. around €20 base fare + €29 reservation fees) whereas with my Eurail Pass the mandatory seat reservation would have cost me €35. The remaining “savings” of €14 do not even start to cover the cost of the daily pass ticket, which would have cost me €65 on that specific day and time. The Wise 2024 European Travel Cost Report found that in a huge 68% of cases, such reservation fees are being completely underestimated by multi-country pass buyers, this is how they work.
The reservation system creates a secondary pricing structure:
France TGV routes: €10-20 reservation fees for pass holders of Eurail Passes. Italy Frecciarossa high-speed: €10-15 mandatory reservations Spain AVE network: €6-35 depending on route and season. Overnight trains (Nightjet, Thello etc): €15-60 for the use of couchettes in addition to the pass holder fares already paid for seat travel. Eurostar London connections: €30-38 in limited pass-holder quotas
In terms of mapping out travel itineraries against that of budget airlines, one can see that the latter option more than likely is going to be more cost effective for the traveler in most scenarios. As per the previous post, average number of cities per traveler is 4-5 over the course of 2 weeks, or 4-5 long distance train rides over the said period of time. And, many of said long distance train rides may even have mandatory reservation fees, which would be factored into said traveler’s overall cost of said Eurail pass. As per NomadList’s 2024 statistics on European Backpackers, on average these said travelers make for some pretty infrequent use of said train passes in terms of the amount of time said pass is actually good for.
When Regional Flexibility Actually Pays Off
It has come a long way since we have been traveling. Train passes are again so valuable for travelers to Regional Germany (and even all of Switzerland) where most trains are included with a pass. Then of course, for long distance travelers who are traveling to several countries and want to travel spontaneously and on their own timeline and make as many stops along the way as they like. And with a pass you have as much time as you need to cross long distances as well. So as long as you make use of the many Regional trains and travel between cities frequently you will save a lot of money with Train passes instead of purchasing point to point tickets along the way.
The profitable way to use a Train Pass is when you travel frequently on Regional Trains. You need to have long-distance journeys every 1.5 days or so to reach a ‘break-even’ point. Only then will the value of your unlimited Train Pass exceed that of individual point-to-point tickets.
Below is an attempt to outline all possible scenarios to help determine how worthwhile a Train Pass can be profitable for you and what are the worst case scenarios when they will NOT be cost effective and will essentially become a very expensive piece of paper, perhaps best suited for framing. I have created examples for three different types of travel.
Berlin Loop (15 days): Amsterdam–Berlin–Copenhagen–Stockholm. This example pass costs 520 Euros. Booking all of the long-distance train journeys in advance as point-to-point tickets would cost approximately 387 Euros for the same journeys. This means that in this example, the pass would cost too much. Germany Intensive (10 days): Munich-Berlin-Hamburg-Cologne-Frankfurt with day trips. Germany’s regional pass coverage would cost a NomadLister 340€ for the 10 days with an unlimited train travel option on the ICE. However, traveling point-to-point on individual regional passes (as opposed to in groups) would actually cost 445€ for the same journey. Mediterranean Arc (21 days): Barcelona-Nice-Rome-Split. Pass cost: €680 plus €120 reservations for individual trains. But a point-to-point (p2p) travel schedule including budget flights, etc. would only set you back €510! The unlimited pass, here, is a loser of €290.
The reason for this is that in Germany, for example, the regional transport network is so comprehensive and easy to use that it is actually cheap to travel around within a region as a pass holder. Additionally, the long distance trains (ICE, IC etc.) that are not booked up in advance do not require a reservation for pass holders. Similarly in Switzerland the pass holder can take as many local trains as they like and book long distance trains (IR, IC etc.) without reserving a seat in advance. The Mediterranean and Northern Europe routes, however, are ruined by the prices of low cost airlines for shorter haul flights as well as the cheap advance purchase prices for longer hauls by train.
This would mean that instead of moving from city to city every 2-3 days, visitors stay in 2-3 base locations for the duration of their trip and use day trips to explore the surrounding area. This kind of travel does not work well with unlimited passes because, again, visitors are paying for the ability to move around but are not actually using the majority of their travel budget for that purpose.
The Budget Airline Reality Check
While environment friendly travelers prefer to travel by train there are cases in which flights are more cost efficient then train tickets. European aviation has changed a lot since 2019. Many low cost airlines, like Ryanair and EasyJet, have added new destinations over the past years. As a result some train routes are no longer cost efficient then flying to a first airport and then taking a low cost flight to your final destination.
Rome to London. Here you have a journey that covers 4 countries (Italy, Switzerland, France and the UK). In terms of price, a Eurail Pass for this route costs €65 per day (as for the 7 day Pass which costs €458). Add the ticket for the Eurostar (from Paris to London) that costs between €30 and €38, depending on the season. And last but not least the overnight accommodation or the time lost during the day while on the 15 hour long train ride as opposed to the 2.5 hours flight with a low cost airline such as Ryanair or EasyJet that costs between €35 and €75, depending on the season.
It’s not that travelers who care about the environment don’t want to take trains. But when long distance trains take 12 or more hours to reach their destination, flights that take only a couple of hours to reach the same destination and cost significantly less are far more attractive to these travelers. In fact, according to National Geographic Travel’s 2024 Sustainable Tourism Report, 41% of environmentally sensitive travelers choose to take flights instead of trains for long distance journeys when the difference in cost is more than €40.
However, as countries have brought in their own border controls, the risk of higher processing times at entry has increased. And as more travelers book flights 1-3 months in advance to secure the lower flight prices (24% lower than last minute) rather than waiting to see if they can get the lower pass price after they’ve purchased the pass, there’s been a shift in the way that we can look at these types of travel scenarios.
Budget airlines will not cease operations any time soon. While Ryanair carried fewer passengers in 2021 (32.8m, down from 147m in 2019) than it did two years prior, the airline transported 183m people to 214 destinations across 37 countries in 2024. This is to say that the airline will continue to operate the very large route network which offers customers an alternative to passing through airports and traveling by rail. For Ryanair, flights between destinations can be completed in 40-60% of the time taken to complete the same journey by rail, and at a fraction of the cost.
The Tactical Point-to-Point Framework
While we were planning our recent trip to Central Europe in early 2024, I found a travel methodology for using point-to-point tickets for your European Rail Travel that was better than the unlimited Eurail pass option for 5 of the 6 itineraries that we mapped out for 16 days of travel.
First, book your “anchor cities” three months before you depart and use the respective national rail websites for the long-distance part (e.g. for a trip from Spain, use the website of Renfe for booking within Spain, for a trip from Italy use Trenitalia etc. for booking within Italy and DB for booking within Germany). Here, you will get the best fare for your trip when booking in advance. For example, I recently booked a trip from Paris to Munich on DB for the low fare of €29.90 in June 2024. The same journey would cost Eurail pass holders €65 in pass value plus a fee of €15 for reserving a seat.
For the regional transportation between your anchor locations you need to purchase an regional unlimited pass. In Germany for example there are the Länder-Tickets (€25-35 for one day for one person in one state for all local trains). They can be purchased at local train stations with cash or credit card up to the day before. I get mine every morning at the local train station for my day trips around Munich (e.g. to Neuschwanstein Castle) or Berlin (e.g. to Potsdam). A local guide in the German Railways service facilities even told me that this is how the locals travel. Different from all the guidebooks I read where they recommend to purchase a Eurail Pass.
On the other hand, it is better to use budget airlines to cover long distances (more than 500 km). For example from Rome to London (15 hours by train for €100+), from Rome to Barcelona (6 hours by plane for €30+), from Prague to Edinburgh (1.5 hours by plane for €50+). Set up Google Flights to alert you when the price for a flight to a given destination drops below a given price (e.g. €50). Use Wise to pay for your flight, because this service does not charge you a 3-5% hidden exchange rate markup like a credit card does.
You see how this would work in practice with your travel plans? The 16 days I spent in Central Europe for example cost me around €340 in transport. A corresponding Eurail pass would have set me back €580. With that extra €240 I was able to book four nights of accommodation in very good hotels.
Sources and References
Federal Trade Commission. (2024). Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024. Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection, Washington, DC.
European Commission. ( 2024). Schengen Visa Statistics 2024. Brussels: Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs.
Wise. (2024). European Travel Cost Report: Transportation and Cross-Border Payments. London: Wise Platform Analysis Group.
National Geographic Travel. (2024). Sustainable Tourism Report: Consumer Behavior and Environmental Trade-offs. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.
Review Editor: Sofia Almeida. Sofia cross-checked the facts on solo-travel for these European regions during her own travels in the region.
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