Interrail Pass or Individual Tickets?
Which is cheaper for a five-day trip across Europe...
In my last post, I described our 5-day interrail journey from Amsterdam to the port of Livorno in Italy in April 2024. Here, I answer the million-dollar question (or rather the £233 question): would it have been cheaper to purchase individual rail tickets for each of our 19 trains on the journey?
We paid £233 each for our five-day interrail passes.
I used the Raileurope.com website to look up the cost of tickets for each section of the journey, both for the next day and in three months’ time. It’s not a direct comparison with our trip because we travelled in April, but it should give a rough idea.
The results show that our five-day pass at £233 was cheaper than purchasing individual tickets. Booking all tickets at the last minute would have cost £383.90 (an extra £150.90), and booking them three months in advance would have cost £294.30 (an extra £61.30).
This analysis, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time, gives me a glow of satisfaction that we saved money with the Interrail passes. But the passes also had multiple other benefits:
They also allowed us to hop on and off the trains at will, adding serendipity to our journey.
The pass eliminates the stress of making multiple connections each day at certain times.
When I attempted to replicate our trip on the Raileurope.com website, it was difficult to ensure I purchased a ticket for the correct route because it doesn’t always list each stop. Therefore, we might have ended up on the wrong train, missing the highlights.
I didn’t include the cost of seat reservations in this analysis. We only needed one reservation from Milan to Livorno, which cost £3 each. If I had purchased an individual ticket, there might have also been a seat reservation fee.
I hope you find this helpful if you are considering Interrailing :).