Should I Buy an Eurail Pass?

Backpacking Europe

has been a staple for the adventurous for as long as anyone can remember. From wild and free college grads to mature vacationers that were never quite able to shake the travel bug, a good ‘ole fashioned European backpacking tour has been sating our wanderlust for generations. Fortunately, a well kept, widespread, and largely efficient European railway network provides affordable and convenient passage across the EU for frugal explorers. For the last 60 years Eurail has offered a pass for travelers that permits unlimited use of this railway network for a fairly sizable price. Is it worth the buy?

What is an Eurail Pass and How Does it Work?

The Eurail pass comes in a variety of options, but they all do essentially the same thing: allow you a certain number of “travel days” within a given timeframe, e.g. 7 days in 1 month, 10 days in 2 months, etc. These travel days can be used for unlimited access to the European railway system. Whether you hop over to the next town or spend the entire day crossing international borders, if you’re using a rail pass the cost to you will be the same.

The pass itself looks like a long empty grid with spaces to fill in dates and destinations. Once you board a qualifying train, the conductors who walk the aisles checking tickets will have you date and initial one of the boxes on your rail pass. They may also ask you to fill in the city you’ve departed from and your destination. The conductor will then stamp your pass on the row that you’ve filled out. That date is now a “travel day.” You can ride as many trains as you want on that day for no cost by showing your stamped pass, and you should! Trains you ride on any other day will require another stamp and the use of another one of your finite “travel days.”

When you first receive your rail pass in the mail it may be tempting to begin filling it in with all the dates and destinations of your perfectly planned vacation. Do not do this! If your plans change once you’re on the road, and they almost certainly will, you may be unable to use your pass if it isn’t filled in with accurate dates and destinations. In fact, I highly recommend leaving the pass blank until the conductor makes you fill it out. Often you may board a train without anyone checking tickets, or they may forget to check you, or they may stamp your pass without making you fill in any information. These scenarios essentially give you free travel days! I traveled every 2-3 days over the course of almost 40 days, sometimes for hundreds of miles, and didn’t even finish off my 15-day pass.  

A Few Caveats…

It’s important to note that while Eurail passes work for most of the trains you’re likely to ride, not all rail companies participate in the program and there are even some participating routes that may require a paid reservation, even with the pass. Stick to the list of participating railway companies on the Eurail website and do a quick search of your intended routes for the day to limit unpleasant surprises during your travels. I once spent a 7-hour trip from Nice to Paris in an unused luggage rack because I didn’t do my homework and had failed to purchase a reservation. I ended up with a free (and very uncomfortable) ride, but they easily could have kicked me off the train.

Eurail also offers country specific rail passes and passes structured for unlimited travel within one to three months. I would take extra consideration before purchasing one of these passes.

If you’re sticking to a single country, you likely won’t be traveling as far or as frequently as someone doing a full European tour. With proper planning, you can likely spend less money just paying for the train tickets you need as you go. As for the unlimited passes, in my opinion, paying for unlimited travel over the course of your trip is a waste of money. Are you really going to spend every day of your vacation on a train? You can save a lot of money with just a little planning. For example, at the time of this writing, an unlimited 1-month Eurail pass is selling for $945. Another option is 15 travel days over 2 months for $696. If you bought the second pass and used it over the course of one month instead of two, you would still be able to ride an unlimited number of trains every other day and have spent 36% less on your rail pass, and that barely gives you time to unpack! The savings only increase as you scale down the number of travel days in your time frame.

Level With Me: Is it Worth it or Am I Wasting My Money?

Firstly, the price of train tickets and of the various Eurail passes are always liable to change, but they are likely to scale proportionally. So while you may pay in total more or less for the tickets and passes than what’s mentioned here, the advice should remain sound.

I recommend purchasing an Eurail pass if you know you’re going to be covering a lot of distance and crossing many borders over the course of your trip. Long duration, international journeys involving multiple trains are the most expensive and are the trips that will best allow the value of your rail pass to shine. If you know you’ll be sticking mostly to one area, then your trip may consist of short regional train rides that could be purchased more cheaply per ticket than by using a rail pass.

The bottom line is to look at the numbers. For example, if you buy the 5 days in 1 month pass currently listed on the Eurail website for $398, you know that an average day of travel should use roughly $80 worth of train travel.

For some perspective let’s say you’re touring Italy. You’ve spent a few days exploring the famous canals and opulent opera house of Venice and now you want to get outside the city and experience the Italian Alps. At the time of this writing, a train from Venice to Belluno booked tomorrow would only cost $10.02. However, the same trip made from outside the country, let’s say Zurich, would run $131. In the case of longer distance international travel, the rail pass wins.

Now, it is true that tickets purchased the day before will be far more expensive than tickets purchased a month in advance, but I highly recommend against booking all your tickets and locking in your plans before you even leave the United States. Things will change once you’re on the road and you want to be able to account for that on the fly. Your trip can be easily altered by things both outside and within your control. What if you absolutely fall in love with a place that you only scheduled a day for? What if you can’t stand the city you thought you’d spend an entire week in? Flexibility is the key to a successful vacation and if there’s one thing a properly planned and budgeted rail pass can offer, it’s flexibility.