Complete Guide to Traveling with a Eurail Pass

A Eurail Pass is a pass valid for train travel throughout 33 countries in Europe. Trains are one of the best ways to travel around Europe as they are so easy to navigate and allow you to travel without having to rent a car or fly everywhere! We spent 3 full months traveling around Europe using our Eurail pass. Here is our complete guide to traveling with a Eurail Pass including picking the right one, how much it costs and what it actually covers!

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A Eurail Pass can be used on both long distance trains going from one country to another as well as local trains within a city or region. The fact that you can use it to travel to 33 countries makes it so convenient!

It allows you to travel by train without needing to book every single train individually. Your Eurail Pass acts as your train ticket so you simply show the conductor your pass and you’re good to go! It allows you to travel around Europe on whatever schedule you want.

Eurail Passes are exclusively for visitors that do not live within the EU. If you are a European resident and want to travel on trains you can purchase an Interrail Pass which is very similar.

Which Eurail Pass Do I Want?

For all Eurail Passes a travel day is a 24 hour period. During that period you can take as many trains as you like. After that 24 hour period is over the next train you take will count as the start of your next travel day. So if you know you are going to take trains on a lot of different days you will want a pass that gives you more travel days.

There are a few different Eurail Pass options and the best one for you largely depends on 2 factors:

The amount of time you are traveling for
The number of countries you are going to be visiting

If you’re only looking to visit 1 country then you can get a One Country Eurail Pass. It allows you to take trains throughout one country for 3, 4, 5, 6 or 8 travel days within a 1 month period. So if you’re looking to travel around Italy for example you can get a pass valid just for Italy to take trains to Rome, Venice, Cinque Terre, Florence or wherever else you want to visit!

If you want to visit more than one country you can also get a One Month Eurail Pass which gives you 4, 5 or 7 travel days (remember a travel day included unlimited trains for that 24 hour period) throughout one month. There is also a 2 Month Eurail Pass which gives you 10 or 15 travel days throughout two months if you want to travel for a little longer.

The last option is the Eurail Global Pass which gives you a set period of time where you can take unlimited number of trains. The difference between the global pass and the one or two month pass is that the global pass has no limit to number of travel days. You can also get a global pass for 15 days, 22 days, 1 month, 2 months or 3 months.

We purchased the Eurail Global Pass for 3 months. That meant we could take an unlimited number of trains for 3 months. We could take a train every single day for those 3 months or we could take a train every 2 weeks because there was no limit to the number of trains or travel days with the pass. It meant we could change our plans really easily!

Read More: 6 Tips for Taking Trains in Europe

How Much Does a Eurail Pass Cost?

One country passes or passes for only a couple of travel days are significantly less expensive than the passes for longer periods of time. If you are under 27 you can purchase a youth ticket which is discounted!

Our Eurail Global Passes cost $807 USD each. We purchased youth tickets (because we were under 27 at the time) which saved us a lot of money. All together it cost $1,617 USD for both of our Eurail Passes.

Throughout our 3 months in Europe we took a total of 100 trains visiting 15 different countries. So for us we saved so much money by buying a Eurail Pass and not paying for each train individually.

Had we paid for each train ride for our 3 months in Europe we would have traveled around much differently. Having the Eurail Pass meant we knew we could get to wherever we wanted on whatever type of schedule we wanted! We didn’t need to count travel days or count the number of trains we had already taken. We had so much flexibility and really took advantage of it!

Is There Anything a Eurail Pass Does Not Cover?

There are specific lists of train lines that the Eurail Pass covers in each country. It’s really helpful to know this ahead of time so you know when you’re planning your trip. Check out the list of Eurail Railways in Each Country to know what train companies are covered as well as in which country public transportation is covered.

In our 100 train rides the only time our Eurail Pass did not cover a train was one train ride from Interlaken to Grindelwald in Switzerland. Besides that one ride we never had a train route that was not covered!

How Much are Reservation Fees?

In more popular countries such as Spain, France and Italy the train companies require reservations. Even though the Eurail Pass is your ticket you still need a reservation alongside your pass to ride the train. This is a fee from the train company, not Eurail, which is why it is not included in your Eurail Pass.

In general the routes that require reservation fees are some high-speed trains or faster routes while the slower trains or longer routes do not. If you do not want to pay reservation fees you can almost always take a different route for free. It may take longer to get to your destination but if you’re traveling on a budget it can save you money!

Reservation fees depend on the country and the train journey. We paid anywhere from 5-15 Euros each ($5-17 USD). It’s important to note though that not all 33 countries require reservations. There are many that do not!

We made almost all of our seat reservations at the train station either the day of or a few days before. You can make some of them online but not in every single country so make sure to look it up ahead of time. At the train station you simply go to the ticket counter, show your pass and say where and on what day you want to go. You pay the fee and are given a receipt that proves you paid the reservation fee. It is to be shown to the conductor along with your Eurail Pass when you are on the train.

Here are all the reservation fees we paid for during our 3 months in Europe. We paid for the most in Portugal and Spain. A lot of that is because we didn’t figure out how to choose a free route until we got to Italy. Our biggest piece of advice is to download the Rail Planner App to help you plan out your routes and also save yourself money!

Travel Truth: You need to be in the country you want to travel from to make your reservation at the train station. For example, if you are in Barcelona, Spain and want to travel from Barcelona to Nice, France you can buy the seat reservation for the train to Nice, France. If you want to continue on and go from Nice, France to Milan, Italy you can’t make that reservation until you are in France. It’s that way because it is a fee from the train company and the train operator is not the same between countries.

How to Use Your Eurail Pass

When we first got to Europe we had no idea how using our Eurail pass would work. We knew it was our ticket but we weren’t sure what exactly that meant. Here is exactly how we used it in every country we visited!

The Eurail Pass acts as your ticket so you need to present it to the conductor on each train that you take. The top section of the pass has your name, passport number and length of time the pass is valid for. Then there is a section to write down each train that you take. When you get on each train you need to write down the date, the time of the train, your starting location and your destination. When the conductor comes around they will expect for the details to be already written down in your pass.

If you run out of lines there is an extra page in the Eurail pamphlet that is mailed with your pass to you. As well you can print a whole page of extra lines from the Eurail website if necessary. We ended up having to print 2 pages of extra lines out!

Sometimes the conductors will stamp your pass and other times they will just quickly glance at it. But it’s important that you have the train written down when they come around. If not you can get fined and have to pay the regular ticket price for that train.

You want to have a pen handy with your pass for this part. We kept both our passes and a pen in a ziplock bag in my purse so it was always easy to take them out!
The back of your Eurail Pass has a QR code on it. There are a few countries such as the Netherlands that have electronic gates to scan your ticket to both enter and exit the train stations. You will need to use this QR code to scan at the exit gates at the train station. If you’re stuck (like we were a few times) there is sometimes an attendant working or there is always a call button to help. Simply say you have a Eurail Pass and they will tell you the procedure for getting through!

How to Use the Rail Planner App

The Rail Planner App is an absolute must if you’re getting a Eurail Pass! It’s a completely free app that gives you the timetables of all trains throughout Europe. That means you don’t have to look online at each train company’s website to see what train times there are. You can also filter it to only show you trains within the Eurail Pass network so you know they are covered in your pass. As well you can filter it to show you only trains that do not require a reservation if you don’t want to pay the reservation fees.

So before a travel day I would put in our starting location and our destination into the app. It will then give you all the possible times for trains for that route. It tells you how long the train is as well as the number of transfers in the journey. For example, 2x means you need to transfer trains 2 times or take a total of 3 different trains.

For each train route it will give you the number of the train so you can find it at the train station as well as each stop the train will make and at what time it should be at each stop. This helps so much throughout the ride because you can check where you are along the route with the stops listed on the app. This is really helpful when all the announcements are in a language you don’t speak!

Trains that have a reservation fee will say additional reservation needed in orange. As well some will say additional reservation recommended in blue if it’s a popular train that sometimes fills up.

Read More: 7 Day Switzerland Itinerary

How to Buy a Eurail Pass

You can buy a Eurail Pass online on the website. However, it is physically mailed to you as it is an actual piece of paper. So it’s important that you order it with plenty of time for it to be mailed to you.

It took about a week from when we ordered our passes online to them getting to us on the east coast of the US. You need to activate or validate the pass in order to start using it. You can choose to activate it when you purchase the pass if you are immediately starting your trip or you can validate it at a train station in Europe when you’re ready to start using it. We just walked into the train station in Lisbon, Portugal and asked someone to help us activate it. They will write the date that the pass is active for directly on your pass that way the various conductors know if your pass is valid or not.