Must-knows before you buy a pass or ticket

  • Most passes and tickets can be bought online in advance. This saves time, and sometimes money too, compared to purchasing them on the spot.
  • Most products are sent by e-mail. You can store your digital pass or ticket anywhere on your phone.
  • You don’t need a “SwissPass” account.
  • The vendors that are listed on our website are trusted partners.
  • I usually recommend the SBB tourist webshop “Switzerland Travel Centre”, and other internationally oriented webshops, over the domestic SBB site and app.

Buying online: the 3 advantages

Buying Swiss rail passes and tickets online saves time, ensures you have a digital backup, and can save money.

1. Save time

Buying online allows you to board your train straight away, rather than spending time at a ticket office. This is especially useful if you arrive in Switzerland by train or plane. But I personally prefer an online purchase over using ticketing machines or waiting at manned desks for any Swiss journey.

2. Always have a digital or paper back-up

Many passes and tickets bought online can be stored on your cell phone or printed at home. So if your pass gets lost or damaged, you’ll still have a digital backup. This is not the case if you buy a paper rail pass or ticket at Swiss railway stations. Such paper products can’t be replaced.

If you don’t want to be dependent on your phone’s battery only, you can print as many backup copies as you want.

3. Save money

Prices offered by online vendors may be lower than the official prices you’d pay in Switzerland. Prices vary per vendor, and also by exchange rates and promotions that may be available.

To check pass prices, go to our page about that pass (start here). To check ticket prices, please use our instructions about finding prices in the timetable.

Buying online: prices, payment and currency

Swiss railways: “official” rail pass prices

Swiss rail passes are priced in Swiss francs when you buy them locally. These are the “official” prices.

The same prices are used by Switzerland Travel Centre, which is the online tourist webshop of the Swiss railways. You can pay in CHF, EUR, GBP and USD there.

Vendors other than the Swiss railways: price differences and advantages

Why there are price variations

The Swiss railways also offer their rail passes and tickets through many other online vendors. The prices offered by these vendors may either be lower or higher than the prices in Switzerland. Price variations are caused by exchange rates, whether or not the website offers additional discounts or services, and so on.

It’s comparable to buying flight tickets. Such tickets have kind of a “base” price, but you can purchase them from many airlines and third-party resellers, and at varying fares.

Possible advantages offered by other vendors

A vendor may be specialized in selling to your country. They may have a helpdesk in your local language and offer local payment methods and payment in your currency. That’s convenient and it can save you money: you’ll have fewer banking fees.

Vendors can also decide to provide discounts and promotions. If a promotion is available, you’ll find it on our rail pass pages and in our promotions section.

Buying through the official SBB tourist webshop

For rail passes and activity tickets, we recommend the SBB tourist webshop Switzerland Travel Centre over the normal (domestic) SBB website or app. That’s because the domestic website and app are mostly meant for Swiss residents.

The online tourist webshop Switzerland Travel Centre, and the other vendors we list on our rail pass pages, are better geared to tourists and foreign payments.

The other online vendors we recommend

To make it easier to pick the best point of sale, we have listed the recommended purchase options on each of our pass and ticket pages. The vendors displayed there are trustworthy and we’ve selected them with care.

If promotions are available, you’ll find those on the pass or ticket page too.

Which rail products do and don’t sell out

Regular tickets do not sell out, except sometimes for mountain trains on very busy days. Other than that, the following products can sell out:

I recommend ordering products that can sell out online and well in advance.

How to indicate you have a rail pass when buying an online ticket

When to indicate you have a travel pass

If you have a travel pass that allows free or discounted traveling for (part of) the route, you can often indicate this when buying your ticket online. The discount will then automatically be deducted from the ticket price. Note:

  • You don’t need tickets for routes that are entirely free with your rail pass.
  • If you don’t need tickets but do need a reservation (for example for an international train or a Swiss panoramic train), some vendors allow you to choose just that: a “reservation only” option.

Which rail passes you can select

Most vendors allow you to select much-used, nation-wide passes such as the Swiss Travel Pass and Swiss Half Fare Card to get your discount. This is often not possible for lesser-known passes such as regional passes and Eurail or Interrail passes. Which passes (if any) you can select, differs per reseller.

Which names are used for rail passes

Not all vendors name the discount options you can choose from exactly “Swiss Travel Pass (Flex)” or “Swiss Half Fare Card”. Here are some of the other names you can encounter:

  • If you can’t choose a Swiss Travel Pass (Flex), see if you can select the Swiss “GA” option. This “GeneralAbonnement” offers free traveling on the same network as the Swiss Travel Pass. The GA may also be called by its French name “Abonnement Général”.
  • If you can’t select “Swiss Half Fare Card”, check if the “Half Fare Travelcard” is listed instead. This subscription for Swiss residents offers discounts on the same train and bus routes as the Swiss Half Fare Card. Alternatively, you may see the German name “Halbtax” or “Halbtax-Abo”. Sometimes, the French indication “Demi-tarif” is used.

Delivery of digital and paper rail products

Almost all rail passes and tickets can be delivered electronically and stored on your phone or printed at home, so there’s no shipping fee.

In rare cases, passes are still physical documents that need to be shipped to you. However, this doesn’t have to mean you have to pay for shipping. Shipping is often free, or free from a minimum order amount. Even if it’s not, ordering online can still be cheaper than buying on the spot in Switzerland.

Your digital pass or ticket will be sent by e-mail, often instantaneously. So you don’t have to wait for a shipment, nor do you have to visit a staffed ticket office once in Switzerland.

How digital passes and e-tickets work on board the train

You have to buy your pass or ticket before you board the train. Your product is ready to use on, or from, the (first) date of validity. This means you can immediately board your first train when you’re in Switzerland. For some special tickets, such as the Supersaver ticket, restrictions apply: they’re valid for one specific train and departure time only.

Train conductors can scan your digital pass or e-ticket directly from your cell phone. Make sure your screen is sufficiently bright: scanning can be difficult from a dark screen. You may want to take along a printed version, in case your phone battery runs out.

Save money by planning carefully

You may need multiple tickets and/or passes. We recommend completing your itinerary first. Then pick a pass and buy all tickets, passes and seat reservations (if any) at once.

For example:

  • You may have planned to travel from Paris to Zurich by train, so you buy the ticket online.
  • However, if you later decide that you need a rail pass for your further travels in Switzerland, you could have saved money as the Swiss part of the journey Paris-Zurich is covered by that pass.

Buying the tickets and passes at once, from a single website, might be cheaper than two separate orders. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

Save money when choosing your vendor

The resellers we have selected are reliable. You can buy from any of them. But if you want to dig into the details of the prices they offer, this is what to consider:

  • Shipping fees. Most products are sent digitally, so shipping fees are mostly a thing of the past. If there is a shipping fee for paper products, it may be waived from a certain order amount.
  • Booking fees. Some retailers charge a fee per booking, per pass or per traveler. This isn’t very common though.
  • Banking fees. If you choose a vendor using a currency different from the one in your country, your bank may charge a fee. The final amount spent depends on the exchange rate of the day. This also applies if you buy your pass in Switzerland: even if you pick your own currency at the payment terminal, the exchange rate will not be in your favor. Tips about the cheapest way to pay can be found here.
  • Promotions. Sometimes a specific vendor offers a promotion, whereas others don’t. There can also be promotions for specific pass versions only. For example: there can be a discount only for a 4-day Swiss Travel Pass, and not for the 3-, 6-, 8- and 15-day versions. If there are discounts, you’ll find them on our rail pass pages and in our promotions section.

Buying at rail stations: how it works

Most rail passes and tickets can be bought at rail stations in Switzerland too, but not all.

Opening hours and waiting times

If you plan to buy at a rail station, check the opening hours of the service desk in advance. Take into account that there might be a queue, especially at rail stations of airports and popular towns. Obviously, this varies a lot by date, time and location.

Stations without manned desks

Switzerland has many small rail stations that are not staffed. In such cases, you can buy tickets from a ticketing machine. Most rail passes, such as the Swiss Travel Pass, are not for sale through ticketing machines though.

What you need to show when buying a rail pass in Switzerland

When buying passes in Switzerland, you’ll have to provide information for each traveler. This information must exactly match the data in the traveler’s passport or another travel document. Buying can take a while, especially if you need passes for several people: all data have to be entered first.

What you need to show when buying a ticket in Switzerland

You don’t need to show your passport when buying a point-to-point ticket at a Swiss rail station. Just get your ticket from a manned desk or ticketing machine.

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Arno
Page author: ArnoI have visited Switzerland countless times since 1997. I've explored most of the country, but find myself staying in the Bernese Oberland and Graubünden most frequently. The alps and the rail network remain very impressive, even after all these years.