Swiss Travel Pass - more details

Free entrance to museums

Your Swiss Travel Pass works as a Swiss Museum Pass too. Normally this is a separate product for which you'd have to pay. You can enjoy hundreds of museums for free.
www.museumspass.ch/en/where-to-use-my-museum-pass/

Swiss Travel Pass Youth: discount for youths

The Swiss Travel Pass Youth is the discounted pass for anyone up to and including 24 years. The Swiss Travel Pass Youth is exactly like a Swiss Travel Pass. There is no difference other than the price.

Swiss Travel Pass, Swiss Pass and SwissPass

The Swiss Travel Pass was once called "Swiss Pass". You can easily confuse both names with "SwissPass". This is a digital product mainly used by Swiss residents, and it has nothing to do with your Swiss Travel Pass. Find more details here. 

We recommend to keep things simple: buy your Swiss Travel Pass from any of the websites listed here, which are geared to tourists. The pass is ready to use from the moment you received it. There is nothing else you need to do. Just hop on and off board, or buy discounted mountain tickets, as explained here.

Swiss Travel Pass versus GA travelcard

The GA travelcard (Generalabonnement) offers free traveling in Switzerland. It is primarily for residents from Switzerland. As a tourist you can best buy the similar Swiss Travel Pass.

Both passes offer similar benefits, but there are differences. For example:

• The Swiss Travel Pass is much easier to purchase than the GA travelcard. Your Swiss Travel Pass will be delivered online in minutes and you don't need to any additional documents as for the GA travelcard.
• The GA travelcard does not include free entrance to museums.
• The GA travelcard offers discounts on trips to Germany and Austria, the Swiss Travel Pass doesn't.

Discounts on various events and day trips

Essentially the Swiss Travel Pass works much like the GA travelcard. That means that in most cases where the GA entitles for a discount, the Swiss Travel Pass will entitle for that same discount.

Combined tickets for events and other day trips include both the transportation and the admission, and sometimes other services. You will get a discount because the transportation is already included in the Swiss Travel Pass.

Traveling in 1st class with a 2nd class Swiss Travel Pass

If you have a 2nd class pass, you can still choose to travel 1st class on occasional trips. You can buy an upgrade ticket at the rail station. It costs half of the difference between the 2nd and 1st class fare for the route you wish to travel.

Who can buy the Swiss Travel Pass?

The Swiss Travel Pass can be purchased by anyone except for residents of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

More about train traveling in Switzerland

Information about timetables, seat reservations and much more can be found here.

Alternatives if you don't travel for exactly 3, 4, 6, 8 or 15 days

• If you only need to travel for one or two days, point to point tickets or the Saver Day Pass are worth looking into.
• If you plan to travel for 7 days, for example, an 8-day Swiss Travel Pass is often still the best option. You can do the math to be sure.
• Do you need an extra day of travel, e.g. for day 9 on top of an 8-day pass? Then again point to point tickets or the Saver Day Pass may work for you.

Alternatives if you stay longer than 15 days

The Swiss Travel Pass is available for 3, 4, 6, 8 and 15 days. You can consider the below alternatives if you stay in Switzerland for longer than that.

• If you need a pass for 30 days, the most convenient option is to buy two 15-day Swiss Travel Passes of CHF 429 each. The cost per travel day is CHF 28.60, which is still good value if used extensively.
• Likewise, if you need a pass for 23 days, you can buy a 15-day and an 8-day Swiss Travel Pass of CHF 429 and CHF 389 each. The cost per travel day is CHF 35.57.
• If you don't need to travel every single day, the 15-day Swiss Travel Pass Flex of CHF 449 allows you to travel for 15 days within one month. The cost per travel day is CHF 29.93.
• The one-month Swiss Half Fare Card is an alternative if you are willing to give up on ticketless traveling. You'll have to buy discounted tickets for all your trips.
• There is also a Swiss Half Fare Card for one year: the Half-Fare travelcard. Apart from this, there is the 1-month GA Travelcard for unlimited traveling by train and bus (not mountain transport). For both products, one must first obtain a SwissPass. Note that the mentioned products are different from a Swiss Travel Pass: museums and castles are not included, for example. These passes are designed for people living in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, not for tourists. Frequent visitors are not excluded though. We refer to the SBB website for more details: www.sbb.ch/de/abos-billette/abonnemente/halbtax.html and www.sbb.ch/de/abos-billette/abonnemente/ga/ga-monatskarte.html.
• Eurail and Interrail passes allow unlimited traveling as well, but these passes are very different from the Swiss Travel Pass. Be sure to study the details before deciding.

Any questions left?

Feel free to contact us. The forum is the best place to do so.