This is where to buy your Swiss rail passes and tickets 

Buying online: the 3 advantages

1. Having a back-up

Passes and tickets bought online can be stored on your cell phone or printed at home. You can have as many copies as you like. If your pass gets lost or damaged, you’ll still have a backup.

Paper rail passes and tickets purchased at Swiss railway stations can’t be replaced or refunded.

2. Saving 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: if you already have your pass, you can skip the usually busy ticket offices at those places, and not miss the first available train.

3. Preventing payment issues

Large international payments in a foreign currency can sometimes cause credit cards to block the transaction. A declined card is especially inconvenient at a train station, so it’s best to purchase in advance to give yourself time to resolve any issues.

Blocked payments are common and usually caused by bank security measures, so there’s no need to worry. In my experience, banks may initially say there’s nothing wrong on their end. That’s why I recommend calling your bank and trying the payment again while you’re on the phone with them. They can often fix it immediately.

Where to find prices and vendors for rail passes and tickets

This is where you can check prices, as well as buy your rail passes and tickets:

• For rail pass prices and recommended vendors, go to our page about that pass: start here.
• For regular ticket prices and purchase options, see our ticket pages: start here. In addition, you can use our instructions on finding normal ticket prices in the Swiss timetable.
• For excursion ticket prices and vendors, consult our activity pages: start here.

Buying passes and tickets through the official SBB tourist webshop

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

This SBB tourism webshop, and the other vendors we list, are better geared to tourists and foreign payments than the domestic SBB website or app. Swissrailways.com also provides quick digital delivery of your products, and has a good helpdesk. Their passes and tickets have the same prices and conditions as those offered by the domestic SBB website and app.

Buying passes and tickets through 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 and excursion pages. The vendors displayed there are trustworthy and we’ve selected them with care.

Why rail pass and ticket prices differ per vendor

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 the official SBB tourist webshop swissrailways.com (operated by Switzerland Travel Centre). You can pay in CHF, EUR, GBP and USD here.

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 offer discounts and promotions.

Which Swiss rail products do and don’t sell out

Rail passes and regular tickets do not sell out. But the following products can sell out:

• seat reservations, which are only required for some panoramic trains and a few very popular mountain excursions;
• some special tickets such as the Saver Day Pass and Supersaver ticket;
• tickets for trains to and from other countries if they require seat reservations, which is often the case.

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

How to buy an online ticket or reservation if you’ll be using rail pass

Whether you have to purchase your rail pass first, and only then discounted tickets

You don’t have to wait until you’ve bought or received your rail pass. You can get tickets with the discount offered by your rail pass at any time. Just make sure you have both when you start traveling: your discounted ticket and the pass providing the discount.

Whether you have to purchase your rail pass first, and only then reservations

The same goes for train reservations, for example for an international train or a Swiss panoramic train. If you need these, go ahead and make them. You can buy your pass and/or tickets later. Again, just make sure you have everything with you before boarding: your rail pass and/or ticket, plus your reservation.

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 or reservation 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, some vendors allow you to choose just that: a “reservation only” option. In some cases, you can also select your specific rail pass. If this is a pass that fully covers the train ride, such as the Swiss Travel Pass, this comes down to the same as 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 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.

What to do if you can’t select your rail pass or discount percentage

As explained, you may not be able to select your rail pass when buying a ticket online, or to pick the appropriate amount of discount. In that case, you can get your tickets on the spot. Go to a manned ticket desk at a Swiss rail station, show your pass, and explain which route you want to travel.

How digital and paper products are delivered

Digital tickets, passes, and reservations

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

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.

Physical products

In rare cases, rail 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.

How to store digital passes and tickets on your phone

Digital passes, tickets, and train reservations are mostly just PDFs. You can store them anywhere on your phone just like you’d do with other downloaded files. You don’t need an e-wallet or special app. Nor do you need a “SwissPass” account or another account.

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

Buy before you board

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.

How your pass or ticket is checked

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.

You may need to show multiple things

Sometimes, you’ll need to show several products. If you have a rail pass that entitles you to a discounted ticket for example, you must show both your rail pass and the discounted ticket. For a just few trains, additional seat reservations are required too. If that’s the case, you must show those too.

The personnel may ask for an official ID document like your passport too. Officially, you have to carry the originals, and copies are not allowed.

Save money by planning carefully

You may need multiple tickets and/or passes. I advise completing your itinerary first, then picking a pass, then getting additional tickets and reservations (if any).

This example shows how planning pays off:

• You plan to travel from Paris to Interlaken by train, so you buy the ticket online.
• You then complete your travel plans and decide that you need a Swiss Travel Pass for your further travels in Switzerland.
• You could have saved money on the ticket you bought, as the Swiss part of the journey Paris-Interlaken is covered by this pass. You would only have needed a ticket from Paris to the Swiss border.

Buying your passes, tickets, and reservations all at once, from a single website, can be cheaper than 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 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.

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. Many rail stations have SBB ticketing machines, but you’ll also see machines from local railway companies. Note that most rail passes, such as the Swiss Travel Pass, are not for sale through ticketing machines.

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 other official travel document. Buying can take a while, especially if you need passes for several people: all data have to be entered manually 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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