Trains abroad · Switzerland
Pass, Half Fare Card or plain tickets — worked out on your own itinerary, with the mountain discounts that usually decide it.
Full pass price. The Half Fare Card costs the same CHF 150 at any age. Children aged 6–15 travel free with either product on the free Swiss Family Card, so compare for the adults.
The pass includes free entry to more than 500 museums. Leave at 0 if you would not visit them anyway.
We do not guess an exchange rate. Put in the one your card or forex provider will actually charge.
Prefilled with Switzerland Tourism's published prices, checked September 2026, for your age and class. Prices change each year, so overwrite any that differ from what you are quoted.
7 travel days · CHF 740 of full fares
Get the Half Fare Card
Swiss Half Fare Card: CHF 520 all in, saving CHF 220 on tickets and CHF 152 on the next best option, Swiss Travel Pass · 6 consecutive days.
Tickets only
CHF 740
Half Fare Card
CHF 520
Best pass
CHF 672
The example is a typical first-timer week with round example fares. Replace each fare with the full price the SBB app shows, with no card applied.
Officially "up to 50%". Most major summits give the full 50%; check the operator for yours.
The pass is free up to Wengen or Grindelwald and 25% off above; the Half Fare Card is 50% off the whole route.
Officially "up to 50%". Most major summits give the full 50%; check the operator for yours.
Journeys on the same date share one pass day. Use “Seat res.” for compulsory reservations such as the Glacier Express or Bernina Express — they are charged in full whatever you hold.
Passes shorter than your trip are costed with the days outside them paid at full fare.
| Option | Price | All in | vs tickets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swiss Half Fare Card | CHF 150 | CHF 520 | saves CHF 220 |
| Swiss Travel Pass · 6 consecutive days | CHF 399 | CHF 672 | saves CHF 69 |
| Swiss Travel Pass · 8 consecutive days | CHF 439 | CHF 678 | saves CHF 63 |
| Swiss Travel Pass Flex · 6 days in a month | CHF 424 | CHF 697 | saves CHF 44 |
| Swiss Travel Pass Flex · 8 days in a month | CHF 459 | CHF 698 | saves CHF 43 |
| Swiss Travel Pass · 4 consecutive days | CHF 309 | CHF 702 | saves CHF 39 |
| Swiss Travel Pass · 3 consecutive days | CHF 254 | CHF 711 | saves CHF 29 |
| Swiss Travel Pass Flex · 4 days in a month | CHF 349 | CHF 721 | saves CHF 20 |
| Swiss Travel Pass Flex · 3 days in a month | CHF 289 | CHF 725 | saves CHF 15 |
| Swiss Travel Pass · 15 consecutive days | CHF 499 | CHF 738 | saves CHF 3 |
| No card — ordinary tickets | — | CHF 740 | — |
| Swiss Travel Pass Flex · 15 days in a month | CHF 519 | CHF 758 | costs CHF 18 more |
List your journeys
Add each train, bus, boat and mountain trip with its date. Several journeys on one date share a pass day.
Enter full fares
Search each journey in the SBB app with no discount card and enter the full fare. Use return fares for day trips up a mountain.
Pick the kind of journey
This decides the discount: ordinary transport, the three included summits, other mountains, or the upper Jungfraujoch section.
Add reservations and museums
Panorama-train reservations are paid by everyone; museum entry is free only with the pass.
Read the ranking
Every pass tier, the Half Fare Card and plain tickets are costed and ranked. For a Flex pass, the tool also tells you which days to activate.
Most advice compares the pass with the train fares and stops there. On an ordinary rail trip that is fair: the pass covers every train, bus and boat outright, and Swiss fares are high enough that a few long journeys pay for it.
But most visitors from India are not going to Switzerland for the trains. They are going for Titlis, Jungfraujoch and the Matterhorn, and those are exactly the journeys the pass does not cover in full. Titlis, Pilatus, Schilthorn and Gornergrat are up to 50% off with either product, so the pass gives no advantage there. On the Jungfrau Railway the pass is free only as far as Wengen or Grindelwald and gives 25% off the steep, expensive section above, while the Half Fare Card halves the whole route.
So the question is really how much of your spending is on ordinary transport. If most of it is, the pass wins. If a large part goes on summits, the CHF 150 card often wins, even on a full week. Only three summits are free on the pass — Rigi, Stoos and Stanserhorn. If one of those is on your list anyway, it can tip the balance back.
Planning trains elsewhere in Europe too? The Interrail and Eurail break-even calculator does the same sums for a multi-country trip.
Some trains out of Switzerland need a compulsory reservation, and tickets for the rest of Europe go on sale on each operator's own schedule.
Editorial Trust Panel
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Last reviewed
September 26, 2026
Content update
Auto-updated on Jun 28, 2026
Scope: Pass prices are Switzerland Tourism's published 2026 figures and the Half Fare Card price is SBB's, both checked in September 2026. The pass's free Rigi, Stoos and Stanserhorn trips and the Half Fare Card's 50% discount come from those same pages. The 25% Jungfraujoch figure and the 50% on individual summits are the published operator practice, and are marked as such in the tool. Fares are always yours to enter. Railmonk does not carry live SBB fares.
“Is the Swiss Travel Pass worth it?” depends on where your money goes. This calculator costs your itinerary four ways: tickets only, the Half Fare Card, every consecutive Swiss Travel Pass and every Flex pass. It applies each product's actual discount on each kind of journey.
It also answers the question most comparisons skip: on a Flex pass, which days you should activate.
The example week — Lucerne, Titlis, Interlaken, Jungfraujoch, Zermatt, Gornergrat — adds up to about CHF 740 of full fares, and more than half of that is mountains. The Half Fare Card brings the whole trip to about CHF 520. The best Swiss Travel Pass still leaves roughly CHF 240 to pay on Titlis, Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat, taking it to about CHF 670. Swap the summits for long train journeys and the result reverses.
Tickets = sum of full fares + reservations + museums. Half Fare = CHF 150 per started month + each fare × (1 − its Half Fare discount) + reservations + museums. Each pass = its price + each covered fare × (1 − its pass discount) + full fare on days outside the pass + reservations. A consecutive pass is placed on the best run of days; a Flex pass on the highest-saving days within one month. Options within CHF 20 of each other are reported as too close to call.
Only if most of your spending is on ordinary trains, buses and boats, which it covers completely. The famous mountains are a different story: the pass makes Rigi, Stoos and Stanserhorn free but only discounts Titlis, Pilatus, Schilthorn and Gornergrat by up to 50%, and the section above Wengen or Grindelwald to Jungfraujoch by just 25%. A trip built around those summits often comes out cheaper on the CHF 150 Half Fare Card.
The Half Fare Card. It takes 50% off the entire Jungfrau Railway route, while the Swiss Travel Pass is free only as far as Wengen or Grindelwald and gives 25% off the expensive upper section. On a Jungfraujoch day the card saves noticeably more, which is why a single Jungfraujoch trip can change which product wins overall.
CHF 150, valid for one month, for anyone living outside Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It halves the fare on trains, buses, boats, city transport and most mountain railways, in first or second class. It is a discount card, not a ticket, so you still buy a ticket for every journey — at half price.
Flex costs more per day but lets you pick which days to use within a month. It wins when your trip has a few expensive travel days separated by cheap or walking days — activate it only on the big days. This calculator picks those days for you, so the comparison is against the Flex pass used well rather than on your first days.
Usually not. Children under 6 travel free. Children aged 6 to 15 travel free with the free Swiss Family Card when accompanied by a parent holding either a Swiss Travel Pass or a Half Fare Card. So the family comparison is essentially the parents’ comparison, which is what this calculator works out.
It covers the fare, but not the compulsory seat reservation, which is charged in full to everyone. The Half Fare Card halves the fare and also leaves the reservation to pay in full. Enter the reservation in the supplement field of that journey — it is added to every option and never counted as a saving.
Yes. Both the Swiss Travel Pass and the Swiss Half Fare Card are sold to anyone whose permanent residence is outside Switzerland and Liechtenstein, so Indian residents qualify. Both can be bought online before you travel and carried on your phone.