Today we’re quietly (and finally!) opening up Railfinder to the public! This is our beta version and - hopefully - the first step towards that one booking site for trains across Europe that we all dream of.
Lots of work has gone into this and equally lots still to do before reach that vision, but if you’d like to try what we’ve built you can now just go to railfinder.eu and have a go!
Any and all feedback more than welcome 🙏
This entry was edited (6 months ago)
Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •And for the nerds among us, we have a page on all the details that went into this - including our initial ticket coverage & how the search works: railfinder.eu/how-it-works
Ask me anything!
How Railfinder works
RailfinderJulian
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Uwe Trenkner
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •what data structures, path finding algorithms, infrastructure and tooling are you using etc 🤓
also, how big is your team?
Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Meercat ✅
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Le Chep
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •kudos, you've found decent solutions to my go-to riddle "Paris to Kaunas" on the very first try, no fiddling.
I may use that next time !
orangerkater
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •orangerkater
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Georg Ruß
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Egon Kastelijn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Hi Stefan,
Great work !! This looks very promising indeed.
I quickly tested the application, and it selects the correct train.
The only thing is that the pricing seems to be a bit different if I compare it the the bahn.de website?
(€ 99,99 vs € 29,99)
Luca Weiss
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Trainfo.eu
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •"Travel at night" and "nighttrain" feels a little odd. I understand that "travel at night" means "sit in whatever train that runs at night", but it might need some thought on wording / explanation.
Being able to avoid "daytrains at night" is huge improvement over other sites 👍🏻
Christian Stadelmann
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Ria Glas
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Gertjan Hulster
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •marado
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •penguin42
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Thomas
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Jonas Boström
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Klimastig
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Alex
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Nice! Seems to find reasonable options between DK / DE.
You are a private company, not funded by EU?
Sami Koskinen
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Malvin
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Very cool and impressive for a beta version!
- Optionally showing a map of the route would be nice.
- Will it be possible to buy tickets / search for prices with a discount card taken into account?
- Do you have plans to allow searching for trains with bike transport or even buy tickets with it? 🚲
- The 2.7 megabyte background video with autoplay on the homeapge seems overkill to me, even when I am not on a German train right now 😉
- Clicking "Support" does nothing.
Jeroen
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Marc Magnin
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Bimba
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •malte
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Trainline : Search, Compare & Buy Cheap Train Tickets
Trainline.com LimitedSimon Waldman
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •ddg
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Jesko Wagner
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Jarek Kopeć
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I do sincerely love this idea. I hope it all works out. If you need help navigating the Polish ecosystem, please let me know.
I managed to find a connection from Warsaw to Paris via Berlin quickly.
Loading time was a bit long, but I understand that it's what a beta looks like.
What I would love to know is the standard of the trains included in my schedule. It is essential for me, as many of my travels would be overnight.
I'm looking forward to using your service for my first booking when my son grows a bit more, and we'll be able to go travelling!
MC
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Eggs now in different baskets.
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Eggs now in different baskets.
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I have spent many hours in the past on the DB website which is the best rail travel site I have found to date.
I had a quick look at Railfinder and it was a cinch to find Bø station in Telemark, easier than the VY or DB sites. So that was a good start.
What is the business model for Railfinder? Where does the money come from to keep the service going?
Kilian Evang
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Gismoe
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •jmc
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •SailRail - Travel to the UK by Rail and Ferry
Irish RailKalle
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •miniBill (Leonardo)
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •are you interested in weird test cases? If so:
Jesenice (SL) -> Udine [there is a path through Gorizia]
Arnhem Centraal -> Udine [the solution you're missing is departing at 05:45 or 07:37 and arriving the same day at 21:13 (it's a tight route but a possible one, I've done it before)]
波鉄 (Hatetsu)
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •(brb, drawing a map, this is fun stuff)
Anthropy
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •This is neat, and worked even from Groningen Europapark to Milan!
I do want to note that maybe it would be good to include some messages about interruptions if there are no routes found; I tried from Appingedam to Milan which didn't work because there are currently major construction works happening in Groningen main trainstation, taking out all transport downstream from there. They do have replacement busses but I'd understand if Railfinder would only want to focus on Railways
Peter Tribble
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •vision
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •exus1pl
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •congrats on the launch!
only bug i can find is that you're calling Portsmouth -> Ryde ferries "ship trains"
and obviously your route finder should prioritise the hovercraft because they're 1,000 times cooler
railfinder.eu/search/trips/new…
Railfinder
RailfinderSam Easterby-Smith
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •波鉄 (Hatetsu)
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Stéphane Tavera
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •First of all 👏 👏 👏
I played 5 minutes with the site:
* for Geneva departure, the name of the main station (Cornavin, see sbb.ch/en/travel-information/s…) is not displayed which may disturb
* The cancel button on the checkout page redirects to Page not found
Will definitely use your site for my future train trips!
tnt
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Grégoire
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Grégoire
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Grégoire
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Joonas Sarajärvi
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Panos Chatzichrisafis
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Bigfood
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Jesko Wagner
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •rugk [📞 7845]
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •You say you prefer night trains on some page, but in railfinder.eu/search?from=4879… if is only listed further below.
Though on that case that's maybe indeed useful, because you can get there on one day.
Also you say you sell öbb NightJet too but for this particular one or saays "Not yet sold by us" hmm.
Leipzig Hbf to Budapest, 2025-06-28
RailfinderMajor Denis Bloodnok
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Well, I tried the next EU rail journey on my calendar; Hoek van Holland Haven to Hamburg Hbf. It recommends I get the ferry back to Harwich, the train down to London Liverpool Street, spend a night in London, and get a Eurostar. This is not what I had in mind.
I think it doesn't know about Rotterdam's metro given the answer is more plausible if I start from Schiedam Centrum.
nihilistic_capybara
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Alan Bellingham
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Jaxom Kaplan
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Best of luck to both projects in any case !
카를로스
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •mossyrua
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Markus Schneider-Pargmann
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •thank you for this, it is great.
A few nice to haves:
- As already mentioned quick swap for origin and destination
- Making clear with which provider each ticket is booked in the booking preview
- Adding some more filter capabilities, like adding via stations or being able to select train types
- For some trains it is OK to have tight connections, for example if this is the last train in the journey, it goes frequently and the ticket can be used with any of them.
Arjen Haayman
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •@Frieke72 I did some random testing, but was quite disappointed that the 'top pick' showed 'sales closed'. This means that it's not available? Then it shouldn't be the top pick. If this is only displayed in the third step searching becomes a hit and miss experience.
Other than that the interface is really, really nice and insightful
squawkbox
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •bitbonk
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Philipp
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I'd suggest you add a more structured way for users to leave feedback. Maybe some bugzilla/trac/mantis/…, or if you plan to opensource
bitbonk
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Dirk Spannaus 🌿
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Looking forward to test it in our upcoming Interrail trip. First feedback: when adding another passenger for a moment I didn’t know how to get back and find the search button. Which was hidden by the „add passenger“ box. Maybe it’s just me.
What I missed a lot in the past days on other platforms was the ability to easily book „reservation only“ for the Interrail use case.
Chris Laprun ⏚
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Experimented a little bit and didn’t notice anything too weird apart from the options where 5-hour plus connections starting around midnight (i.e. waiting for the next first train departure) were considered as a « day to explore », which, I thought, is a bit over enthusiastic! 😅
ranska
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I really really appreciate the clutter free webpage, it is so refreshing these days to find a webpage like that.
I sincerely hope you'll keep it like that in the future🤞🏽
Eragon
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Thomas Depierre
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •i uh.
I need to go cry in a corner. I had stopped thinking that going to see friends in Berlin was doable because I hated the plane travel and I couldn't find a good way to get there by train. The options were just shit
But this found me some actually good options that I could fit in my schedule and do
Just. Thank you. So fucking much. I had never been able to get these options or realise they exist before, and i did try hard.
I an legit crying rn.
benoit mortier
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •david
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •JonathanMM
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Hello, great site!
However, I'm not sure about the part of this trip between Madrid Puerta de Atocha and Madrid Chamartin in 3h30 ^^'
timorl
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Erika
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •railfinder.eu/search?from=533&…
for trips from Palermo / Sicily you seem to avoid the direct night trains and prefer changing at Messina, smells like a bug 🤔
could you somehow be detecting the train ferry as a very short transfer?
Palermo to Swansea, 2025-06-25
RailfinderVHG 🇪🇺🇺🇦
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •udo m. rader ☕ 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🐧
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •tried to search for a train for our upcoming holiday trip ("Innsbruck Hbf to München Flughafen Terminal", Aug 12th for 3 passengers).
Couldn't get past the landing page, the search button doesn't seem to do anything. I see this in the console (latest FF):
Wintermute_BBS
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Tomi the Slav and 1024 others
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I see you include buses too (like DB Navigator that adds a bus between Saarbrücken and Luxembourg, because it's better than train connection.)
Jessica Stewart
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •ArchaeoIain
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •tlohde
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •very nice. In this example, what does "unavailable" mean? Re: "not yet sold by us" flag, from the roadmap on your /how-it-works, do you envisage linking to a site (with that journey already found) where that ticket can be purchased?**
From a UX perspective, I was anticipating the tags (Break in X, Day in Y, Night in Z, etc) to have a bit more detail when hovering/clicking. Similarly the "not yet sold by us" and "unavailable".
Two thumbs up. Well done.
** I fully understand if you don't want to link people to other ticketing services.
crypticcelery 2579@39c3
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Tinkering with this would be really interesting, here’s a few things to maybe consider from playing around:
- travel windows: depart mon-wed, to maybe find non-daily night trains
- day in $city: use two or more consecutive night trains, visit the city (possibly with hints as to which days they operate to optionally extend stay)
…
TuxTux👗🧔♀️
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •We're on vacation by train most of the time... avoiding to take flights.
And so, we'll giving it a try next time, we're on the way across europe! 👍
jalal
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •For the last few years I've avoided flying as much as possible and travelling by train, so this is very useful to me. Thanks
Sven
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Benjamin Piouffle
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Congrats on the launch!
Tried today and got a bug: in the search results & confirmation screen, the cheapest tickets start at 70€ (+7€ fee). On the next screen (Select travel class), it's 139€ (+13.90€ fee).
Is it because SNCF changed their prices overnight, and I'm seeing a cached version?
lambda🔺FLRA-362
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Kexe
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Guro
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •For fun, I tried searching from Oppdal in Norway to Copenhagen. If I want to start by taking the night train to Oslo, I'm told that I should take the northbound train at 19:14 to Heimdal, wait 3 hours, and then take the southbound night train from there. The thing is: the night train stops at Oppdal at 01:11. I'll spend 6 hours extra for no reason?
Nene La Beet
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Chloé
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •dch
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •congratulations! I'll give it a whirl for my next trip.
Big Question: how does it handle a trip that crosses countries and where 1 segment is either fully booked, or the requested seat or tariff isn't available?
Hint: every other trainsite just crashes on this very common scenario.
The bar is very very low for you to be the best!
Thaddée Tyl
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Anke
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Wow, really like the visual display of the journeys, it lowers mental load a lot!
For future development, try to add some more WCAG accessibility in the website, the orange (sorry!) does not have enough contrast with the white, and using the site with tab sometimes does not show the active element; (sorry, it's my job to check these things)
But overall, i'd definitely use it! Really nice!
John Robinson
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Oleksii
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Nice initiative!
I'm wondering if #railfinder already has any experience with EU Digital Identity Wallets?
It seems to me a scalable and reliable mechanism of credentials exchange is key component for successful #CrossBorderRail initiative.
Let me know if anyone is interested to discuss it.
#digitalwallet
ec.europa.eu/digital-building-…
What is the Wallet - EU Digital Identity Wallet -
ec.europa.euLeo Avrit
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Trainfo.eu
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •The add stop and add return does similar things. The diff seems to be if destination is pre-filled.
But my expectation was that add stop would act as via/stopover between the current start and destination
At least that’s how I usually have encountered similar functions
Thomas Lee ✅
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Richard de Waard
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Drahflow
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •H1D
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Gaelan Steele
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •ooh, very cool!
Out of interest, what are you using as a minimum connection time for arrivals at London Kings Cross connecting onto a Eurostar? I was offered 51m, which is definitely doable on a good day but seems a little risky.
Trantion
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •looks nice from a quick look, and I like your aims. Can you make the price for partial journey message as prominent as the fare? If it finds routes where you can sell all tickets one way but not another way, that other way looks much cheaper at a glance.
Found a bug too: searched for Leeds to Chamonix, today. Top option, departs 21:43, says the TGV Lyria costs from €58, but when I go to choose a class the minimum is €131. Also, the add stop button doesn't show any options
MxFraud
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •so far I tried to book from the UK to France, or from Poland to France (via Prague), but you don't sell UK-> , PL->CZ or CZ-> DE, yet.
Gdansk has many train station but no ability to choose any, like say for Paris.
But looking forward to see how you grow as the routes you found were interesting 😀
Chake
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Björn Gohla
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Mark
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • •Patrycja 🔜 SL18
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •any plans to add more customizability to the search, such as excluding train types ( or even specific operators ) as well as adding stopovers?
my main use case is banning eurostar, because the tickets are too expensive for more-or-less the same travel time as the EuroCity Direct, or even a TGV
Zhenbo Li
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •@ericsfraga
Great! I can’t believe this coincidence that I’m planning a trip to Europe right now. This tool looks quite helpful to me.
Thanks/Merci
Sven Geggus
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •guenther
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •- I can find no info regarding supported payment methods (SEPA transfer/direct debit would be nice).
- Autoplay video on mobile (especially on the start page) is a waste of traffic and renders your website less accessible to people on German trains.
- Anonymous booking would also be nice but I guess the train operators mostly killed that one.
Ulrich Popp
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I just found out that Latvia seems not to be included.
And thats really funny 😀 :
guenther
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •hey @EUCommission this dude from sweden seems to be implementing your european train ticket booking app that you promised within three months a few years ago
@stefanlindbohm
rytro
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Good start, I've had some results I wouldn't get at bahn.de.
However, the newly established daily Vilnius-Rīga-Tallin connection is missing: Vilnius departure 06:45, Rīga arrival 11:04, departure 11:16, Tallinn arrival 17:34.
Interestingly, the opposite direction is available: Tallin departure 10:25, Rīga arrival 16:37, departure 16:55, Vilnius arrival 21:03.
Patrick Dersjant RCX
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Steve Holden
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •looks pretty good for a first release.
Time open source started eating proprietary’s lunch!
Carsten
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Impressed by the site so far - main wished would be:
* Return trips
* Flexible start and return dates (+-1/2/3 days)
* Prices calculated on the initial search result
onterof
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •The routing also seems to have a bit of hickup in cases where trains continue with another number.
AliciaBytes
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Hmm, for feedback, I can't find a certain train station/city: Weirdly enough it only finds Schafhausen i.E. a tiny station in a Municipality of ~3.000 people with a single hourly S-Train and ~150 travelers per weekday. Also trains only stop there on request.
But it can't find Schaffhausen, a city (and main city of the Kanton of the same name) with ~38.000 people living there, 14 trains per hour and ~22.000 travelers per weekday.
~Tijl
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Ciara
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •normis
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •nice!
P.S: pinging @jon@gruene.social, if you have not seen it
Mārtiņš Bruņenieks
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •I hope this project succeeds and more partners agree to sell tickets there.
After playing around, not sure how to better handle route Riga-Helsinki. It should obviously include a ferry but this is a rail website so it is technically correct to route through Berlin and Stockholm.
Mark
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Nicd
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Holger Hellinger
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •smilingoctopus
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •- customizable transfer times (up to 3 hours is not strange - in case the connecting ticket is expensive and/or the previous ticket is likely to be delayed, or you risk getting stranded overnight otherwise).
- customizable transfer times per specific transit station.
Bonus
- an option to include buses, like Flixbus or Blablacar.
- avoid high-speed trains
- avoid specific high speed trains (eg avoid the Eurostar but not the TGV within France)
Angela Scholder
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •ECHAEA
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •The Brum Reaper
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •