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I'm based in Germany, and the Deutsche Bahn website is great for scheduling international train travel. It knows all about the train times and connections all over Europe. However, it rarely shows fares for trips which cross a border. All the other national train operators' websites I've tried have the same problem. This makes them rather useless for comparing prices when I've got a destination in mind and am trying to choose between, say, taking the train, flying, or renting a car... or alternately if I've got a budget but no particular destination in mind, and would like to see what places I can afford to visit.

Is there any website which will let me plan train journeys in Europe, and give me the exact or even approximate fares? (That is, something similar to the many flight search websites like Kayak.)

Psychonaut
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RailEurope works pretty well for this.

I just tested it by searching for a train from Paris to Rome. It immediately showed me a few, including those that change in Milan.

Oddly, their Australian site seems to give a nicer layout of prices for me. I don't know if the prices differ at all, but it may be worth your time investigating.

Mark Mayo
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  • yup, and with RailEurope, Voyages-sncf.com is targetting covering the whole Europe. Their idea is to bet on international trains and their websites will all offer trains across Europe, sooner or later. Anyway, European Union is pushing the retailers to show both air and train fares for comparison. – Vince Aug 14 '13 at 11:31
  • Is it documented somewhere which trains are covered by RailEurope and which are not? My searches between a few cities either don't find all (or the most reasonable) connections, don't find any connections at all or give me an error message that the trip would involve too many train changes to book the trip online. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Aug 14 '13 at 13:43
  • While RailEurope does give fares for many countries, beware that it's often cheaper to shop around and book segments separately. A lot of train companies have seat quotas for reduced rates, so this will vary depending on exactly when you book, but I'd rarely expect RailEurope to come up with the best price. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Aug 14 '13 at 17:32