Your Guide
Mose Hayward
Travel Nerd
Travelers make some mistaken assumptions about how to get around Europe. Many think that flights are always faster or long-distance buses are always cheapest. But, of course, it depends. Competition has opened up for buses, planes, and independent budget train companies. These offer new and better ways to get between the breathtaking cities and landscapes of Europe.
I’ve been living and traveling between various European capital cities for decades and endeavored to stay abreast of the new budget travel options for getting around as the options change.
Here, then, is our complete guide to ensuring you understand the options and can decide what is best for getting around Europe in terms of prices, comfort, convenience, and travel times.
- Trains: The Most Comfortable and Convenient Choice for Short to Medium Trips—and Often Surprisingly Affordable
- Airplanes: For Longer Distances and Cities with Poor International Train Connections
- Buses: They're Cheap and Take You Anywhere
- Environmental impact
- Pricing
- Convenience and Comfort
- Scenery
- Reliability
- Flexibility
- Accessibility
- And Your Choice for Crossing Europe: Bus, Train, or Plane?
Trains: The Most Comfortable and Convenient Choice for Short to Medium Trips—and Often Surprisingly Affordable
When to Take Trains in Europe
- There are more and faster train options than you might think, including especially budget and independent train operators. It’s worth checking for the full range of high-speed train options between major capital cities. And even longer, international trips now are making a comeback as night trains return for longer trips. Hop on in the evening in Vienna, wake up in Rome.
- Trains are more comfortable and have roomier seats than flights and buses. You can walk around, including to a bar car, for a break.
- The magnificent scenery from the train window is worth a visit to Europe just for its own sake. (For example, see our take on beautiful Swiss trains.)
- Prices have come down for routes that offer various competing high-speed train services.
- Train stations are generally right in the middle of major city centers, which saves you from the significant extra time and expense of getting to and from airports.
- Don’t stress about baggage sizes: While we encourage you to travel as light as possible, European trains generally don’t have much in the way of luggage limits as long as you’re not obviously abusing the system to transport large amounts of merchandise.
Disadvantages
- For some longer distances and poorly served places, train travel is simply not feasible, and buses or planes must be used instead.
- Some train services, especially purchased at the last minute, can be quite expensive compared to other options.
- Train passes (like Eurail and Interrail) are, in our calculations, almost never worthwhile any more compared to simply buying point-to-point tickets; passes have lots of tack-on fees, are restricted to traditional national operators, and sub-optimal for combining modes (regular trains, budget trains, buses, the occasional flight…).
Get The Best European Train Tickets at the Lowest Prices
In our tests, the best way to search most European train operators all at once for a specific train trip is currently the platform Trainline. It excels especially at finding you the best routes and cheapest options across both national and independent train operators within Western European countries like Spain, France, Germany, and Italy.
Without Trainline, it can be complicated to find the best train tickets, especially for complex trips or if you don’t know all of the high-speed train operators. For example, in France you could search national operator SNCF for both its fares and for the competing budget Ouigo service, but you’d still likely miss out on the high-speed offers from Trenitalia and Renfe on some French routes. In Germany, the Deutsche Bahn site doesn’t give you the competing FlixTrain. Or in Spain, you’d have to check each operator to compare the Renfe Ave, Avlo, Ouigo, and Iryo options, all of which are excellent. Sometimes in Europe the national operator is best; often the competitors are cheaper and more or equally comfortable.
This is why we strongly recommend checking Trainline for all your train options, rather than defaulting to a national train operator’s site. Other ways to check various train operators at once are Rail Europe (not as complete as Trainline, but occasionally finds worthwhile deals) and Omio (certainly overrated and less useful for complex trips, but it does search trains, buses, and flights side-by-side).
There are countries, especially in Eastern Europe, for which none of these platforms sell tickets; these must often be purchased from the national carriers directly. That’s less of a problem, as there are usually not competing private train services to consider for those countries. Do consider private operator bus options in Eastern Europe though (see buses below), which can be more reliable than some of the train systems there.
Airplanes: For Longer Distances and Cities with Poor International Train Connections
When to Fly in Europe
- As a general rule, start to consider flying if the train/bus options are more than six hours and there are no night train options.
- Some countries (Portugal, Ireland, much of Eastern Europe) have no or poor rail connections to neighbors.
Disadvantages
- Airplanes have a nightmarish environmental impact compared to the other forms of transport.
- Airports are often well outside of city centers and add to that that you need to arrive hours early (as opposed to about a half-hour early max for some trains). The cheapest public transport options to European airports can cost more than some airfare themselves, and taxis much more; be sure to figure this into cost comparisons.
- Planes, especially European budget airlines, are very cramped and uncomfortable and have minimal services.
- There are extra charges for checked and even for carry-on bags that can cost more than the ticket itself; be sure to include this in cost comparisons. Note the maximum free personal item size for your airline and choose an underseat cabin bag that maximizes what you can carry without going over the limits.
Get The Best European Flights and Pricing
Be sure to use search engines that can include the various European budget airlines (like the very cheap Vueling, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Transavia, etc.); these are not just cheaper but generally have slightly smaller carbon footprints per seat than standard airlines. For the best pricing, search various nearby airports and flexible dates; I suggest comparing both Kayak and Google Flights.
I also frequently check Kiwi, which crams a lot of options into a simple interface. It can come up with some surprising cheap fares via “Travel Hacks” like skiplagging and self-transferring between airlines, although they must be used with careful attention to their limitations; for Europe this mainly comes in handy for flights to non-capital cities.
Buses: They’re Cheap and Take You Anywhere
When to Take Long-Distance Buses in Europe
- This can sometimes be the cheapest option, especially as compared to certain costly train routes like Eurostar’s Paris to London.
- Buses tend to be particularly cost-effective for last-minute travel compared to the alternatives.
- Bus services go just about everywhere, including to smaller cities and between countries with poor rail connections.
- For parts of Eastern Europe, bus services can be more reliable than the national train companies.
- Buses are a lower-carbon alternative to flights.
- Usually there is no extra charge for checking a large bag or suitcase, which rides in the hold under the bus.
Disadvantages
- Less comfort than trains: Buses give you less seat space and less ability to walk around than trains. The lavatories, if any, are really only suitable for use in an emergency and there are no bar cars.
- Often, long-distance bus stations are located on the fringes of city centers. While accessible by public transport such as metros, they are likely to leave you somewhere less central than train stations (though certainly easier and cheaper to get to than airports).
- Buses are slower than high-speed trains and flights.
Get The Best European Bus Routes and Prices
We’ve created a list of European bus services for each country—there really are quite a few options but generally each only serves certain regions.
To compare various bus offers for a specific route, you can also just plug your search between European destinations into either Trainline (which offers bus-only searches as well as some very useful bus+train combos) and BusBud.
If you’re just looking for a single company with good prices covering nearly the entirety of Europe, there’s FlixBus.
Environmental impact
Aviation is responsible for 2.5% of global carbon emissions and causes a great deal of other pollution as well, with its total contribution to global warming being much higher than that 2.5% figure. Choosing train or bus travel wherever possible is a great way to reduce your personal impact on the environment.
The booking sites we recommend above, Trainline and Rail Europe, publish the carbon footprints for the high-speed European train routes as you select them, allowing you to see your improved carbon footprint.
An important facet of buying train or bus tickets is that your money is sending a message to country governments and the EU about the type of travel that you would like to see their policies and future infrastructure investments supporting. Countries and regions continue to invest in new and expanded airports when they should be improving high speed train connections, rail infrastructure, and bringing back more long-distance night trains. Cooperation in these areas is improving, but too slowly.
Pricing
When every euro counts, it’s hard to beat buses for the best prices for getting around Europe, especially if purchasing tickets at the last minute.
Trains can be quite competitive with buses, though, especially for routes with good competition going between the national train operator and other companies. For example, a check of Barcelona to Madrid daytime travel for tomorrow (as of the moment of this writing) shows:
- The cheapest high-speed train options at €28.75, via Trainline search for Barcelona to Madrid
- The best bus price is €39 found at BusBud (and takes more than twice as long)
- The best flight price is €49 found at Kayak, but extra charges would need to be factored in as well for luggage and getting to and from the airports
The point is not that trains will always be cheaper in Europe—that’s not the case. Rather, this shows that it pays to check at least the above three platforms to comparison shop trains vs. planes vs. buses—there can be some surprises. In this case, the most comfortable and convenient option for city center to city center—a high-speed train—is also the cheapest.
In particular, keep in mind that there is now competition in many European train markets, and the national companies like Renfe, SNCF, Deutsche Bahn, etc., do not in many cases have the best train prices or services; Trainline or other good platforms point you to those other options when they exist.
Flights can be cheaper when covering longer distances across the continent, especially where the route is served by budget airlines. However, be sure to factor in that most airlines make you pay extra for checked and even for standard carry-ons—the only thing that’s always free is your underseat cabin bag (a.k.a. personal item).
Convenience and Comfort
Trains win out over flights and buses for most of Europe in terms of providing a relaxed and enjoyable time in transit:
- Train seating is the most spacious and comfortable of the three types of travel. And if you really need to spread out or relax, first class train services often don’t cost that much more; they often mean three rather than four seats spread across the train width. For night trains, there are bed options (strongly recommended over chairs) and even private cabins. Bus seating provides less room than on trains, and airline seating seems like an intentional effort to cram as many passengers as cruelly and uncomfortably as possible into a small tube.
- Trains generally offer the convenience of city-center-to-city-center travel. You board and get off not too far from the areas where you are most likely to want to stay and visit in European capitals. This saves transport time and money, especially compared to airports. The worst by far is far-flung airports served by budget airlines like Paris Beauvais, which tends to have cheap flights but is a significant investment of time and money to get to. Long-distance bus service in some parts of Europe goes directly to bus stations abutting the main city-center train stations; in other cases the bus station or drop-off point is on the outer ring of the city center. Wherever they are located, bus and train stations tend to be well-served with city metro and local bus connections, whereas special, more expensive city transport tickets are usually required for airports.
- Trains often have a bar car and roving service, and in some cases even a dining car. The food usually isn’t great, but certainly better than airline food options. Buses rarely have any dining options or snacks.
Scenery
Crossing through Europe’s mountains, seasides, and rural areas by train is one of the great joys of European travel. It can be fun to fly into and out of European capitals, for sure, but that’s nothing compared to the hours of joy that come out of riding past changing scenery in places like France or Italy.
Train windows are large and a walk to the bar car allows you to enjoy the view with a glass of wine or an espresso.
You might also see some interesting things on buses—but highways in Europe tend to look not all that different from those elsewhere in the world.
Reliability
Overall, trains tend to be more reliable than planes in Europe, which can be disrupted by weather and other events. High-speed services are particularly reliable.
All modes—buses, trains, and flights—are susceptible to strikes. These don’t happen as often as some non-Europeans imagine, but they do happen and can cut down or delay services. European airports and rail networks are more prone to these than bus companies.
Bus services can be disrupted greatly by road conditions; delays are common.
Flexibility
Whether or not you can change your trip dates and times depends greatly on the specifics of the company you are traveling with and the ticket type you’ve purchased; more expensive tickets tend to offer more flexibility. But generally speaking, long-distance buses tend to offer the most flexibility in terms of making changes, followed next by trains. European budget flights’ ticket-change costs are often more than just buying a new ticket.
Generally, you make your changes through the website where you purchased your tickets. If you have purchased your train or bus tickets on Trainline, you can make changes within the platform; the same is true for Rail Europe and Omio (though we’ve heard complaints about Omio not working well for this). If you’ve purchased directly with a train, bus, or airline, you’ll have to navigate their policies and websites; some of the national train websites can be pretty dysfunctional.
Accessibility
Passengers in wheelchairs and with other mobility issues tend to find that train travel is the least-stress option for traveling around Europe: particularly modern, high-speed trains. These tend to have relatively large wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and attendants to help in boarding and arrival. When high-speed trains board in underground tracks, they are in more-recently renovated areas of train stations with elevators.
Communicate with transport operators in advance; airports and modern train stations like Barcelona Sants have dedicated teams to help with accessibility, especially if informed in advance.
And Your Choice for Crossing Europe: Bus, Train, or Plane?
There’s no one perfect answer for all trips. It pays to compare options by at least checking:
- Trainline for train options across many national and private operators. It will also show you bus+train combo routes where appropriate, and some bus-only options.
- BusBud for bus options across the continent, or the bus options for specific European countries listed here.
- Budget and standard flight options on Kayak and other platforms, especially for longer distances and countries with poor international train services.
Let us know your thoughts and any lingering questions in the comments; they help others and guide us as we continuously update this article.
