Trainline - is it worth it?

[stephen rp]

I've just reimbursed expenses of an external speaker at a conference. I gently queried the use of Trainline and its fees (and not finding a split fare). The speaker's PA explained why - is it a fair rationale?

"The reason we still use Trainline is that we are booking trains on a very regular basis, sometimes multiple times a day. It pulls together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly, and has a polished app with live platform updates, delay alerts, digital tickets, and automatic refund processing in some cases."

 

[Bletchleyite]

They will presumably be using Trainline for Business or whatever it's called?

 

[pokemonsuper9]

I think - for all we fault them for here - there's good reason they have so much market share. And they have quite the large advertising budget.

together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly

Clearly by that the advertising works, any TOC (or third party's) website will allow you to buy for all others. Trainline aren't eager to tell people this.


Not that trainsplit doesn't surpass them by every method now that multiple Railcards are supported.

 

[35B]

I've just reimbursed expenses of an external speaker at a conference. I gently queried the use of Trainline and its fees (and not finding a split fare). The speaker's PA explained why - is it a fair rationale?

"The reason we still use Trainline is that we are booking trains on a very regular basis, sometimes multiple times a day. It pulls together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly, and has a polished app with live platform updates, delay alerts, digital tickets, and automatic refund processing in some cases."

That is an entirely reasonable answer. I would find it unreasonable to be expected to seek split fares in those circumstances, especially as the conditions of doing so may be unhelpful to me as a traveller.

I would also expect to be advised of any requirements on how I booked to be communicated before booking.

 

[Djgr]

I've just reimbursed expenses of an external speaker at a conference. I gently queried the use of Trainline and its fees (and not finding a split fare). The speaker's PA explained why - is it a fair rationale?

"The reason we still use Trainline is that we are booking trains on a very regular basis, sometimes multiple times a day. It pulls together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly, and has a polished app with live platform updates, delay alerts, digital tickets, and automatic refund processing in some cases."

I think some education would not go amiss.

Sounds like they are paying over the odds for some weasel sound bites.

 

[Hadders]

Trainline is the largest retailer of train tickets by some considerable distance.

'Us' on here, who are generally experts in rail fares reaslise that they are not normally the cheapest place to purchase tickets. But the average person in the street cannot really be expected to know that.

It's a bit like criticising someone for buying something from Tesco, the largest retailer in the country, when the same item can be purchased from Aldi for less.

 

[ACDC]

The NHS should stop using trainline, not a great use of taxpayers money.

 

[John R]

I would regard it as totally unreasonable to, after the tickets had been booked, ask a speaker why they had not looked at split ticketing.

If you had any requirements in that regard they should have been made clear beforehand. In the same way that one might typically say “we will reimburse Standard Class rail travel” to make it clear that First Class was not acceptable.

 

[Dave W]

Trainline does have some split ticketing functionality doesn't it?

The NHS should stop using trainline, not a great use of taxpayers money.

Is it not? Are you aware of the alternatives being a significantly better deal?

 

[Farigiraf]

It's a bit like criticising someone for buying something from Tesco, the largest retailer in the country, when the same item can be purchased from Aldi for less.

Difference of course being that someone may have a Tesco much nearer to them than an Aldi, while both Trainline and Trainsplit are available on the app store by anyone that has a phone.

The main problem is that a lot of high quality competitor sites that don't sacrifice one of: ease to use, quality of algorithm or lack of additional fees, don't have nearly as much publicity as trainline does.

 

[yorkie]

Trainline does have some split ticketing functionality doesn't it?

Yes but it's not anywhere near as good as Trainsplit's.

This is due to differences in the journey planner systems working in the back end.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 May 2026 ==

"The reason we still use Trainline is that we are booking trains on a very regular basis, sometimes multiple times a day. It pulls together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly, and has a polished app with live platform updates, delay alerts, digital tickets, and automatic refund processing in some cases."

The forum's ticketing site, powered by Trainsplit, does most - if not all - of that, but without a booking fee.

 

[Swedenorer]

Somebody being bought tickets by a company or on their own self-employed basis for a paid job with a deadline will want the best flexibility in tickets that they can have. I would never have priced for a job on the basis of making a bit on split tickets. If the customer wants the product they have to put up with that expense, who their suppliers are is none of your business. You are very lucky you never asked me to justify an expense once the job had been done. Don't do it again - gently or not. It's not appropriate.

 

[styles]

Sometimes Trainline* is cheaper than other split ticket booking engines which charge say a commission based on the amount saved by finding a split, which for some saves can be greater than the Trainline booking which which is capped at £2.79. It does however one of poorer split ticketing algorithms, so something like the forum's website will usually find a better split ticket arrangement to begin with. Overall though, I'd question whether split tickets are desirable for a lot of business journeys - I book them for my own company, yes, but there's a lot of business travellers taking flexible tickets, maybe because they don't know what time their meetings will finish, or they might decide to go out for drinks on the last day of a conference, etc.

I have no idea how Trainline's business offering differs from their competitors. I worked for an organisation who used them because you could do SSO with OIDC, require internal account codes when booking, generate reports, etc. I'm sure competitors offer similar features, but I don't know how they stack up, nor how pricing compares, in all honesty as I've never had to choose a train booking platform for a company!

If the organisation isn't doing a huge amount of train travel, then the odd £2 booking fee probably isn't that much of a concern in any case.

By all means if you think there's a way your organisation could save money, speak to whoever is in charge of procurement, but I'd stop short of overly-criticising the use of a particular platform until you know what they're getting out of it.

Trainline probably wouldn't be my choice, but like I say, I'd need to compare pricing as well as the features specific to the organisation's needs.

* by Trainline, I mean the website. They do of course power e.g. ScotRail's booking engine, which also offers split tickets, but doesn't charge a booking fee. ScotRail in this example also have a business offering, but I don't know if it's the same as Trainline Business.

 

[AlterEgo]

Somebody being bought tickets by a company or on their own self-employed basis for a paid job with a deadline will want the best flexibility in tickets that they can have. I would never have priced for a job on the basis of making a bit on split tickets. If the customer wants the product they have to put up with that expense, who their suppliers are is none of your business. You are very lucky you never asked me to justify an expense once the job had been done. Don't do it again - gently or not. It's not appropriate.

I agree. On the occasions I have travel paid for as an expense I have simply bought the appropriate public fare (with my railcard discount).

It's not up to the person reimbursing me to suggest I should have thought to use a loophole ticket or some other travel agent or provider.

 

[35B]

I agree. On the occasions I have travel paid for as an expense I have simply bought the appropriate public fare (with my railcard discount).

It's not up to the person reimbursing me to suggest I should have thought to use a loophole ticket or some other travel agent or provider.

Unless communicated and agreed to prior to booking, at which point it may be reasonable. Given the answer to the question asked at the beginning, it may also increase the hire cost by reducing the speaker’s efficiency.

 

[dosxuk]

If you want to put restrictions on which platform your speakers use, and which tickets they can purchase, you should be arranging the travel for them. If you're willing to let them book their own travel, then you shouldn't be questioning any reasonable expense.

Personally, when I book travel for business, I prefer simplicity and flexibility over minimum price. Being able to choose to travel a bit earlier on the day to make sure I'm there on time, or routing around disruption is far more valuable than saving £2 on a booking fee. If I'm pricing a job which includes train travel, I'll base the cost of the job on the anytime single / return - if I quote less then I'm on the hook for any difference. And often using a known retailer for the tickets helps with getting the expenses approved.

Personal travel, sure, it's my time, it's my risk, and it's me who makes the saving, so I'll go searching for bargains.

 

[OscarH]

It pulls together multiple operators in one place, handles cross-operator journeys fairly smoothly, and has a polished app with live platform updates, delay alerts, digital tickets, and automatic refund processing in some cases.

None of this is unique to them, and shows how important effective marketing can be.

If you want to put restrictions on which platform your speakers use, and which tickets they can purchase, you should be arranging the travel for them. If you're willing to let them book their own travel, then you shouldn't be questioning any reasonable expense.

But this. I don't think you should prescribe platforms to people in cases like this, people have their personal preferences on what works best for them, and for an expenses claim I'd never expect split tickets or anything like that

 

[Dave W]

Until my current role, I've always been in orgs with a corporate travel provider - I've booked everything from £39 hotels in Swansea to a few grands worth of business class flights to San Francisco.

The very last factor to consider is price in these booking engines - if the business (or your client) wants you to be somewhere, they damn well need to pay for it. As it was, later systems actually automatically filtered out stuff you weren't entitled to which was a nice guardrail (i.e. first class trains, hotels outside policy - it even "warned" about buying Anytime tickets).

My last jolly in this job I had to buy and claim the tickets back. Perhaps slightly more cautious about what I bought, but in the end it was two flexible tickets, not the advances available and the money was reimbursed accordingly.

Yes but it's not anywhere near as good as Trainsplit's.

This is due to differences in the journey planner systems working in the back end.

Yes I was of the view it certainly wasn't particularly aggressive in its split finding, thanks for confirming.

 

[Rescars]

If you want to put restrictions on which platform your speakers use, and which tickets they can purchase, you should be arranging the travel for them. If you're willing to let them book their own travel, then you shouldn't be questioning any reasonable expense.

Absolutely! Time is money. It is often better value to use a known reliable provider and sort the matter quickly, rather than incur considerable admin time researching other options to find the best deal, setting up bespoke payment arrangements etc.

Clearly it is up to the principal (in this case the conference organiser) to decide if they would prefer to accept a reasonable rate or pay for the additional administration.

If maximising the savings is their key driver, then absorbing the costs themselves to arrange travel maybe a better option as they may have admin staff available with the time on their hands to do this. Not all speakers will necessarily enjoy this luxury.

 

[ACDC]

Trainline does have some split ticketing functionality doesn't it?


Is it not? Are you aware of the alternatives being a significantly better deal?

you would be surprised at how many NHS managers blindly use it. Perhaps some of the forum mods could go and educate government bodies how to use booking engines judiciously.

 

[35B]

you would be surprised at how many NHS managers blindly use it. Perhaps some of the forum mods could go and educate government bodies how to use booking engines judiciously.

NHS managers being like managers anywhere else or, as I prefer to think of them, people. While I'd love to see them taken down a peg or two, the mods here would need to be careful because of their own vested commercial interest in an alternative to Trainline. Which highlights another of the issues that may be in play - if booking using a business account, there are other benefits which may not be free to realise once the costs of change are considered.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

you would be surprised at how many NHS managers blindly use it.

Given that the NHS consists of a variety of trusts which seem to me as an outsider to have a great deal of autonomy, is there a single NHS contract for buying train tickets?

If so, it will be enormous, and that could mean that the NHS gets a very favourable rate from Trainline (not much in the way of commission on each transaction, but with enough transactions the total would add up to something worth having).

Alternatively, if each trust contracts separately, then are we sure that Trainline has all/a majority/some/any of the contracts?

 

[DiscoSteve]

I thought Trainline did do Split Ticketing. I use it all the time. And it works really well with a manual plastic card Senior Railcard too.

 

[Swedenorer]

You have to think of the back office too. Dealing with, maybe a dearer OK, supplier all the time will have benefits when it comes to accounting and service.

I used the same two printers for years while others went to print brokers all the time. Why? Reliability and location - I could go down and shout at them if needed. I never used anything other than the Southern Mixing Desk site for business travel as the reporting was so easy.

You can soon lose more in wasted time than the savings made in shopping around - if the guy in the OP was happy with Trainline good for him. It's his business.

 

[Dave W]

Given that the NHS consists of a variety of trusts which seem to me as an outsider to have a great deal of autonomy, is there a single NHS contract for buying train tickets? If so, it will be enormous, and that could mean that the NHS gets a very favourable rate from Trainline (not much in the way of commission on each transaction, but with enough transactions the total would add up to something worth having). Alternatively, if each trust contracts separately, then are we sure that Trainline has all/a majority/some/any of the contracts?

And if it is the case that the NHS doesn't mandate the use of a booking engine, so the lazy overpaid NHS managers we are all apparently dunking on have to do their own - then the argument comes back to the one we've already had upthread of "if you don't want people using Trainline, do it for them or give them something else".

If NHS managers have no other way of booking tickets than doing so off their own back, then it is not their fault they use Trainline.

 

[IslandDweller]

As a user of this forum, I am probably more familiar with rail ticketing foibles than the average member of the public - but I am nowhere near the expert that some on here are.

I do use trainline sometimes because it is so slick and simple. This is especially important when trying to book at the last minute - such as at an airport station (where I have not booked in advance due to flight arrival time uncertainty).

The rail industry needs to accept that some of their websites/apps are diabolical if you are an "average punter". Furthermore, the ability to use the same app when travelling abroad is also seriously helpful.

 

[Haywain]

The rail industry needs to accept that some of theiir websites/apps are diabolical if you are an "average punter".

And some are not, which may include Trainline who, as a major retailer, are part of the rail industry.