Welcome to a whistlestop tour of the ways to find cheaper train tickets.
Once you’ve picked up these tips and put them into practice, you’ll be bagging great value fares for your business in no time.
- Book in advance
Generally, fares will go up in price until the day of travel.
On the other hand, they’re typically lowest as soon as the first batch of tickets are released.
So if you’ve got a team day in the diary or a regular client meeting, book ahead and thank yourself later.
- Split and save
While one operator will take you from A straight to B, it might not be the cheapest way to buy tickets.
Our nifty feature, SplitSave, will tell you when this is the case. SplitSave means splitting your journey into two or more cheaper tickets, without having to interrupt your trip and hop onto a different train.
It's often most beneficial for longer journeys; for example, London to Manchester.
Rather than buying one direct ticket, passengers can buy London-Stockport and Stockport-Manchester fares, if the two shorter journeys amount to a cheaper total cost.
- Shop around
Some routes are served only by a single carrier, while with other more popular journeys, multiple carriers are running services.
But visiting lots of different operators’ websites in search of the fairest price can be a painstaking process.
Instead, passengers are choosing to shop around using an aggregator. On Trainline Business, you can browse routes from hundreds of carriers across dozens of countries in seconds.
- Railcards
Railcards are one of the most surefire ways to guarantee big savings on your journeys.
You only need to buy the card once, and its discount will apply every time on eligible journeys until its expiry.
There’s a wide range of cards, including nine main types in the UK.