What you need to know about booking train tickets in Italy and tips for getting the cheapest prices when Italian isn’t your first language.

Italy has an incredible high-speed rail network which in our experience runs on time and gets you from city to city in comfort. We’ve used the trains in Rome, Florence and Sienna in the past and most recently in Verona, Milan and Venice with our three children.

Seats between the major Italian cities do sell out so book train tickets online and in advance for routes.

What we have however experienced in the past is that it’s not always the easiest to work out how the timetables work, or exactly how much it will cost. It’s also been tricky to establish if there are discounts for children or not when travelling by train in Italy with kids. We’ve overpaid before and it’s definitely not been the cheapest when we’ve turned up at the station without booking and tried to book tickets for the train for the family. We’ve also all been sat in different places on the train and that’s not always fun when you don’t actually know where you’re getting off, or how long it will all take. I know sometimes that’s the fun of travelling but I never like to overpay if I don’t have to.

For this reason I was utterly delighted to find out that my go to app/website at home, Trainline, makes booking trains in Italy really easy and actually makes your trip more affordable. This guide should explain how to buy train tickets in Italy so you can get the best train tickets at the cheapest price.

The official train network in Italy is Trenitalia but their website is really tricky to use as it defaults to Italian for the payment section and often at other times too. If you want to buy Italy train tickets here is why I recommend you use Trainline.com.

How to use Trainline to save money on Italian Rail Tickets

By way of example I searched Milan to Venice when writing this post for Saturday 15th April for 2 adults and 3 children, you can see below that Trianline presented me with lots of options. If I had simply gone to the station I could have ended up on the 10.10 train to Venice and been asked for £271.15 for the journey.

Searching on Trainline.com showed me a shorter train time journey for only £54.27 for all of us in second class and £70.88 for the five of us in first class. That’s a crazy difference in price and the time the journey was due to take.

When I was in Milan on 8th April 2023 and did this search I actually saved myself over £200 for a family of 5 by booking a train an hour later than I’d planned.

I think* this is due to the different prices the different train companies charge, the fact that some charge for children and some don’t, but also down to availability of tickets. For example you can see below that at 11.45 the tickets are actually cheaper in first class. Always worth checking!

Some of the trains below take over 4 hours, some take 2 and a half hours. They are very differently priced.

You can use the trainline app in advance of your travels simply to work out the distances between places and what might be possible when planning a trip, or you can also use it to book train tickets in Italy.

When you’ve decided what trains you want to book, either on the website or on the app, you will in most cases receive an e-ticket sent to your phone (via email or the Trainline App)—just show it to the train conductor. If e-tickets aren’t available, you can print/collect your tickets at the train station. It’s that easy and it works so well.

Other options for booking Italian train tickets are as follows:

In Person

You can of course still choose to book tickets at the station when you arrive. The plus to this is you shouldn’t find yourself watching trains leave that you could have got on if you arrive early.

Omio

A German booking service who sell Italian train tickets at the same price as Trenitalia a similar proposition to Trainline. They charge a small service fee (around £1) but for us worth the extra cost.

Most Omio tickets are electronic so you’ll receive an e-ticket sent to your phone (via email or the Omio App)—you simply have to the train conductor when he/she comes by to check tickets. If e-tickets aren’t available, you can print/collect your tickets at the train station.

Trentalia

The official train network in Italy is Trenitalia but their website is really tricky to use as it defaults to Italian for the payment section and often at other times too. If you want to buy Italy train tickets here is why I recommend you use Trainline.com.

Italiarail

ItaliaRail is the official worldwide distributor of Italian train tickets and easy to use for those with English as a first language.