My wife and I will be traveling (one-way) on high-speed train from Vienna to Prague mid-April 2024. Is there a preferred rail company/website we should use in making our online purchase of tickets? Or are all the rail companies going to be similar in price/service regarding this particular four-hour long route?
Thanks!
Compare fares on www.cd.cz and www.oebb.at (the national carriers). Czech rail often has the better offer.
And they are not high speed trains. Limited stop express would be a better description. The Railjet trains operated by Oebb are a little faster, taking 4 hours and 1 minute vs 4 hours and 12 minutes by the CD trains.
You have three choices:
https://www.oebb.at/en/
https://www.cd.cz/en/
https://regiojet.com/
OeBB (Austrian Railways) is the main carrier between Vienna and Prague (and vice versa) using the modern RailJet cars. You may get a better price when booking via the CD (Czech Railways) reservation system. Make sure to book a seat reservation as well.
RegioJet is a private carrier using older rolling stock, not much less comfortable, though. They have aggressive pricing, seat reservation is included.
Or use Trainline to browse and perhaps buy
Trainline will show you both Regiojet and the OBB/CD Railjets. But it will not show you wether a particular train is currently cheaper on CD than on OBB>
However, I usually follow the "buy from the national railway of the country your trip starts in" heuristic. So would buy from OBB here. You can also buy from Regiojet, but be aware that with open access operators you do not have protected connections, so only do that if you actually can indeed do your whole trip on them. Do not book a combination of OBB and Regiojet for example.
Did anyone ask the Man about that route?
