Rail travel Stockholm to Copenhagen

Where are you looking?

You cannot book these trains yet, so it would appear that you are not looking at the official site, or a reputable agent.

EDIT: Tickets for July will be available from mid April. You should book on www.sj.se, and prices should start at 325 SEK (about 31,-).

As I wrote in the other thread you posted in, what kind of strange overpriced third party site are you looking at? The train tickets for July are not for sale yet.

I have not seen an announcement from SJ about when the summer tickets will be available.

I think I know what happened.

If you google "Train Stockholm to Copenhagen" the first hit is for a website called "Swedentrains.com".
And if you go there you can indeed apparently already book trains for 31st of July for 129$ or more...

That website is operated by an outfit called "Rail Ninja", a group based in Hong Kong, that have discovered that they can take advantage of the fact that a lot of people are unfamiliar with train travel to make a quick buck. And they know how to manipulate Google search rankings.

They have set up a whole lot of sites that appear at first glance to look like official railway websites, but only to people who are unfamiliar with what a railway website actually looks like. Those sites are actually often quite funny. They at one time used a lot of stock pictures, often of the wrong trains. "austriantrains.com" used to have London Underground trains on them, as examples of the kinds of trains you can expect in Austria... Now they use a lot of AI generated pictures. Created by an AI that does not know how a train is supposed to work...

Stay away from them. Maybe I should post about them in the "scams" forum.

To the OP: Be happy you haven't bought tickets yet.

Lowest price for 2 adults+1 child (up to 15) is around 71 USD in total. My experience is that when tickets are released you might find one or two departures with that price while the most popular departures are roughly 50-100% higher.

I was looking at both rail ninja and www.sj.se & they both list the same prices for the time I want. So if I’m too early booking when do tickets open up? Both sites let me proceed to the booking process.

I would avoid rail ninja. It is not reputable.

As others have said you have not seen any fares for 31 July on www.sj.se. You can see them for earlier dates and they do start at around 750 SEK towards the end of May (the latest date currently available for booking)- around 90 USD.

Rail Ninja nor any other third party (like Rail Europe or Trainline) has any kind of special access to early bookings. Neither SJ or Badger or Anders or anyone else can tell you when SJ will open bookings, but USD126 is far higher than you should have to pay.

They are hypothesising soon after Easter to open. Check back on SJ (and SJ only) then and see what progress has been made. The important point is that if you can't book then nor can anyone else.

Rail Ninja are basically saying that fares are around the USD $70 to 80 area when opened and then adding on around a 50% commission, even assuming that they provide the tickets at all- which is in itself doubtful.

Forget you ever heard about Rail Ninja- they are nothing but trouble and that is being kind.

I was looking at both rail ninja and www.sj.se & they both list the
same prices for the time I want.

No they don't. SJ does not list any prices for July, they simply state that the tickets are not available.

So if I’m too early booking when do tickets open up?

As I mentioned earlier, who knows?

Tickets for the summer ought to be available from mid April onwards. At least, that is what The Man in Seat 6t says, and he is usually pretty well informed.

The Man in Seat 61 is usually very well informed, but he is not infallable. And in this case I don't think he is correct. The date when SJ releases their tickets have varied a bit in the last years.

Regarding the question of when sj would make tickets available - by looking at the latest dates for which train tickets are available, and checking this repeatedly over many weeks, I've figured out that they release tickets approximately 3 months in advance. I was able to book my May tickets in Feb.

YMMV

I've figured out that they release tickets approximately 3 months in
advance.

They don't.

SJ has now announced that the summer tickets will be released end of April. Sometimes they announce an exact date later, sometimes not. This time they have a new ticketing system so I believe not, without an exact date they can release and stop it again in case the new system isn't working. Info in Swedish and English, but the English version is sometimes updated with a delay.

https://www.sj.se/kundservice/fragor-och-svar/4607/naer-slaepps-sjs-biljetter

https://www.sj.se/en/customer-service/frequently-asked-questions/5170/when-does-sj-release-their-tickets/

For the phone number add +1 before a US phone number. SJ relies a lot on texts to communicate traffic info, since they sometimes get lost overseas I recommend to check the status yourself. Add the ticket to the SJ app or use this web page: https://www.sj.se/en/traffic-information

On the SJ website you can find the following information today:

You can book tickets until June 16 2024.

The summer trips will be released at the end of April. We will update here as soon as we have information about a date."

On the website click on "More" then select "Customer Service" then "FAQ" and the first entry is "When does SJ release their tickets?"

I am looking to book several rail tickets for the Swedish rail system for August. The tickets are available on the sj site. I'm wondering whether to book now or to wait. Will the prices go up or down at this point?