Fine tuning train passes. Please help

1. Am I missing something, is there a catch that I'm not aware of?

Perhaps. The Eurail pass only gives you a 25% discount on the trains from Interlaken Ost to Wengen and all the side trips. The Swiss Pass includes up to Wengen, then 25% to 50% discounts for mountain lifts above populated villages.

Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen can be done with a Werdenfels Ticket 26 EUR total for 2.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is 31 EUR for 2.

Innsbruck to Wengen can be done if you buy a nonrefundable nonchangeable ticket well in advance for 124 CHF fo 2. 282 CHF is the "walk-up" price. Also it is 164 CHF if you get the Half Fare Card, or 64 CHF if you have a Swiss Travel Pass.

Almost always, if you have over 240 CHF of full fare tickets in Switzerland, the Half Fare Card saves more money than any kind of Swiss Travel Pass. The Half Fare card costs 120 CHF per person. Then everything, trains, buses, local transit, mountain lifts is 50% off. Even the Swiss Travel Pass only gives a 50% discount for most mountain lifts, and only 25% for the trains up from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg and the Jungfraujoch. The downside is you still have to buy a ticket for every trip, but you have to do this anyway for mountain lift excursions.

Thanks Sam, I think this is a good idea. Is there a half fare pass that will cover both Germany and Switzerland or do I have to buy a pass for each country?

Katherine,
Swiss railways offer a half price pass for tourists, CHF 120 fro 1 month, valid in Switzerland only. Details here: https://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/travel-in-switzerland/international-guests/swiss-halffare-card.html

AFAIK German Railways DO NOT offer a half fare card for tourists. Their only half fare card is an annual one for residents.
But for Germany and Austria (and for many other countries) you can get substantial discounts (50% or more) by buying weeks or months in advance. Advance tickets can only be used on the trains for which they were purchased.

Beware of the fare estimate maps on this website. The fares they give are the full fare you would pay if you bought on the day, not the fares you would pay with discounted advance prurchase tickets or half price cards.
When comparing costs to calculate whether a pass is good value, always compare with the discounted fares from the website of the company running the trains.

If all you are doing in Germany is Munich to Garmisch and then to Innsbruck, just buy tickets, which is what almost everyone does except foreign tourists. There is special discount ticket for Munich to Garmisch called a Werdenfels ticket which is 26 EUR for 2. You buy it out of a vending machine. If you buy at a ticket window, it is 2 EUR more. Garmisch to Innsbruck is just a 31 EUR ticket for 2.

Thanks all, very good information.
Chris F. When you mention "you can get substantial discounts (50% or more) by buying weeks or months in advance. Advance tickets can only be used on the trains for which they were purchased."

Do you mean that the advance tickets purchased are only good for that exact route, day, and time? A flexible departure time would be nice. I can commit to the route and the day but it might be tough to commit to the departure time...

Do you mean that the advance tickets purchased are only good for that exact route, day, and time?

Yes, precisely that. You buy a ticket for a train. It will say date, time, train No. coach and seat numbers on the ticket and is only valid on that train.

For example, if I look up Zürich to Innsbruck for today on the ÖBB website ( http://www.oebb.at/en/ ), it says €72 for the 18:40 train.
If I try for example 25th September, it says €44 for the 10:40 train, €19 for the 12:40 and 14:40, €34 for the 16:40 and €19 again for the 18:40.
All those tickets are only valid on the specific trains.
But €72 --> €19 is 73% reduction, for most people that saving is worth fixing your plans in advance for.

Swiss railways have a different pricing policy. There is NO reduction for advance purchase, but they do offer a half price card.

For train trips inside of Switzerland, SBB does have Supersaver tickets available at up to 50% discount. They go on sale beginning 30 days before the departure day. You must travel on the exact trains listed on the ticket. Otherwise normal tickets are good on any trains on the route during the day. If you bought a Half Fare Card, you get the 50% discount. It is not required to buy these tickets ahead of time ahead of time, just before you get on the train. Trains are so frequent, seat reservations are not usually even offered.

It is not difficult to commit to a specific train time to get the advance purchase discounts, apart from the arrival day which is difficult to time becauseof possible flight delays and uncertain passport control lines. After that, for travel days between cities/villages/hotels, we find it easy and convenient to book a train departing around 10-11 am, depending on the length of the journey and our plan for getting to the train station for departure. This gives us time to pack up (10 minutes!) and enjoy breakfast, then head to the train station without feeling rushed. We buy sandwiches or snacks for the journey at the station, if it is a large one with snack stands and bakeries, like Munich or Zurich. The G-P station is basically just a platform, so we buy our snacks in advance.

After a journey of 2-4 hours, we arrive at our next stop, usually close to check-in time for our lodging. If early,,we can still drop our bags and then have most of the afternoon left to explore our new location, buy groceries (assuming it is not Sunday), etc.

You can save so much on these advance-purchase tickets (Sparpreis in Germany and Austria) it is well worth committing to a specific travel time. And in our experience, not at all inconvenient.

See https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/switzerland-rail-passes for a comparison of what rail passes cover in Switzerland. A few notes about the price comparison:

• The Eurail Select Pass price that you quoted includes a 15% discount for traveling together, but Swiss Travel Passes don't have any group discount this year.

• Yes, you could theoretically use a multi-country pass only in Switzerland, but why would you, when you actually are traveling in more countries.

• If your pass covered Germany and Switzerland, you'd have to be sure to choose a train route via Germany and to pay separately for any portion in Austria (such as $5 between Lindau and St. Margrethen). My first choice of route would be via Innsbruck, as you are planning, and most of that route is in Austria, so an Austria-Switzerland pass for the same 2-country price would make more sense than Germany-Switzerland.

• A 3-country pass is more expensive, with no 2nd-class option. Anyway, Munich-Garmisch tickets are quite cheap and a regional Bavaria/Bayern Ticket is also an option to buy on the spot.

• The Austrian train may offer advance-purchase discounts on their own, frustrating web site at www.oebb.at. The German site sells the Garmisch-Zurich tickets too, but only at the full fare of 84 euros per person, or 51 euros to the Swiss border at Buchs.

• If you were considering 8 flexi travel days on a multi-country pass, for what I don't really know, you don't need the same number on a pass for just Switzerland. Try to find a closer fit. If you were taking a discounted mountain train or lift ride with a Eurail pass, it would not require starting use of a counted travel day, though with a Swiss Travel Pass, it does.

• If your time within Switzerland fits into 4 consecutive days, that version of the Swiss Travel Pass currently totals $550 for two from Rail Europe. The one-month Swiss Half Fare Card does save money for most people doing a route like yours.

"The German site sells the Garmisch-Zurich tickets too, but only at the full fare of 84 euros per person, or 51 euros to the Swiss border at Buchs."

Actually, I see Sparpreis tickets on bahn.de for the Garmisch-Zurich route (via Munich) on dates in September. 39,90 instead of 83 euro.

If you want to go via Innsbruck instead, you can buy a discount ticket from Innsbruck to Zurich on sbb.ch (rather than OeBB which I agree is frustrating, but not impossible). You would need a walk-up ticket from G-P to Innsbruck, which costs 15,50 euro on bahn.de. (There might be cheaper tix for 2 or more traveling together but I did not think to check this. n any case, it is inexpensive). Then you can buy from Innsbruck to Zurich on sbb.ch. The "special offer price" is 37 CHF instead of the full fare of 78 CHF per person. Note that there are no further discounts for passholders with this special price, so if you are thinking of buying a Swiss Half-Fare Card, you would only use it to cover Zurich to Wengen.

Going back to the original question regards price difference between Eurail and Swiss Travel Passes, and "am i missing something" the answer is yes. Swiss Travel Passes cover more than rail, you get the national bus network, city bus and trams, most lake ships and a few cable cars.

Adding to SteveB's comment about the difference in coverage between the Eurail Pass and the Swiss Travel Pass, "Swiss Travel Passes cover more than rail, you get the national bus network, city bus and trams, most lake ships and a few cable cars."
Swiss Travel Passes cover 50% of the cost of most cable cars, and 100% of the cost of the cable cars to Mürren (near Wengen) and to Mt. Pilatus and Mt. Rigi (near Luzern). They also cover the full cost of most museums, including castles. And you're likely to make use of the lake ships on Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, which are near Wengen, and are covered fully by the Swiss Travel Pass.
And as Sam mentioned, The Swiss Travel Passes cover the full cost of trains all the way to Wengen, where you're going, but the Eurail Pass only covers 25% of the cost between Interlaken Ost and Wengen.