Cheap train ticket Verona to Munich

The Trenitalia website - https://www.lefrecce.it/Channels.Website.WEB/#/search-results?handoff=true&referrer=www.lefrecce.it
shows a single train at 0520 that costs €14.95. The later trains seem to cost around €39.90.

Is this the website you were using for Deutche Bahn? https://int.bahn.de/en

I'm not seeing that price listed when I look at that date. And their prices seem quite a bit higher than Trenitalia's.

The direct Verona - Munich trains are jointly operated by the German (DB) and the Austrian Railways (ÖBB). Bahn.de is the official website of the German Railways, so it is as legit a as it gets. You are buying directly from the operator.
oebb.at, the website of the Austrian Railways is also a good place to buy those tickets. It is also the best place if you want to be able to pick the seat as the trains are now operated with Austrian trainsets.

Italian railways (Trenitalia) also sells tickets for these trains.

For trains like that there are two types of tickets:
- Normal full fare tickets. These are always available, even minutes before departure, are flexible (you can take a different train than the one booked) and are refundable. These also can be sold by anyone that has a link to the European train booking system, and that is probably what you got when trying to book via Rick Steves (which is really Rail Europe in this case).
- Discounted tickets. These come in different fare buckets, and often the participating railways each get a number of tickets they can sell out of each fare bucket. That is the reason why sometimes you may see a lower price on eg. Trenitalia than on ÖBB or DB or vv. So if you want the cheapest ticket it is sometimes good to check all three.
Some third parties like trainline can sell those discounted tickets as well as they link directly in to the railways' own booking system, rather than the Europe wide one.

This leads to funny situations btw. If you try to book this on eg Trainline you will see every train listed twice, because Trainline looks it up both in the German and in the Austrian system, finds the same trains, but may find different prices :-)

There are 4 direct trains from Verona Porta Nuova station to Munich Hbf on June 6, at 9:01, 11:01, 13:01, and 14:58. The last direct train is showing the cheapest tickets on DB of 75.98 EUR for 2 adults, 2nd class, SuperSparpreis. That means they are nonrefundable, like airline tickets. Other websites, like Trenitalia or OeBB may have better prices They are all the same train, as Wengenk explained.

There is an even later train at 17:01. DB and OBB like to run long distance trains at nice 2 hourly or hourly intervals, but apparently they could not get a 15:01 slot from Verona, hence the 14:58.

Thanks you all. I got tickets on the DB website. That's an easy site to use! 2 tickets on the 11:01 train from Verona PN to Munich, for 198 E plus 10 E to reserve 2 seats. (We watched a YouTube video last night that a couple made of their Verona to Munich train trip, mentioning how glad they were they reserved seats because people did have to stand for long stretches!) Looks like a pretty train trip!

Its a pretty trip, and since a few months it is also on brand new trains. So if you are looking at Youtube Videos make sure you pick one where they travelled on the new generation RailJet train.