Where are you going?

What does Iterbis do?

Iterbis is a comparison service that finds intermediate cities where you can switch modes of transport. Rather than completing the entire journey by train, coach or plane, Iterbis routes can combine them to find better options that are cheaper, faster or greener.

We may find that you can combine a train and a coach, for example, to travel more cheaply in the same amount of time. The trade-off: you will need to book tickets with several transport companies. Whenever possible, we redirect you straight to the carrier’s journey page, so you only need to buy each part of the itinerary.

There is no magic

Although you may find better routes on Iterbis, watch out for one thing: connections. The suggested margins are designed to absorb potential delays, but because you book a separate ticket for each part, protection may be more limited if there is a delay, depending on the transport company.

The real price and the real duration of the journey

Unlike most comparison services, Iterbis compares journeys from city centre to city centre. We calculate the time and cost needed to travel between a central stop and a more distant location, such as an airport, both at departure and arrival.

For most domestic flights in France, for example, flying becomes less attractive than taking the train because of the time needed to reach the airport, the recommended allowance for security and boarding, and then the time needed to leave the airport and reach the city centre on arrival. The same applies to price: many airport shuttles have special fares that are higher than regular city transport.

This avoids surprises, especially when getting to an airport costs almost as much as the flight itself.

“Surely this already exists?”

We thought the same. It seems incredible that there is no website looking at which places are most worthwhile to travel through on a long-distance journey. But, to our great disappointment, we could not find a comparison service that does it.

Rome2Rio only gives theoretical advice without checking the genuinely best options for a specific day. Omio and Kombo offer combined itineraries like Iterbis… but miss a huge number of routes. They also add booking fees: understandably, because they sell the ticket and must cover bank charges, customer support and their internal costs.

So, because we could not find a satisfactory comparison service, we built it ourselves, quite simply: Iterbis finds the best journeys by genuinely looking at dozens of possibilities, without an intermediary adding fees to the final price. And while we are at it, we can also calculate how to reach the city centre from airports and distant stops. It always helps!

Iterbis is not perfect

Displayed prices may be incorrect, and so may redirection links. Some transport modes, such as ferries, are not yet available. Some urban transfers are still unknown and marked as such, meaning you need to check manually whether a journey is possible. Connections are not protected by Iterbis if something goes wrong, since it is a comparison service rather than a travel agency.

Sometimes, there is simply a very good direct journey. The ranking takes this into account: we will not suggest a train-and-coach journey if the train alone is cheaper, faster and otherwise better. The point is not to advertise multimodal routes as if they were the holy grail; run your search and see for yourself whether multimodal journeys found by Iterbis are better than the usual routes.

Despite all this, can you find options you would not have considered to make smarter, cheaper journeys in France and Europe? Absolutely.