fay637

In america they have greyhound and megabus, does Europe have any cheap buses? Or do you recommend trains?

Thanks for any insight.

malmostoso

Flixbus is the heavyweight, and on some routes it can be more convenient than trains. Often they are much slower though, and their departure and arrival points can be relatively removed from the main areas of a city.

bacchus85

I would say it all depends on where exactly you want to go

For a trip within Germany, I would recommend you check out https://www.fromatob.com/ to compare different options

stut

https://loco2.com/ is a good resource - lets you compare rail and bus side by side.

deniah

There is no super pan-european operator, so it will depend where you look.
In central europe for example, theres one called Student Agency

For shorter trips, like <3hr, buses can be just as fast as trains, and as comfortable. They might serve cities point-to-point where trains might require transfer.

Anything longer that that can be a drag. Go train when you can.

NickB

We are getting close to it with flixbus, though. As you say, there are local operators in various areas but eurolines (which is a not an operator but an agglomeration of different operators) and flixbus tend to dominate the market in Western Europe.

loco2 only show some buses. On routes of interest to me, they only seem to show eurolines-affililiated services. Other comparison sites include omio.com and busradar.com. eurolines and flixbus also have their own websites.

bitterproffit

UKtravelbear

it depends on your starting and finishing points

sydunipete

It does depend on your locations but I've had a few successes from FlixBus and they have a convenient app for my mobile phone. Loco2.com is also a great website.

TheMadBrewer

I've use DB IC Bus (Deutsche Bahn) on a number of routes (Nürnberg <-> Prague, Düsseldorf <-> Antwerp) where trains are somewhat inconvenient. We bought early enough to get €19 tickets. These are both 4 hour (ish) trips and I wouldn't want to do a whole lot longer -- maybe 6 hrs if the alternative was terrible but no more. If the bus is full there is not a lot room compared to a train.

Did Flixbus once Düsseldorf -> Antwerp when I needed to purchase and DB hadn't loaded their schedule and it was pretty much comparable -- DB a tad better.

EmailKid

Nah, even on short journeys train is more comfortable IMHO. But the bus can be a lot cheaper.

Student Agency is Czech based and go from there pretty much everywhere in Europe, but while not only for students, it is tourist based. I thought they were OK.

Flixbus is also OK, though I only did one journey with them.

As noted in some other posts, there are regional lines that concentrate on country of origin (even if it is European Union) such as Slovak Lines in (imagine) Slovakia and ......

.... wait, what

Poland based, also OK, took it to Vienna where FlixBus also had buses. Come to think of it, may have taken it intra Poland as well, but guess FlixBus wants to be the Greyhound of Europe (but without the nasty bus stations ).

I am a train fan will pay a little extra to go by train, but as is obvious from my bus experiences, that is not always possible

glennaa11

I like the Alsa bus too. I took the first class bus in Andalusia for a couple of trips where there was no train. 1-2 seating. I think I paid something like 11 euros.

flyingfkb

https://www.eurolines.eu/

VitaliU

UKtravelbear

Just realise that this poster has a history of posting questions like this or 'would you visit A or B' and then not responding or if she does it's usually to be rude when people ask her questions!

Her latest include asking what peoples favourite Hilton or Wyndham hotel with a balcony is.

We are just wasting out time with this poster.