How to Buy and Use your eTicket for Dutch Trains

The Dutch National Railways (NS) website sell etickets. 

1 - Click on the ‘Menu’ tab for a drop-down menu
2 - Click on ‘Tickets and Supplements'.
3 - Choose single ticket or other options for example day return) enter your details and purchase your ticket.

Rules to Remember Before Buying Your eTicket

1. Remember when entering your details that they must be the same as the ID you will travel with. (as an aside - by law everyone in the Netherlands is obliged to have ID when asked by officials such as police). The eticket is sold under the condition that you can show your ID to prove your identity. The name and date of birth on the eticket and ID must match (I must say however mine has never actually been checked).

2. You must download (or print) your etickets. 

3. You do not need to check in like with a OV-card however you may need to use the barcode on the eticket to get through the barrier


Using your eTicket
You can use these etickets to gain entry to the station via the barriers with the ‘scan ticket’ symbol. It is not difficult to figure out. Find the electronic barrier with the barcode scanner symbol hold the ticket to reader. 

If you have any problems there is usually a member of staff around ( or a help button you can press to find a member of staff). The electronic gates are being installed in more and more stations but not every station has them yet, so you don’t need to worry about scanning your ticket if there are not gates when travelling with the eticket

There are other websites that also sell etickets for domestic train travel in the Netherlands such as saveatrain.com who accept a lot of different payment methods and guarantee low prices with no booking fees. 

It is also possible to purchase tickets for domestic Dutch train travel on the website of the Belgium Railways (the European website not the regular Belgium Railways website.





With these etickets you have the option to home print the ticket and if you can’t print your ticket yourself then you can collect it at the station. Another advantage of buying with this website over the Dutch Railways website (www.ns.nl) is that there are multiple payment methods (Visa, E- Mastero, GiroPay, MasterCard, iDeal, KBC online, Bancontact, American Express, Sofort, CBC Online, ING HomePay).

If you know of more online eticket retailers please add a comment below.