Ticket refund

Train ticket cancellation charges and refund calculator

What comes back when you cancel a railway ticket — confirmed, RAC, waitlisted or Tatkal — worked out from the railway’s own cancellation rules and the fare on your ticket.

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TrainBot India is an independent service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Indian Railways, IRCTC, or any rail operator or ticketing organisation. It cannot cancel a ticket or see a refund. Tickets are cancelled on IRCTC or at a railway counter; the figure above is an estimate from the published rules, and IRCTC works out the actual refund when you cancel.

Train ticket cancellation charges: how the railway works them out

Three things decide the deduction on a confirmed ticket: the class, the fare, and how long is left before the train’s scheduled departure. Cancel early — more than 72 hours out — and the railway keeps only a flat charge per passenger, fixed by class: highest in AC First and Executive Class, then AC 2 Tier and First Class, then AC 3 Tier, AC Chair Car and AC 3 Economy, then Sleeper, and lowest in reserved Second Class. From 72 hours down to 24 it keeps a quarter of the fare; from 24 hours down to 8, half. In both windows the flat charge is a floor — on a cheap ticket a quarter of the fare can be less than the flat charge, and then the flat charge is what is kept. Inside the last 8 hours a confirmed ticket is not refunded at all. The charge is counted per passenger, so cancelling two people out of four costs two charges, and the calculator splits the fare you type evenly between the passengers you are cancelling.

Tatkal ticket cancellation charges and refund

This is the shortest rule in the book: a confirmed Tatkal ticket is not refunded on cancellation, whether you cancel a day ahead or an hour ahead, and the same goes for Premium Tatkal. It is also why a Tatkal waiting list barely moves — nobody holding a confirmed Tatkal berth has any reason to give it up. A Tatkal ticket that is still waitlistedis another matter: it is treated like any waitlisted ticket, and the fare comes back less the clerkage charge. The exceptions to “no refund” are the ones that apply to every ticket — the railway cancels the train, or the train runs more than 3 hours late and you do not travel.

RAC and waiting list ticket cancellation charges

An RAC ticket, a waitlisted ticket, and a ticket on which some passengers are confirmed and others are not, all lose only the clerkage charge — a small fixed sum per passenger — when they are cancelled. The deadline is what catches people: the ticket has to be cancelled, or a TDR filed, at least 30 minutes before the scheduled departure. Inside that half hour nothing is refunded. On a partly confirmed ticket IRCTC’s rules give the confirmed passengers the same treatment only on condition that allthe passengers on the ticket are cancelled together. Pick “RAC, waitlisted or partly confirmed” in the calculator for the figure.

Cancellation after chart preparation, and the TDR

Once the reservation chart is prepared, IRCTC will not cancel an e-ticket. What is left is a TDR — a ticket deposit receipt — filed online from your IRCTC account, which IRCTC forwards to the railway concerned, and the railway decides the refund under the same rules. The clocks still run: no refund on a confirmed ticket unless it was cancelled or the TDR filed before the last window closed, and no refund on an RAC ticket unless that happened at least 30 minutes before departure. A TDR is also the route for a train that ran more than 3 hours late and that you did not board. It is a claim, not a guarantee, and this site cannot file or track one.

Train cancelled or running late: when the full fare comes back

Two situations refund the whole fare, with no cancellation charge and no clerkage, on every kind of ticket — confirmed, RAC, waitlisted and Tatkal alike. The first is the railway cancelling the train. The second is the train running more than 3 hours lateat your boarding station when you decide not to travel — provided the ticket is surrendered, or the TDR filed, before the train actually departs. The last condition matters: the claim is for a journey not made, so it cannot be raised after you have travelled. Whether your train is that late is something the chat on this site can tell you in a line; pick “Train cancelled, or over 3hours late” in the calculator to see the refund.

New railway ticket cancellation rules in 2026, and what IRCTC’s page still says

The windows moved in 2026, and the official pages have not all caught up — so this is exactly what was read and what was only reported, as of 2026-09-21. The 2015 rules set the steps at 48, 12 and 4hours before departure, and IRCTC’s own e-ticket cancellation page still lists those figures. On 24 March 2026 the Railway Minister announced new steps for all trains — 72, 24 and 8 hours — reported by the public broadcaster the same day and described everywhere since as in force from April 2026; the same announcement said counter tickets can be cancelled at any reservation counter. We could not find the gazette notification for that change, so the calculator applies the new windows, which are the stricter ones near departure, and whenever the two readings give different answers it prints both. The flat charges by class, the clerkage charge and the Tatkal rule are the same under either.

Vande Bharat Sleeper and Amrit Bharat cancellation charges

Two trains have a rule of their own, notified in the Gazette in January 2026 and read here in full from the Railway Board’s circular. On the Vande Bharat Sleeper Express, and on reserved tickets of the Amrit Bharat II Express, there is no flat charge at all: cancel more than 72 hours before departure and a quarter of the fare is kept; from 72 hours down to 8, half; under 8 hours, nothing is refunded. So the cheapest moment to cancel on these trains still costs a quarter of the ticket, which is far more than the flat charge on any other train. Waitlisted and RAC tickets on them follow the ordinary clerkage rule. Choose the train in the calculator and the table changes to match.

IRCTC refund status and refund time

A great many people searching for a refund calculator actually want to know where their money is, and that is the one thing no page outside IRCTC can tell you. A refund’s status lives in your IRCTC account — the booked ticket history for a cancelled ticket, the TDR history for a claim — and the money goes back to the account or card that paid. This site does not read a PNR for this calculator and holds no booking data, so it cannot see a refund, chase one, or say how many days yours will take. What it can do is tell you what the amount should be, so that when the credit arrives you can check it against the rules rather than take it on trust.

Questions people ask

Travelling after all? The retiring room charges calculator prices a room at the station, the railway penalty calculator shows what travelling without a proper ticket costs, and the railway distance calculator estimates how far two stations are apart by rail.

Last updated 16 September 2026.