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For the past few weeks, one figure has been making the rounds in the media: +75%. That is the rise in the average price of a OUIGO ticket between 2017 and 2024, as widely reported by the press. Quite a shock, given that OUIGO remains firmly associated in the public imagination with low-cost high-speed rail, the blue and pink symbol of a TGV finally accessible to everyone.
Except that this figure has since been called into question. Did the Fnaut (Fédération Nationale des Associations d'Usagers des Transports) and the media exaggerate? Or, on the contrary, is the brand genuinely betraying its founding promise? And how can a service raising its prices continue to attract ever-growing numbers of passengers?
To separate fact from fiction, we took the time to analyse the data, revisit the origins of the OUIGO model, and understand what has fundamentally shifted in the French rail landscape. Because behind a simple train ticket lie track access charges, energy costs, new competing operators, and a reality far more nuanced than the shock figures repeated in unison by the media…
Important note, in the interest of transparency: SNCF Voyageurs (and more broadly the SNCF Group) are among HOURRAIL!'s clients. They have in no way funded this analysis and have not been involved in its editorial treatment.
In this controversy, the difficulty lies not only with prices themselves — it also lies in how they are measured.
The starting point of the debate is the average price of a OUIGO ticket. Based on open data from the Autorité de régulation des transports (ART), subsequently taken up by the Fnaut, the picture painted was this: in 2017, a ticket cost an average of €19.80, versus €34.70 in 2024, a rise of around €15, or +75% in percentage terms.
Put that way, it sounds enormous. Except that the Fnaut itself later issued a correction, explaining that the 2017 data was not "directly comparable" with subsequent years, notably due to an issue with reference kilometric distances. With this correction applied, the increase falls to around 50% over the 2017–2024 period, or 65% if measured from 2016. The rise remains real and significant — but since this correction received far less media coverage, it is important to highlight it.
The ART, for its part, tracks price changes over a more recent period: between 2019 and 2024, it records a rise of around 24% for OUIGO, versus 9% for classic high-speed services. A very real increase, but considerably less dramatic once you are no longer comparing the same time period or the same indicator.
Several analyses converge in placing the bulk of the price rise between 2017 and 2019, the period during which OUIGO underwent a profound transformation. But this does not fully explain why the average price per kilometre also rose. According to the Fnaut's correction, this increase was actually slightly higher: +67% per km versus +65% on the average ticket.
This is all the more counter-intuitive because, in high-speed rail, the price per kilometre generally tends to fall as distance increases. The ART confirms this: a 100 km journey structurally costs more per kilometre than a 500 km journey. And for equivalent distances, routes to or from Île-de-France remain on average more expensive than transverse links between regions.
Part of the explanation lies in the concept of commercial distance. Unlike the actual physical distance of a line, commercial distance is a statistical reference that can differ significantly from it. The ART gives the example of the Paris–Lyon route: the high-speed line measures approximately 427 km, but the commercial distance used in some databases can reach 511 km. As a result, for a €30 ticket, the price per kilometre shifts from 7 centimes to 6 centimes depending on which distance is used — without the ticket price itself having changed by a single cent.
The debate over OUIGO prices almost always comes paired with a comparison to TGV INOUI, and this is where interpretations diverge most sharply. According to the Fnaut, over the same 2017–2024 period, INOUI prices rose by just +8% on the average ticket and +11% per kilometre. Set against OUIGO's increase, this creates the impression of a dramatic gap.
But as Alain Krakovitch, CEO of SNCF Voyageurs, points out: "OUIGO remains on average 30% cheaper than INOUI. So OUIGO is truly an essential product for those who want to travel by train on a tight budget." It can happen, right at the end of sales on very busy trains, that a OUIGO ticket exceeds the price of an INOUI ticket, but such situations remain exceptional and concern only the very last available seats.
It all depends, then, on what question you are asking. Have OUIGO prices gone up? Yes, undeniably. Does OUIGO remain cheaper than the classic TGV? Also yes, in the vast majority of cases. And it is precisely this tension between two simultaneous truths that is fuelling the controversy.
To grasp how prices have evolved, we need to go back to the context in which OUIGO was created. Because, against all expectations, this low-cost train was born into a world in the midst of crisis.
In the 2010s, following the 2008 financial crisis, the classic TGV began to lose momentum. Purchasing power was under pressure, travel slowed, and competition from low-cost airlines (EasyJet, Ryanair…) intensified on the same routes. SNCF faced a clear challenge: make high-speed rail accessible to those who had abandoned it or never had access to it, without destabilising the existing TGV pricing model.
The answer? OUIGO. A distinct product, with its own rules: more seats in the same space, optional paid services (seat selection, access to a power socket…), a strictly managed baggage policy, and maximum rotation optimisation.
But on one essential point, nothing changed: OUIGO runs on the same high-speed lines as other TGVs. The first train ran in April 2013 between Marne-la-Vallée and Lyon, with an introductory price of €10 that caused an immediate sensation.
That "€10" was, however, a floor price, not an average price. And that is one of the keys to understanding the subsequent pricing evolution. From the outset, the model was built on yield management: the fuller the train, the higher the prices. OUIGO was never "always €10", it was "from €10".
It was during this period that OUIGO truly changed scale, and where the vast majority of the observed price increases take root.
Geographically, first: the network expanded well beyond the initial Paris–Lyon and Paris–Bordeaux routes, reaching Brest, Hendaye and Perpignan. OUIGO became a genuine national network, capable of reaching new audiences. Then came station upgrades: in 2017, the brand moved into Paris Montparnasse and Gare de Lyon, gradually shedding its image as a "peripheral" train departing from Marne-la-Vallée or Massy. Finally, the fleet grew from 4 trains at launch to nearly 50 planned by 2026–2027, with rotations optimised to maximise frequency.
This was not simply a question of prices, it was a profound transformation of the product itself: more destinations, more central stations, modernised services. And that transformation came at a cost.
Now that the context is clear, we can examine the concrete factors pushing prices upward.
According to SNCF Voyageurs, changes in the service scope (more central stations and longer journeys) account for more than 80% of the observed price increase, with the remainder attributable to rising costs. This reading is contested, but it points to a real phenomenon.
On one hand, central stations cost more. The Fnaut illustrates this with the "platform fee", a charge linked to platform use in a station: approximately €587 at Paris Gare de Lyon versus €146 at Marne-la-Vallée. Spread across a OUIGO train carrying around 634 passengers, the difference amounts to roughly 70 centimes per ticket. Not negligible, but insufficient, according to the Fnaut, to explain on its own an average ticket price increase of €13.70.
On the other hand, longer journeys mechanically push the average up: if you add more tickets for distant destinations, the average price rises even without changing the price of existing tickets. This is a mix effect, comparable to a shopping basket where you progressively replace certain cheap items with more expensive ones, the average price rises, even though the entry-level products remain available.
Part of the increase is also explained by the logic of penetration pricing, a classic approach for any new market entrant: attract customers with floor-level fares, then adjust them once the offer is established. This is exactly what was observed with the arrival of Trenitalia in France, and it was also the strategy adopted by OUIGO España at launch.
Add to this the dynamic pricing inherent in yield management, which varies prices according to purchase date, capacity fill, travel period, and time slot. Tickets bought late or during peak periods can reach high levels, and although these cases remain a minority, they contribute to pulling the average price upward.
SNCF is France's largest industrial electricity consumer, with 9 TWh consumed annually. Since 2022, the bill has exploded: the traction current supply charge went from €111.95/MWh in 2022 to €473.51/MWh in 2023, a fourfold increase. For SNCF Voyageurs, this translated into an additional €700 million energy bill in a single year. Across the group, electricity's share of costs rose from 7% to 14%.
It is in this context that the group launched SNCF Renouvelables, a subsidiary dedicated to clean electricity production, with a target of installing 1,000 hectares of solar panels by 2030 (enough to cover 15–20% of its needs) and an ambition of energy autonomy by 2050.
Beyond energy, several other cost items weigh on fares:
And one final point, often absent from the debate: the State requires the SNCF Group to return almost all of its profits into a dedicated fund for the regeneration of the rail network.
OUIGO today embodies a permanent tension between accessibility and profitability. The brand has evolved, longer journeys, more central stations, increased frequencies, a modernised offer, and these transformations justify part of the observed price rises. Yet despite these increases, trains are running at fill rates close to 95%, and the brand claims over 180 million passengers since 2013, of whom approximately 90 million would not have taken the train without it.
The founding promise has not disappeared, it is adapting to a context radically different from that of 2013: tight energy markets, rising track charges, inflationary pressure, European competition. And it is perhaps the 2022 launch of OUIGO Train Classique that most clearly illustrates this: these former Corail carriages, repainted in blue and pink, link Paris to Nantes, Lyon or Rennes via classic lines, with fares from €10. The journey takes 4 hours instead of 1h30, but perhaps that too is learning to travel differently.
The blue and pink train, then, is very much alive. And as Alain Krakovitch sums it up: "OUIGO has the highest fill rate in Europe in the rail world. We are at between 92 and 94% fill rate. That is the most eloquent proof that this is a successful low-cost operation."
Issue du monde de la communication et des médias, Sophie est Responsable éditoriale chez HOURRAIL ! depuis août 2024. Elle est notamment derrière le contenu éditorial du site ainsi que La Locomissive (de l'inspiration voyage bas carbone et des bons plans, un jeudi sur deux, gratuitement dans ta boîte mail !).
Convaincue que les changements d’habitude passent par la transformation de nos imaginaires, elle s’attache à montrer qu’il est possible de voyager autrement, de manière plus consciente, plus lente et plus joyeuse. Son objectif : rendre le slow travel accessible à toutes et tous, à travers des astuces, des décryptages et surtout, de nouveaux récits.
