Help and frequently asked questions

Tatkal seats are genuinely scarce and go fast, and this prototype models that honestly: seats deplete as a real function of elapsed time, and a small, time-dependent chance of a payment-gateway failure is built in, mirroring the real, very common complaint of sessions timing out.

RAC (Reservation Against Cancellation) means you can already board and share a berth, with a good chance of a full berth opening up. Waitlist means no berth is currently allotted at all, so you can only board if it confirms before departure.

It's a simple, honest estimate (not IRCTC's real, undisclosed model) using three plain-language bands: 80%+ is likely to confirm, 50-80% is a reasonable chance worth watching, and below 50% you should start looking at alternatives.

It never applies to Tatkal. Concession fares exist only under the General quota, so a senior citizen pays the full Tatkal fare. That is real IRCTC policy, not a limitation of this prototype.

This one surprises a lot of people: a confirmed or RAC Tatkal ticket gets no refund at all if you cancel voluntarily, no matter when you cancel: the full fare is forfeited. General quota has a gentler, time-tiered refund, but Tatkal doesn't. The one exception is a PNR that's still fully waitlisted when the chart is prepared, which is auto-cancelled and refunded, since no berth was ever actually allotted to you, minus the standard flat clerkage charge (about ₹60, or ₹60 + GST for AC classes) that applies to any cancelled e-ticket. It is not a true zero-deduction refund.

Indian Railways quotes availability per pair of stations, not per train. A normal search asks only whether there is a berth for the whole journey, and stops at no. The live berths page asks the railway about each stretch of the same train separately, so a service that is full end to end usually turns out to have real, bookable berths over most of it. Every number there is the railway's own, including after the chart is prepared, when it switches to quoting current booking.

A real, but under-explained, IRCTC scheme: if you're stuck on a waitlist or a class sells out, you can be offered a different train/class with better availability at no extra cost. This prototype surfaces that offer directly, instead of leaving you to find and opt into it yourself.

It is not how IRCTC works today. It is this prototype's proposal. Indian Railways is moving counter Tatkal to a token system from 1 August 2026, where tokens are handed out in a window before booking opens so nobody has to win a scramble. That change applies to reservation counters only; online Tatkal is still a first-come race, which is the channel automated agents actually dominate. The ballot page models the token system online: declare what you need any time during the entry window, and a single draw allocates every berth. Entering first earns nothing.

You don't have to take our word for it. Before entry opens, the server publishes a hash of the draw seed; your browser generates a secret and sends only its hash. After entry closes the seed is revealed, and the draw order is computed from the seed plus every entry. Your browser can then re-derive all of it. The verifier on that page checks four things: that the revealed seed matches the hash published beforehand, that your entry is the one in the published list, that the draw seed is what it claims to be, and that your position is what the server said. Standard SHA-256, no library, running locally.

Online Tatkal has required an Aadhaar-authenticated account and an OTP since 1 July 2025. That rule is what makes one-person-one-token enforceable, so the ballot models the verification step. It never asks for an Aadhaar number, a real mobile number, or any document. There is deliberately no field that could receive sensitive data, and the mock OTP is printed on screen because no real SMS is sent.

It is two tickets on the same train, split at an intermediate station, and yes, it is legitimate, not a loophole. A berth booked New Delhi to Kanpur is genuinely empty from Kanpur onwards, and the railway resells it, so a train with no through berths can still have room the whole way if you book it in parts. The trade-offs are real: separate PNRs that cancel and refund separately, usually a berth change en route, and a higher total, because reservation and superfast charges are per ticket rather than per journey. This app searches every combination and shows the exact berths and the exact extra cost before you commit.

No. That is exactly how one failure becomes two debits, with the retry going through while the first attempt is still settling. Check your booking history first: if a PNR was created, the ticket exists and a second payment buys nothing. Money from a genuinely failed transaction comes back automatically, typically in 2 to 3 days and up to 7 for some banks, and you do not need to file a TDR for it. In this prototype the berth you were allotted is also held for three minutes, so you can complete the same booking without paying again.

No. This is a prototype, not affiliated with or endorsed by Indian Railways, IRCTC, or the Government of India. No real government or IRCTC system is touched, tested, or scraped, and no booking made here is a real booking.

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