Your train out of Berlin was late. What do you actually get back?
A late train out of Berlin pays 25 percent at 60 minutes and 50 percent at 120, a late U-Bahn pays nothing in money at all, and underneath both sits a four euro floor that quietly cancels most small claims.
Set what you were travelling on, drag the delay at your destination, then add each bad journey as its own case. The board plots what one journey pays and shows the running total against the four euro payout floor, which is the number that decides whether filing is worth it.
Berlin runs three transport systems on the same map and only one of them pays cash. The trains that take you out of the city, ICE, IC, RE and RB, fall under EU rail passenger rights and pay a percentage of the fare. The U-Bahn, tram and bus belong to BVG, whose customer guarantee pays in free tickets. A Deutschlandticket has no single-journey price at all, so it pays a flat amount instead. The board holds all three rules on one screen, because the mistake visitors make is not misreading a threshold, it is assuming the same rule applies to every train in the city.
What this tool does
It draws the payout rule as the step function it actually is. Pick a ticket type and the curve shows what one journey pays across four hours of delay, with the 60 and 120 minute thresholds marked and the four euro payout floor shaded as a dead zone. Drag the delay slider and a marker moves along the curve. Press Add this journey and the case joins a running total drawn as a bar against that floor, which is the honest test of whether a claim is worth filing.
The number worth carrying
Twenty minutes. It is not a compensation threshold and it pays nothing, but it is the one that fires most often: at 20 minutes of expected delay at your destination, a saver fare stops being locked to its booked train and you may take the next departure that works. Compensation starts much later, at 60 minutes for 25 percent of the fare and 120 minutes for 50 percent, and at 60 minutes you can also abandon the trip and take the full fare back instead.
Before you file
Get the delay confirmed while you are still in the station, either by having a Fahrgastrechte form stamped or by noting the train number with the scheduled and real arrival times. Ask for the bank transfer instead of the travel voucher. The legal deadline is three months after the journey, although Deutsche Bahn says it is still accepting claims for up to twelve months as a transitional practice. BVG runs on a much shorter clock and wants its guarantee certificate within 14 days. Thresholds and amounts were read from the operators own pages and checked on 28 August 2026.