Prices and rules on this page last verified: 22 August 2026
The Haramain train is the right way to travel between Makkah and Madinah for most pilgrims: 453 km in 2 hours 20 minutes, at up to 300 km/h, with a station built into Jeddah airport. It is also the leg of a self-booked Umrah where the most avoidable mistakes happen — paying an agency double, missing the last train because your flight landed at midnight, or discovering the miqat announcement comes seven minutes after departure and you are not in ihram.
A note on our fares. Haramain does not publish a static fare table anywhere. Prices sit inside the booking engine and move with demand. Every figure below is either an official fare mirrored by a booking platform or a secondary source, and it is labelled. Check the live price at sar.hhr.sa before you budget.
Fares
The standard published Makkah–Madinah fare is SAR 150 plus 15% VAT, so SAR 172.50 in economy — roughly £34 or $46 — and SAR 362.25 in business, roughly £71 or $97.
| Route | Economy | Business |
|---|---|---|
| Makkah ↔ Madinah | SAR 172.50 · ~£34 / ~$46 | SAR 362.25 · ~£71 / ~$97 |
| Makkah ↔ Jeddah airport (KAIA) | SAR 34.50 · ~£7 / ~$9 | SAR 97.75 · ~£19 / ~$26 |
| Makkah ↔ Jeddah Al Sulaymaniyah | SAR 23 · ~£4.50 / ~$6 | SAR 69 · ~£13 / ~$18 |
| Jeddah ↔ Madinah | SAR 100–150 · ~£20–29 | SAR 210–250 · ~£41–49 |
Pricing is dynamic and can fall well below those figures. One regular traveller reports economy discounted to SAR 87 and business to SAR 187 when booking several weeks ahead. Treat the numbers above as the ceiling for a normal day, not a fixed price.
Children, infants and accessibility
- Children get a discount, but sources disagree on whether it is 40% or 50%, and on whether the band is 2–11 or 2–12. Check at booking.
- Infants under 2 without their own seat travel free or at 90% off depending on the source, one per adult.
- There is no senior discount. We found none on any source, official or otherwise. Do not budget for one.
- Passengers with a disability are entitled to a discount — the official site confirms this exists but does not state the percentage. Bring your disability ID card.
- Everyone on one booking must travel in the same class. That is an official rule.
Book direct. Resellers quote materially above the official fare. One international rail site advertises Makkah–Madinah business “from $207” against an official fare of about $97. The official channels are sar.hhr.sa and the “HHR Train” app on Android and iOS.
The route and the stops
Five stations, in this order travelling south to north: Makkah → Jeddah Al Sulaymaniyah → King Abdulaziz International Airport → King Abdullah Economic City (Rabigh) → Madinah. The airport sits on a short branch line.
| Leg | Time |
|---|---|
| Makkah ↔ Madinah, fastest direct | 2h 20m |
| Makkah ↔ Madinah with intermediate stops | 2h 45m – 2h 50m |
| Makkah ↔ Jeddah airport | ~30–50 minutes, depending on the service |
| Jeddah airport ↔ Madinah | ~1h 54m |
| KAEC ↔ Madinah | ~1h |
Check the stop list of your specific train. We could not establish from any source whether a single service calls at both Jeddah city and the airport, or whether services split between them. The booking page shows the stops for each departure — read it before you buy.
There is no permanent published timetable; services vary daily with demand, typically 12–20 departures per direction, rising steeply in Ramadan and Hajj. For scale: the operator ran 142 trips on the busiest day of Hajj 1447, and carried 48,000 passengers in a single Ramadan day.
The Jeddah airport connection — the best thing about this railway
The airport station is “an integrated structure within the Main Airport Terminal Building”, in the operator’s own words (official station page). You walk from arrivals to the platform without leaving the airport. Two independent traveller reports put it at two to three minutes on foot from clearing customs.
It serves Terminal 1. We found no documented connection to the older terminals or the Hajj Terminal.
Station hours are 06:30 to 00:30. This is the trap. If your flight lands late and you clear immigration after midnight, the train is gone and you are in a taxi to Makkah — around £30 and an hour and a half. Check your arrival time against that window before you plan to take the train, and allow 30 minutes at the station for security screening.
Luggage
The official allowance (source) is tighter than most pilgrims expect:
| Item | Allowance |
|---|---|
| Large piece | One, maximum 25 kg, maximum 65 × 55 × 35 cm |
| Hand luggage | One additional item — backpack, laptop bag, camera bag, purse or baby bag |
| Cash and jewellery | Combined value may not exceed SAR 60,000 |
| Food and drink | Only small drinks in their original sealed packaging; food must be tightly packaged inside luggage |
| Prohibited | Explosives, corrosives, compressed containers including lighters, firearms and toy weapons, sharp tools |
Oversized bags are directed to a station cargo service for a fee — one traveller reported paying SAR 75 at Madinah and collecting the case at Makkah station around 23:00, well after they arrived. Enforcement is inconsistent: some travellers pass with clearly oversized cases, while the Madinah return leg is where luggage desks are most often reported to check.
On Zamzam water: Haramain publishes no rule at all. Its baggage page does not mention it. Sites stating a definite train allowance are inventing one. In practice it is your airline’s rules that bite, not the train’s — and Zamzam must be bought sealed at an airport outlet and handed over at check-in, never carried through security.
Getting from the stations to the Haram
Makkah
Makkah Central station is in the Rusayfah district, about 2.8 km from the main Haram gates — a 6 to 8 minute drive, stretching to 10–15 minutes around prayer times.
- Free shuttle bus to the Haram area, every 20–30 minutes, 15–25 minutes with stops. You carry your own luggage.
- Taxi from about SAR 15 for a sedan; a van SAR 20–25.
- Uber or Careem SAR 12–25, surging at peak.
Madinah
Madinah is the harder end. The station is roughly 8–12 km from Masjid an-Nabawi — sources disagree — and there is no free shuttle. Budget SAR 40–80 and about 20 minutes. Street taxi SAR 40–60, Uber or Careem SAR 50–90, pre-booked sedan around SAR 125.
Ihram and the miqat
Travelling Madinah to Makkah is the direction that needs planning. The miqat at Dhul-Hulayfah (Abyar Ali) lies about 11 km from Madinah, and the train crosses it roughly seven minutes after departure. There is no station there — the train passes without stopping.
There is an announcement in Arabic and English at the miqat, reported by travellers as clear and reliable. But seven minutes is not enough time to change, and the train washrooms are cramped enough that experienced pilgrims advise against trying.
The practical sequence: perform ghusl and change into ihram at your Madinah hotel, make your intention at or before the station, board already in ihram, and listen for the announcement. Most pilgrims on that service are doing exactly this.
Travelling in the other direction, or flying into Jeddah and going to Madinah first, you do not need ihram on arrival — Madinah sits outside the miqat boundary. Whether Jeddah airport itself functions as a miqat is a question of scholarly disagreement, not a railway fact, and we are not the right people to answer it.
Accessibility
The official position, from the operator’s own accessibility information: “Each train is equipped with 2 special seats with wheelchair bay.” You must tick the special-needs box when booking, and bring your disability ID card.
Two wheelchair spaces on a 417-seat train, on a pilgrimage route. That is very tight. If you are travelling with a wheelchair user, book as far ahead as you can, check your chair’s dimensions against the bay, and have a private-transfer fallback. The bay is located in business class.
A cafeteria on board is officially confirmed. An onboard prayer area is widely claimed by third-party sites but appears nowhere in the operator’s own material — we are not going to assert it.
Changes, refunds and missing your train
This is the official policy (source), and it is less generous than most sites report:
| When | Economy refund | Business refund | Economy change | Business change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| More than 24h before | 20% fee | Free | 10% fee | Free |
| 24h to 20 minutes before | 50% fee | 35% fee | 20% fee | 10% fee |
| Within 20 minutes | Not permitted | Not permitted | Not permitted | Not permitted |
A widely-copied blog claims fee-free refunds more than 24 hours out and a 10-minute cut-off. The official page says economy pays a 20% fee even 24 hours ahead, only business is free, and the cut-off is 20 minutes. Several agency sites reproduce the wrong version. If you miss the train, you forfeit the ticket with no compensation.
Tickets bought at station counters are widely reported to be excluded from changes and refunds entirely. Cancel online through Manage my booking using your booking code and the phone number on the reservation.
The one problem you should plan around
Payment failure is the most-reported issue with this railway, by a wide margin. Travellers describe the website freezing at the payment step, cards being charged with no ticket issued, and having to raise chargebacks. Reports span several years and continue into 2026.
Use the app, not the website. That is the consistent advice from people who book this route regularly. If the site does fail, clearing cookies, switching browser and trying a different card are the reported workarounds. Do not re-submit repeatedly — that is how people end up double-charged.
Punctuality, by contrast, is genuinely excellent: the operator reported over 98% on-time performance during Hajj 1447, and travellers consistently describe departures as prompt.
What we could not verify
- Exact fares on any given day — no static official table exists.
- Whether one service calls at both Jeddah stations.
- The advance booking window. A regular traveller reports inventory opening only 4–5 weeks ahead; resellers claim 6–12 months, but that is their own system, not Haramain’s.
- Delay compensation. The official Passenger Charter exists but we could not retrieve it.
- Promo codes. Codes circulating on SEO sites have no official basis. Haramain has historically applied seasonal discounts — up to 50% for Hajj 2025 — automatically to fares, not through codes. We found no 2026 discount campaign announced.
Official sources
- Haramain booking portal — the only place you should buy
- Baggage policy · Ticket conditions and refunds · Travel tips
- Jeddah airport station
- Saudi Press Agency — Hajj 1447 operating results
Fares and timings on this page were captured on the date shown at the top and are rechecked quarterly. Found something out of date? Tell us.