The cheapest ride on Vietnam's Reunification Express is the Hue to Da Nang soft seat at 106,000 VND, about 4 dollars for the 103 km over the Hai Van Pass. The most expensive single fare is the full Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City soft sleeper at 1,758,000 VND, about 67 dollars for the 1,726 km end-to-end run. Everything else sits between those two poles in a predictable pattern: the longer the leg, the less you pay per kilometre, and within any leg the classes climb a short, shallow ladder from seat to berth.
This page is a fare reference only. For what the trains are actually like and which segments are worth riding, see the Vietnam trains explainer; for how to pay and how to dodge the foreign-card decline on dsvn.vn, see the booking guide. Here we simply price every major leg by class.
Every Reunification Express leg, priced by class
Fares below are for the best trains, SE1 to SE4, which carry the newer air-conditioned stock. Cheaper SE5 to SE8 and regional services run a little lower. Soft sleeper figures are the lower-berth price; upper berths run roughly 5 to 7 percent less. USD is converted at 1 USD = 26,300 VND.
| Leg | km | Duration | Hard seat | Soft seat | Hard sleeper (6-berth) | Soft sleeper (4-berth) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hanoi-Ninh Binh | 115 | ~2h 15m | 80,000 / $3 | 120,000-170,000 / $5-6 | see note | 247,000 / $9 |
| Hanoi-Lao Cai (Sapa) | 296 | ~8h | 150,000 / $6 | 200,000 / $8 | see note | 450,000 / $17 |
| Hanoi-Hue | 688 | ~12h 45m | see note | 569,000 / $22 | 1,070,000 / $41 | 1,218,000 / $46 |
| Hanoi-Da Nang | 791 | ~15h 20m | see note | 651,000 / $25 | 1,137,000 / $43 | 1,294,000 / $49 |
| Hue-Da Nang | 103 | ~2h 30m | 80,000 / $3 | 106,000 / $4 | 219,000 / $8 | 265,000 / $10 |
| Da Nang-Nha Trang | 524 | ~9h 15m | see note | 424,000 / $16 | 733,000 / $28 | 865,000 / $33 |
| Nha Trang-HCMC | 411 | ~8h | see note | 404,000 / $15 | 763,000 / $29 | 869,000 / $33 |
| Hanoi-HCMC (full run) | 1,726 | ~33h | see note | 1,026,000 / $39 | 1,637,000 / $62 | 1,758,000 / $67 |
The Ninh Binh and Lao Cai rows carry ranges because those legs are dominated by seat classes on through-trains rather than a single fixed berth fare; the "see note" cells are covered under Limitations.
How the fares work: the distance taper
The single most useful thing to understand about Vietnam Railways pricing is that it does not scale in a straight line with distance. There is a base component in every ticket plus a per-kilometre rate that tapers as the journey lengthens, so short legs are expensive per kilometre and the long haul is a bargain per kilometre.
The numbers make it plain. In soft sleeper, the short Hue to Da Nang hop works out at about 2,573 VND per km. Hanoi to Hue drops to about 1,770 VND per km, Hanoi to Da Nang to about 1,636, and the full Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City run bottoms out near 1,019 VND per km - less than half the short-leg rate. The practical read: if you are riding the train mainly to cover ground cheaply, the value is in the long overnight legs, not the short daytime ones.
That does not mean you should ride the full 33-hour run to save money. It means that when the train and a short flight are close on price for a long leg, the train's per-kilometre economics are working in your favour, whereas on a two-hour hop the train is a comfort-and-scenery choice, not a savings one. If the sleeper fare on a long leg still stings, the overnight coach is the natural comparison - our sleeper-bus operator atlas prices that alternative on the same corridors.
The class ladder, and which rung to pick
Within any single leg the four classes climb a shallow ladder, and the shape of that ladder is consistent across the network. Using the full Hanoi to HCMC run as the clearest example: the soft seat is about 58 percent of the soft sleeper price, the hard sleeper is about 93 percent of it, and the soft sleeper sits at the top. In other words, the expensive step is the jump from a seat to a berth. The second step, from a 6-berth hard sleeper to a 4-berth soft sleeper, is small - roughly 7 percent, about 5 dollars on the full run.
That is why the buying advice is so simple:
- Soft sleeper (4-berth) is the default for anything overnight. Two fewer cabin-mates than the hard sleeper, a door that shuts, and only a few dollars more.
- Hard sleeper (6-berth) makes sense only when the soft sleeper is sold out, since the saving is marginal.
- Soft seat is the right call for daytime legs under about five hours - the Hue to Da Nang run over the Hai Van Pass being the obvious one, where the seat also gives you the window without paying berth money for a two-hour ride.
- Hard seat is a last resort on short, cheap hops, and it is not even offered on the best trains for the long overnight legs.
Methodology
Fares come from Vietnam Railways' own pricing as published by Seat 61, the most reliable English-language record of VNR tariffs, cross-checked against Baolau and 12Go booking data for the short Ninh Binh, Lao Cai and Hue-Da Nang legs. The quoted figures reflect the best trains - SE1, SE2, SE3 and SE4 - which carry the newer air-conditioned carriages; cheaper services (SE5 through SE8, SE21, SE22, and older regional trains) run roughly 5 to 15 percent below them. Durations are the SE1 southbound schedule. Distances are the standard VNR kilometre posts: Hanoi 0, Ninh Binh 115, Hue 688, Da Nang 791, Nha Trang 1,315, Saigon 1,726, with the Lao Cai branch about 296 km. Per-kilometre figures are our own arithmetic on the soft sleeper lower-berth fare divided by leg distance. USD conversions use 1 USD = 26,300 VND, the mid-market rate in July 2026; Vietnam Railways sells only in dong, so the dollar column is indicative and will drift with the exchange rate.
Limitations
Vietnam Railways adjusts fares by season, by train number and periodically across the board, so treat every figure as a close guide rather than a locked quote, and confirm the live price at checkout. Two honest gaps remain in the table. First, hard seat is not sold on the best SE1 to SE4 trains on the long overnight legs; the cheaper SE5, SE7 and older regional services carry it at roughly 15 to 25 percent below soft seat, but VNR does not publish a stable per-leg hard-seat fare on those runs, so those cells read "see note" rather than carry an invented number. Second, the Hanoi to Lao Cai line for Sapa is dominated by 4-berth soft sleepers - VNR's own at about 450,000 VND and private-operator cabins (Chapa Express, Violette, Sapaly) at a 30 to 70 percent premium - so hard sleeper there is limited and not separately priced; the Ninh Binh sleeper figure likewise reflects the through-train soft sleeper rather than a dedicated short-leg berth. For the private-cabin options on the Sapa run see Hanoi to Sapa, and for how train fares sit against buses and flights in a whole trip budget see the Vietnam travel cost index. Fares were gathered in July 2026. Trains are one piece of getting around Vietnam, and they pair naturally with a flight on the leg you would rather not sit through.