Tick the journeys you plan to take. This adds up the real point-to-point fares and compares them with the pass price, then tells you plainly which one is cheaper, including when the answer is "skip the pass".
Fares are ordinary reserved seats, one way. Tick a box twice for a return trip.
Days spent riding JR lines inside a city (the Yamanote loop in Tokyo, JR around Kyoto). Counted at a conservative ¥800 a day. Metro and private lines are not JR and never count toward the pass.
Nothing ticked yet, so there is nothing to compare.
Prices last checked July 2026. The 7-day ordinary pass rises to ¥53,000 on 1 October 2026.
Get the same calculator on your phone, plus the part a web page cannot do: every leg of every route tagged with what it actually accepts, "Suica OK" or "JR Pass covers this", and an offline phrasebook for when the gate rejects your ticket.
The nationwide Japan Rail Pass went up by about 70% in October 2023. A 7-day ordinary pass costs ¥50,000, and rises to ¥53,000 on 1 October 2026. The classic first-timer trip, Tokyo to Kyoto, a few days around Kansai, then back to fly home, comes to roughly ¥30,000 in point-to-point fares. That trip loses money on the pass, by a wide margin.
The pass wins when you keep moving. Tokyo to Hiroshima and back, Tokyo to Fukuoka, or a route that adds Kanazawa or Nikkō on top of the Golden Route will clear ¥50,000 without much effort. Long single hops are what it is for.
It compares the nationwide pass with ordinary reserved fares on the routes most first-time visitors actually take. It does not price the regional passes, which are often the real winner: the Kansai Wide Area Pass, the JR East passes, the Hokuriku Arch Pass. If your trip stays inside one region, check a regional pass before you rule the whole idea out.
Fares move. These figures were last verified in July 2026 and the pass prices are read live, so this page and the app always show the same numbers.
¥50,000 for 7 days ordinary, ¥80,000 for 14 days and ¥100,000 for 21 days. Green (first class) runs ¥70,000, ¥110,000 and ¥140,000. From 1 October 2026 the 7-day ordinary pass becomes ¥53,000, a rise of about 6%.
Almost never. Tokyo to Kyoto and back is about ¥28,000 in reserved fares, and JR travel inside the two cities adds a few thousand more. You would need to add Hiroshima, Kanazawa or Fukuoka before the 7-day pass breaks even.
No. Tokyo Metro and Toei are separate companies. The pass covers JR lines only, including the Yamanote loop, so an IC card is still what you tap for everything else.
Not without a surcharge that removes most of the saving. Ride Hikari or Sakura instead. On Tokyo to Kyoto that is roughly 17 minutes slower.
They solve different problems. Suica pays for individual rides across almost every operator, the pass buys unlimited JR travel for a fixed window. Most first trips need only the IC card.
Online through an authorised reseller before you fly, or at major JR stations once you arrive. Buy it only if a calculation like this one says it wins for your route, and check the regional passes first.
