Flights, railways, hotels

Review by eFreeware

Tutu.ru's app comes from OOO NTT and is the mobile side of a travel service with a partner network that reaches across the globe. It sits in the Travel & Local category and has been on Google Play since November 2017, with more than 10 million installs and a 4.7 average from over 437,000 ratings.

The reason to consider it is straightforward: it gathers flights, rail and bus timetables into one app and lets you buy railway and bus tickets without leaving it. For anyone organizing a trip that mixes transport types, or simply comparing a train against a budget flight, that combination is the main draw.

Built for travelers piecing together Russian journeys

The app is aimed at people whose travel plans run through Russia. The developer mentions support for journeys during the World Football Cup and ticket sales to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Saransk, Volgograd, Kazan, Sochi, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Rostov-na-Donu, which suggests city-to-city planning is the core use case rather than a side feature.

That makes it a reasonable fit for residents booking regular rail trips, for visitors assembling an itinerary across several Russian cities, and for anyone who wants to check a bus schedule and then buy the ticket in the same place. If your travel rarely touches Russia, the value is thinner, since the service is presented around that market even though the network extends further.

I would expect it to work best for someone comfortable planning ahead and comparing options, rather than a traveler who wants a single fixed itinerary handed over. The app gives you the timetables and the purchasing step; the decisions stay with you.

Flights, rail and bus in one timetable

The core of the app is search across three transport types: air travel, railway stations and bus stations. Having the timetables side by side matters when a route could be covered by a train or a plane, or when a bus fills the last leg that rail does not reach.

Behind the search sits a comparison layer. The developer says the service compares more than 2,287 partners, naming Aeroflot, RZD, S7 and Pobeda among them, in order to surface the best ticket. That partner list is the part I find most interesting, because it is what turns a timetable viewer into something that can actually price a journey.

The practical effect is that you search once and see options drawn from many carriers instead of checking each one yourself. Whether the cheapest result is genuinely the cheapest is the sort of promise every comparison service makes, and the developer's claim here is worth treating as marketing rather than a guarantee.

Buying tickets and sharing them

Railway and bus tickets can be bought inside the app, which is the feature that separates it from a pure schedule reference. Flights appear in the search and comparison side of the app, while the purchase step is for rail and bus.

You can now share a flight from its details screen. Tapping it copies a link to the ticket that you can send to someone else, which is a small but useful addition for group trips where one person handles the booking and others need the details.

The same update brought a dark theme, switched on from the app settings. Neither change alters what the app does, but both make it easier to live with: one for coordinating with fellow travelers, the other for reading schedules in low light.

What it costs

The app is free to download, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases. The cost picture is an unusually clean one for a travel app.

Ticket prices themselves are set by the carriers whose inventory the service compares. There is no subscription or paid tier sitting on top of the booking process.

How it compares with other ways to book

Against a dedicated rail operator's own app, the advantage here is breadth. A single carrier's app sells that carrier's seats; this one pulls in flights, rail and bus together and compares across a large partner network, which is more useful when the cheapest or most convenient option is not the one you would have guessed.

Against a general flight search service, the difference runs the other way. Those tend to be built around air travel, while this app treats railway and bus timetables as first-class citizens and lets you complete a rail or bus purchase in the same place.

A traditional travel agency is the other alternative, and it offers human help in exchange for less control over the comparison. The app keeps the choice with you, which suits travelers who would rather see the options themselves than have a shortlist prepared for them.

A capable companion for Russian travel

I would point this app at travelers whose plans involve Russia and who want flights, rail and bus options in a single search, with the ability to buy rail and bus tickets on the spot. The free price, the absence of ads and the lack of in-app purchases make it easy to try alongside whatever you already use.

The 4.7 average from a large body of ratings suggests the app has settled into a form its users accept, and the recent additions of ticket sharing and a dark theme show it is still being worked on. If your journeys rarely touch the routes and cities the service is built around, its strengths will not do much for you.

For everyone else, it is a sensible first stop when a trip spans more than one mode of transport. Search, compare, buy the rail or bus leg, and share the details with whoever is traveling with you.

What's new in version 3.155.2

Two pieces of good news. Planning trips with your loved ones just got easier. A 'Share' button has touched down on the flight details screen — tap it to copy and send a link to your ticket. And dark theme has finally stepped out of the shadows — turn it on in the app settings.