TrainKothai - BD Train Tracker

Review by eFreeware

Checking where a train actually is in Bangladesh has traditionally meant sending an SMS and paying for the reply, roughly 5 TK each time. There is no official app or website from the railway that shows a train's current position, so passengers, families waiting at stations and anyone planning a pickup have had little to go on beyond a timetable that rarely survives contact with reality.

TrainKothai, from the developer FoodOS, is an attempt to fill that gap. It is a free crowdsourced tracker that shows live train locations, delays and current speed, and it is published for Android under the Travel & Local category. The name is a play on kothai, the Bengali word for where, which tells you most of what the app is trying to answer.

Who will get the most from it

The obvious audience is anyone traveling on the Bangladesh railway network who wants to know whether their train is running late before committing to a platform. If you are meeting someone off a long-distance service, the delay figure matters just as much, because it decides when you actually need to leave the house.

It also suits people who make the same journey regularly and have grown tired of paying per message for a location update. The app is free, needs no sign-up and includes route search alongside the tracking, so the practical loop of checking a train and confirming where it stops happens in one place.

Because the location data depends on other passengers, the app works best for the busy intercity routes where plenty of people are traveling with a phone in hand. On those services there are more contributors to draw from, and the picture is likely to be fresher.

How the live tracking actually works

TrainKothai does not track trains with its own hardware. It is powered by passengers helping each other: on the tracking page there is an option labeled I'm on the train, and when someone aboard turns it on, their position is used to place that service on the map for everyone else. The developer says the system checks the location to confirm the person really is on that particular train before the data is accepted, and that it is only used to pinpoint the train.

What you get out of that is a live location, a delay reading and the train's current speed. Those three figures answer the questions most people actually have: where is it now, how late is it, and is it moving at a reasonable pace or crawling toward the next station.

The approach has an obvious trade-off. Accuracy depends on someone on board choosing to share, so the developer notes that live GPS positions may not always be available and are not guaranteed to be exact. Treat the map as a good indication rather than an instrument reading, and it will serve you well.

Coverage across the network

Coverage is broad rather than selective. The developer says nearly all trains running in the country are included, and that at peak times more than 50 services are tracked live at once. The named list covers the intercity workhorses most travelers will recognize, including Chattala, Drutojan, Ekota, Kurigram, Paharika, Chilahati, Chitra and Panchagarh Express.

It continues through Mohanagar, Upakul, Lalmoni, Parabat, Silk City, Kalni, Jayentika, Rupsha, Nilsagar, Simanta, Bijoy and Rangpur Express, with the paired numbers each service runs under. If a train is genuinely missing, the developer invites users to report it and says it will be added.

Route search sits alongside the tracking, which is useful when you are working out which service covers a particular stretch of line rather than following one train you already know. Schedule and route information comes from data published by Bangladesh Railway.

Independence and where the numbers come from

TrainKothai is an independent, community-run project with no ties to Bangladesh Railway or any government body. That distinction matters when you are deciding how much weight to put on a delay figure, since the app is not an official channel and does not speak for the railway.

The split is worth keeping in mind: timetable and route details are drawn from published railway data, while the live position comes from passengers. One is a reference, the other is a moving estimate. For anything official, the railway's own booking site remains the place to go.

What it costs and what you pay with

The app is free to download and use, with no in-app purchases. The developer is explicit that there is no sign-up and no charge for tracking a train, checking delays or searching routes, which is the central pitch against paying per SMS.

The trade is advertising: the app contains ads. For a free service built on volunteer contributions, ads are a familiar way of keeping the lights on.

How it compares with the alternatives

The realistic comparison is not another app, because the developer's point is that no official app or website exists for this job. The practical alternative is the SMS query, which costs around 5 TK per message and gives you a single snapshot rather than a view that updates as the train moves.

The other alternative is simply asking around, relying on station announcements or phoning someone who is traveling. That costs nothing but depends on someone picking up and knowing the answer. A crowdsourced map is a different bet: it works when enough passengers are sharing, and it gives you location, delay and speed together.

A general maps app can show you where a station is, but not where a named express currently sits on the line. That specific question is what this app is built around, and it is why the crowdsourcing model, for all its gaps, is a reasonable fit for the problem.

A free answer to a daily question

TrainKothai has over 50,000 installs and a 4.6 average from 3,220 ratings, which suggests the crowdsourced approach is finding an audience. It launched in May 2026 and was last updated in October 2026, so it is a young app that is still being worked on.

I would point it at regular rail travelers in Bangladesh, people meeting arrivals, and anyone who has had enough of paying per SMS for a location. The app is free, covers nearly every train in the country and answers the three questions that matter most: where, how late and how fast.

Go in understanding the model. The live position depends on a passenger on that train switching on sharing, and the developer is upfront that it may not always be available or perfectly accurate. As a free, no-sign-up companion to a journey, that is a fair trade, and for the price of a few SMS queries a month it is an easy one to make.

What's new in version 1.3.4

Ads bug fixed