Traveling from South Africa Landing Geneva then Villeneuv 3 days, Chamonix 4 days, Briançon 11 days then Paris overnight then Troyes 7 days and back to Paris.
My question is simple - the Eurail Global pass does it work on ALL trains that i will use, even the Metro in Paris??

The answer is no it does not work on local transport like the Metro unless owned by the railway's.

linda - welcome to Fodors! The general consensus here in Fodorville seems to be that Eurail passes are not good value for money in most cases. If you have a good sense of what your itinerary will be, check out on line the fares for point to point transport and see if they amount to less than a pass - often they do not. And as you have already seen, Eural passes do not work on local public transit.

Hi Linda, welcome! You might ask the moderators if they can take that trip report icon off (the little aeroplane before the name of your post). You will get better or more answers if you are tagged correctly.

There are on the interweb out there somewhere estimating tools that will help you estimate what point to point tickets are worth to be able to help you decide whether a Eurail pass is good value for your trip. Also Rome2Rio can be helpful in this.

Lavandula

Welcome to Fodors. We removed the Trip Report flag.

Generally for your sort of trip a Eurail pass is not worth it, especially as France puts a surcharge on holders for many trains.
Have a look at the Man in Seat 61 website, which is full of great information on train travel and tickets.

If you do decide on a Eurail pass then get a single country one for France rather than the more expensive Global pass since you are not travelliing across Europe by train.

I've never seen a case where the Eurail Global pass saved any money, and I've priced quite a few. You would have to travel long distances nearly every day to get your money's worth.

That said, in Paris you can use a Eurail pass on the RER trains, which make numerous stops in the center of the city.
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Thank you everyone

I doubt if you can use a Eurail pass on RER trains in Paris. First, Eurail has arrangements with SNCF, the national French railway. SOme of the RER lines in Paris are not operated by SNCF, but by RATP, the local city transport authority. That would be all of RER A line and RER B line south of Gare du Nord (the one from CDG). I also have read that even on the other RER lines run by SNCF, you can't use it, but I have never bought such a pass and have no personal experience. But I would be doubtful, frankly. But I have never read you can use them on the RER lines run by RATP, not SNCF. That wouldn't really make sense to me as SNCF has nothing to do with them. Besides, using the pass means you bring up your trip on your app (Smartphone) and the ticket inspector is suppose to scan the bar code of the trip. This is impossible for RER travel, you don't have ticket inspectors checking individual tickets. Furthermore, the Eurail pass website specifically says you cannot have the gate scan your pass in France except at TER stations. from their website -- You can also use the barcode on your ticket to open platform gates in some countries. At present, platform gates can be opened with the barcode in France (TER gates only), Italy, and the Netherlands.
So I would say you can't use it on RATP-run RER lines for sure as they aren't the rail company, and I don't know how that would work for the other RER lines, but can't say as they are managed by SNCF.

This is railway pass, it is not for local city transport like metro systems.. Some cities do have trains running through the center of cities run by the national railway, though. Like in Germany, I think you can use it on SBahn trains but not Ubahn (ie, metro).