How to Confirm No Seat Availability in Any Train on IRCTC

You are booking train tickets online, and after finding suitable list of trains for journey you see that there is no confirmed ticket available. You check another train and again there is no room available. Third time when you see that no confirm seat is available, you start to wonder if there is any train out there (which runs between my stations) in which seat is available.

How to know that there is no train left in which seat is available so that you start trying alternate options to make your journey, rather than wasting time in checking seat availability, in various trains?

The trick we present here is quite simple. You need to do this:

1. Login to your IRCTC account (forgot irctc userid? / forgot irctc password?). Make sure you don't sit idle, otherwise you may get logged out automatically.
2. Start by finding trains by providing source and destination stations.
3. You will see list of trains, click on check fare and availability.
4. Now you might see all trains have waiting list or RAC status but not confirmed availability.
5. Don't be disappointed. Click on "Book Now" even if waiting list is there. (Our purpose here is not to do booking in waiting list but to get satisfied that there is no other train left in which seat is available on that journey date in our class ).
6. After clicking "Book Now", if you see IRCTC showing your other trains in which confirmed empty/vacant seat is available (number of seats if available will be shown in green color), you can conclude that accommodation is still available.
7. In point 6 above you don't see IRCTC displaying any train it is a confirmed indication that now there is no train left out there in which seat is available.

Have a look at example below:

We searched trains between New Delhi and Mumbai. On checking availability we see there is waiting list all the way

But we click of "Book Now", and IRCTC shows us other trains in which seat is available.

Remember, the check above we have made for seat availability status is for a particular class of travel only. You can keep changing travel classes and apply same method as discussed above to get the seat availability status.

If you wish and if you can be little flexible with your travel plan, you can opt for irctc vikalp scheme which will automatically allot you berth (if available) in any train departing from your station in next 72 hrs.