Railway Quota Insight docs

How to look up a train, how to read what you are shown, and where the numbers come from.

Getting started

Open Railway Quota Insight. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

1. Search by train number (for example 12301) or by name.
2. On the train page you will see the full route, and — where data has been collected — the quota structure along it.
3. Click any station to see how it behaves as a boarding point across trains.

Search results mark which trains actually have availability data. Most do not yet; the route is still viewable for all of them.

Reading the labels

Four labels appear throughout, and the difference between them matters more than any individual number.

• OBSERVED — what the Indian Railways enquiry returned, recorded exactly as given. Facts.
• INFERRED — a conclusion this system reached by comparing observations across boarding points. Likely, not certain.
• ESTIMATED — a number derived from observations, always a lower bound. "At least 24 berths" means 24 were once seen free, not that the quota is 24.
• PRESUMED — a station assumed to share a pool because it sits between two stations that do, but never actually checked.

Booking status vs current status

The enquiry reports each date as two values separated by a slash, and both are shown.

• At booking — what a ticket bought at that moment would have received.
• Currently — where the earliest existing booking stands now.

GNWL74/WL23 means a new booking joins at wait-list 74, while the earliest existing booking has already cleared to 23. The gap between the two shows how fast that date is moving, which is often more useful than either number alone.

Confidence scores

Every inferred quota group carries a score from six weighted factors: how many observations back it, across how many journey dates and collection days, how consistent the wait-list evidence was, whether more than one station corroborates the group, and whether the capacity figure recurred.

• HIGH (85+) — well supported across multiple stations and dates.
• MEDIUM (65–84) — reasonable, worth reading.
• LOW (40–64) — a working hypothesis, not a finding.
• VERY LOW (under 40) — barely evidenced.

A group resting on a single observed boarding point is capped in the LOW band no matter how much data backs that one station, because the extent of the pool has not been tested against a neighbour.

JSON API

Every page is backed by a public endpoint. No key, no sign-up, no rate-limit beyond ordinary courtesy.

GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/coverage
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/trains/{train_no}
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/trains/{train_no}/route
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/trains/{train_no}/classes
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/trains/{train_no}/quota-map
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/trains/{train_no}/availability-history
GET /ir-reservation-quota/api/stations/{station_code}/quota-behaviour

Every response carries a provenance field and the same disclaimer shown on the site. Start with /api/coverage to see how much data actually exists before building against it.

Where the data comes from

Availability is collected from the same public passenger enquiry any traveller can use, one query at a time, with a person answering the site's verification question on every single request. Nothing automates that step. The pace is roughly one operator session a day, which is why coverage grows slowly.

Grouping works because passengers within one quota pool draw on the same seats: their availability moves together and their wait-list carries the same prefix. Walking a route and finding where that prefix changes locates the pool boundaries.

FAQ

Why does my train have no data?

Because it has not been collected yet. There are over 10,000 trains and each enquiry needs a human-answered verification, so coverage is thin by nature.

Can I book or check PNR status here?

No. This is informational only. Use Indian Railways or IRCTC for anything transactional.

Is the estimated allocation the real quota size?

No — it is a floor. It is the most berths ever seen free at once, so a quota that was never observed empty will be understated.

Is this official?

No. Ornova Labs is an independent software studio and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Indian Railways, IRCTC or CRIS.

Known limitations

• Coverage is thin and grows slowly.
• Quota allocations change with timetable revisions and seasonal demand; an observation is true of the moment it was taken.
• A station showing free seats gives no signal about which pool it draws on, so such stations are left ungrouped rather than guessed.
• Estimates understate by design.

Open Railway Quota Insight ↗ Product overview