Indian Railways’ new ticket booking system will be 5x faster — here’s what’s changing for IRCTC users

Indian Railways has begun replacing its nearly 40-year-old Passenger Reservation System (PRS) with a next-generation cloud-based platform, developed by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS). The new system is designed to handle dramatically higher booking loads.

The existing PRS can process approximately 32,000 ticket bookings per minute. The upgraded platform is designed to handle over 1.5 lakh (150,000) reservations per minute — nearly five times the current capacity — according to the Ministry of Railways.

Beyond booking speed, the new system will also dramatically improve enquiry handling — from around 4 lakh passenger enquiries per minute currently to over 40 lakh per minute. This covers seat availability, PNR status, waitlist positions, and RAC updates.

Tatkal booking hours generate massive simultaneous traffic spikes that frequently crash the existing system. With the new PRS capable of handling far greater transaction volumes per minute, Indian Railways expects the platform to manage peak-load situations more efficiently.

The transition has already begun. The new IRCTC beta website went live on July 15, 2026. Early data shows Tatkal bookings completed within the first three minutes improved by over 5%, while bookings within five minutes improved by around 3%.

Between June 2025 and June 2026, approximately 65.08 crore reserved tickets were booked through the PRS, of which around 57.90 crore — nearly 89% — were purchased online. This scale makes the backend upgrade a critical national infrastructure project.

Indian Railways will not shut down the old PRS in one step. The new system is being tested in phases under different traffic loads. Only after demonstrating stability at scale will more booking traffic be shifted to the upgraded infrastructure, minimising disruption to a service used around the clock.