How to decide if priority boarding is worth paying for

Start by naming what is being sold, because the name on the button is misleading on both airlines.

Ryanair's product is called Priority and 2 Cabin Bags, and the second cabin bag is the point. It carries the 10 kg overhead trolley of 55 x 40 x 20 cm, which cannot be bought in any other way at any price. Wizz Air does the same thing under the name WIZZ Priority, which bundles the 55 x 40 x 23 cm trolley at 10 kg with priority boarding and a priority check-in desk.

So on both airlines the trolley is rationed behind a boarding product. That is a commercial choice rather than an operational one, and it means the decision in front of you is about luggage.

If you would not pay for the bag, you are being asked to pay for the order in which you walk onto an aircraft where your seat is already assigned.

Both airlines publish a band, not a price, and both charge per passenger, per one-way flight.

Ryanair's Priority and 2 Cabin Bags runs €12.49 to €36 bought inside the booking, and €19.99 to €45.50 added afterwards. Wizz Air's WIZZ Priority runs €10 to €60 bought online or through its call centre, and €65 to €75 bought at the airport.

Double every one of those for a return. Two people going to Rome for a weekend, each with a trolley, are buying four separate priority purchases.

At the middle of those bands that is comfortably more than many of the fares on this site, which is why a cheap fare with two trolleys on it is no longer a cheap fare. Settle the bag question before you decide whether a deal is one.

Wizz Air's own fee data shows a lower floor than its consumer page. Neither is what most people pay.

Treat the bottom of those bands as advertising rather than a planning number, because someone measured it.

Which? sampled more than 1,500 real cabin bag prices across eight busy routes on four dates spanning peak and off-peak travel. Ryanair's advertised floor was available in 2 of 634 flights. Wizz Air's was available in 2 of 338. On a third airline in the same study the advertised price never appeared at all, and the regulator banned the claim.

Both airlines say openly that the price moves. Ryanair repeats on every baggage row that the fee depends on the route and travel dates. Wizz Air prices by season, with peak windows over Easter, from mid June to the end of September, and across Christmas.

So budget the middle of the band when you are comparing two fares. If priority decides the choice, open both booking flows and read two real prices.

On Ryanair there is a cheaper answer to the same problem often enough to be worth a minute.

Priority and 2 Cabin Bags runs €12.49 to €36 at booking. A 10 kg check-in bag runs €10.49 to €44.99 for the same 55 x 40 x 20 cm case. The bands overlap, so on any given flight either can be the cheaper purchase.

They buy different days. The trolley stays with you and needs no desk, but it has to pass the gate sizer, which is where the expensive mistakes happen. The hold bag has no sizer risk at all, but you must arrive early enough to drop it before security and wait for it at the other end.

On Wizz Air the trolley starts lower, €10 against €15 for the 10 kg hold bag, but those bands overlap too, from €15 up to €60. Check both prices on your dates rather than assuming either one wins.

Three limits, all published by the airlines themselves, and each one is a common misreading.

Wizz Air states plainly that WIZZ Priority gives no priority at security control. Security Fast Track is a separate paid product. If the queue you are worried about is the security queue, this is the wrong purchase.

Wizz Air's conditions of carriage also let it carry even a fully compliant trolley in the hold for operational or safety reasons. Priority guarantees that you may bring the bag, not that it travels beside you.

And on both airlines the purchase is non-refundable. Wizz Air's is refundable only by cancelling the whole booking, which carries its own fee. Ryanair states that a cabin or check-in bag cannot be removed from a booking or refunded once bought.

So this is a decision you make once, for a benefit that is narrower than the name suggests.

Wizz Air sells a bundle that is priority plus a seat, and it is the one that matches a cabin-only trip.

SMART carries the free under-seat bag, the 55 x 40 x 23 cm trolley, priority boarding, priority check-in and seat selection, with no hold bag. At Wizz Air's published floor prices its components come to about €14 per one-way flight, being WIZZ Priority at €10 and a seat at €4.

So the test is simple. If the booking flow shows a SMART uplift of less than about €14 a leg over Basic, take SMART. Above it, buy Priority on its own and take whatever seat you are given.

Do not solve this with WIZZ Go. Go carries a 20 kg hold bag and a seat, and includes neither the trolley nor Priority, so a cabin-only traveller who buys it pays for a suitcase they will not check and still boards with the under-seat bag.

Priority and 2 Cabin Bags is capped per flight, and Ryanair publishes a help article for people who find it gone.

Its own advice in that situation is to buy a 10 kg check-in bag instead. That is a workable fallback and a different trip: the bag has to be dropped at the desk before security, so a passenger who planned to walk straight through now needs to arrive earlier.

This turns a price question into a sequencing one. If you know you want the trolley, buy it in the first booking rather than the week before, because waiting risks both the higher post-booking band of €19.99 to €45.50 and the product not being on sale at all.

It also means a fare that only works with a trolley is not fully priced until you have checked that priority is still available on that flight. Check it in the same session, before you commit to the date.

Match the purchase to the nights, and most of the arithmetic answers itself.

Two nights fits the free under-seat bag on either airline, and on Wizz Air that bag holds 10 kg. For a weekend in Rome or Milan you should be buying nothing at all, which is the only zero-cost outcome available.

Three to five nights is where the trolley earns its price, especially in winter when the clothes are bulkier than they are heavy. This is the case priority was designed for.

Beyond five nights, or any trip with different weather at each end, the hold bag usually wins. It is often similar money on Ryanair, it removes the sizer from the day entirely, and you stop rationing toiletries.

For two people travelling together at that length, one shared hold bag frequently beats two priority purchases. Ryanair lets passengers on the same booking split their combined checked weight as they like, up to 32 kg a bag.

The downside is asymmetric, which is the real argument for deciding rather than chancing it.

Arrive at a Ryanair gate with a cabin bag that will not fit the sizer and it costs €70 to €75 to put it in the hold. On Wizz Air it is €55 to €65, and its conditions of carriage let the airline hold-load the bag anyway, so you pay and lose it for the flight.

Either figure is roughly twice what priority would have cost at booking, and more than many fares on this site.

This is not a rare event. A consumer study across several European low-cost carriers found that about a third of all baggage charges were levied at check-in or the boarding gate, averaging around €45, and that 38 per cent of surveyed passengers had a compliant bag forced into the hold.

Decide at the booking screen. It is the only place where the number is small.