How to read cabin bag rules before you book

The free under-seat bag is the only zero-cost outcome, so price the trip against it first. Ryanair and Wizz Air both carry a 40 x 30 x 20 cm bag free on every fare, including the cheapest one on sale. Wizz caps it at 10 kg. Ryanair publishes no weight limit for it and does not weigh it, so the sizer frame at the gate is the whole test.

The network carriers are tighter on paper and looser in practice. Lufthansa allows 40 x 30 x 15 cm under the seat, but it also includes an 8 kg cabin trolley on every fare from Economy Light upward, so the small bag is a second piece rather than your only one. Bulgaria Air gives you a 10 kg cabin bag on every Economy fare and caps the cabin total at 12 kg.

Two things follow. If the trip fits the free bag, nothing on this page costs you anything. If it does not fit, you now know the exact gap you are paying to close.

Airlines sell three different objects and give them overlapping names, which is why the phrase cabin bag on its own tells you nothing.

The first is the small bag that fits under the seat in front. Ryanair calls it a small personal bag. Wizz Air calls it the carry-on bag. Lufthansa calls it a personal item.

The second is the trolley that goes in the overhead locker. Ryanair's is 55 x 40 x 20 cm at 10 kg. Wizz Air's is 55 x 40 x 23 cm at 10 kg. Bulgaria Air, Lufthansa and most network carriers use the same 55 x 40 x 23 cm shape, though Lufthansa caps it at 8 kg rather than 10 kg.

The third is the hold bag, which you drop at a desk before security and do not see again until the carousel.

When a fare page says hand luggage included, work out which of the three it means before you read anything else on the page.

This is the split that separates a low-cost fare from a network fare, and it is worth more than any single fee.

On Ryanair the 10 kg trolley cannot be bought on its own at all. It exists only inside Priority and 2 Cabin Bags, which also gives you priority boarding, and that product is capped per flight and sells out. On Wizz Air the same thing happens under a different name: the 55 x 40 x 23 cm trolley is sold only inside WIZZ Priority, which bundles the bag with priority boarding and a priority check-in desk.

On Bulgaria Air and Lufthansa the trolley is simply part of the fare. Bulgaria Air includes it on every Economy fare, Economy Light included. Lufthansa includes it from Economy Light upward, with one exception worth knowing: its deepest-discount Economy Basic fare, sold on a subset of routes, drops the trolley and leaves you the personal item alone.

So on a low-cost fare the trolley is a purchase decision. On a network fare it usually is not.

Fare names are marketing, and several of them point the wrong way.

Lufthansa's Economy Light includes the cabin trolley and zero checked baggage, on short-haul and long-haul routes alike. That trips people up, because a long-haul economy ticket normally carries a 23 kg bag and the fare name overrides the flight length.

Bulgaria Air's Economy Light is a genuine no-bag fare: no checked allowance at all, and the date cannot be changed afterwards.

The pattern holds across the network carriers. The cheapest Economy fare excludes the hold bag, the middle fare includes one, and the flexible fare includes the same one bag with looser change terms. You are paying the top fare for flexibility, not for luggage.

Read the fare conditions table rather than the fare name. Bulgaria Air publishes its fare families in full in English on its own site, which is faster to check than any comparison page.

Multiply before you compare. Every Ryanair and Wizz Air baggage fee is charged per passenger, per one-way flight, per bag. That is not an inference. Ryanair labels its 20 kg row as a charge per item per flight, the Bulgarian version of the same table marks each bag row the same way, and Wizz Air's own fee data records the charging method on every checked tier.

The network carriers work the same way. SWISS states that its baggage fee is charged for each leg, and Bulgaria Air's published table is priced one-way.

So a fee that reads as €25 in an airline's table is €50 for one person on a return, and €200 for a family of four. On the fares this site publishes, that is frequently more than the flights.

This single step changes more decisions than any other on this page. It is also the step a fare comparison site never does for you, because it quotes the seat and stops.

Both low-cost airlines publish a band rather than a price, and the bottom of that band is close to fiction. Which? sampled more than 1,500 real cabin bag prices across eight busy routes on four dates covering 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.

Both airlines say openly that the number moves. Ryanair repeats on every baggage row that the fee varies by the route and travel dates you pick. Wizz Air publishes separate low-season and high-season bands, with its 2026 peak windows running over Easter, from mid June to the end of September, and across Christmas.

Budget the middle of the band, not the bottom. If you are comparing two fares and the bag decides it, open both booking flows far enough to see two real bag prices rather than two advertised ones.

Some carriers print the price and some only quote it, and knowing which is which saves a pointless search.

Ryanair publishes a full table of optional fees with two columns, one for the price at the time of booking and one for afterwards. Every figure is there before you start a search.

Wizz Air publishes a fee schedule split by where you buy, online or at the airport, and by season. There is no published tier for adding a bag after booking at all, so the cost of waiting there is drift rather than a fixed surcharge.

Bulgaria Air publishes a fixed table with exact figures, split by prepaid against airport and by domestic against international.

Lufthansa publishes no live table on its own site. The figures we hold come from a Lufthansa Group fee sheet dated November 2023, so treat them as the shape of the price rather than the price, and read the real one in the booking flow.

Measure it packed, with everything in it. Wizz Air's conditions of carriage state that the stated dimensions include side pockets, and allow only 5 cm extra for wheels, so a soft bag that passes empty can fail once it is full. Ryanair's sizer is a rigid frame and the bag is expected to drop in unaided.

There is a stale-size trap in the shops as well. Ryanair enlarged its free bag from the old 40 x 20 x 25 cm shape to 40 x 30 x 20 cm in 2025, about a fifth more volume. A large amount of retail listing copy, and some luggage still on sale, is cut to the old spec.

If you get this wrong you find out at the gate, where Ryanair charges €70 to €75 to put an oversize cabin bag in the hold and Wizz Air charges €55 to €65. Either figure is more than many of the fares on this site.

They do not make the overhead trolley free, and the coverage saying otherwise is describing a position that was dropped.

The revised air passenger rights regulation cleared its final votes in July 2026 and applies roughly a year after publication, so around 2027. Per the European Parliament's own statement it does two things on baggage. It guarantees free carriage of one personal item. And it obliges airlines, agents and search portals to show a fare inclusive of carry-on luggage from the start of booking. It explicitly permits airlines to keep selling cheaper fares to passengers travelling without hand luggage.

Ryanair and Wizz Air already carry a 40 x 30 x 20 cm free item, which is larger than the 40 x 30 x 15 cm industry minimum, so neither has to change anything.

The gain is honest comparison, not a free bag. Budget for the trolley exactly as you do today.