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The hidden cost of flying - budget airlines' bag prices exposed
We can’t find any flights where taking a cabin bag is remotely as cheap as the lowest price claimed
We checked the price of taking a cabin bag on more than 1,500 easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air flights and found the lowest advertised price was almost never available.
While Ryanair advertises cabin bags from £12 we only found bags at that price twice in the over 600 flights we checked.
EasyJet was even worse. We were not able to find its advertised £5.99 cabin bag fee once in the more than 500 flights we checked.
Wizz Air was the most confusing. The price listed on its website was from €0-€60 to take a standard cabin bag onboard. We obviously found no flights where you can add a bag for free. When we queried this with Wizz Air it told us that the €0 price was a technical error and it should in fact be €10-€60. We didn't find any bags for €10 either. The cheapest price we found was €15 - and that was only twice out of 338 prices checked..
The cheapest bag on easyJet was £23.49, and the average £30 – about five times more expensive than the lowest price claimed. The average fee for Ryanair was £20.50 and for Wizz Air £28.93.
These were flights spread out between peak and off-peak dates to popular holiday destinations.
Are airline luggage prices transparent?
Ryanair was indignant when presented with our results. It said: ‘Ryanair operates over 100,000 flights each month so your “survey” of just 600 flights is statistically too small to be representative or accurate.’ Wizz Air said that our figures were ‘potentially misleading’. However, it later admitted that the figure of €0 for a cabin bag was an error. It said the actual figure is ‘typically’ €10-60’.EasyJet said bag options and pricing were 'well understood by our customers’
All three of the airlines said that their pricing is ‘transparent’ – but we disagree.
Even after collecting almost 1,500 cabin bag prices, we’re still not able to say how much you’ll pay to take a cabin bag on holiday. We’d guess it’s likely to be more like £30 with easyJet – not £5.99 – but only it can confirm whether that’s right. We challenged it to send us a link to a flight – any flight – where it costs less than a tenner, but it declined. It just said that more than half the bags were available for £26 or less. We have reported it to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) and it’s told us that it’s investigating.
What’s the real price of a flight?
When we looked in 2024 we found that taking cabin bags quadrupled the cost of some lowcost flights. If you wanted to check luggage into the hold it would cost even more.
The fact that some airlines (such as Jet2 and BA) include two cabin bags in the headline price means that they can appear more expensive in comparison with easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz. The confusing pricing makes it difficult for travellers to compare different airlines.
European action against luggage fees
We think that the airlines are shooting themselves in the foot with their failure to provide transparent fees. The Europeans are increasingly refusing to put up with their nonsense. In November last year, Spain’s Consumer Rights Ministry fined five budget airlines €179m (£149m) for what it called ‘abusive practices’ around luggage.
In June 2025, the European Parliament’s transport committee voted that travellers should be allowed to take a standard cabin bag, of a minimum size on all airlines, for free. If ratified, the law would affect flights to or from the EU. The airlines’ successful business model could end up being outlawed, in part at least, because of their own murky pricing.
It would be easier to accept separate fees for luggage if each airline had a single price for cabin bags and stuck to it. These prices could then be shown by comparison sites as well as on the airlines’ own websites. But by making their pricing so elusive and confusing – and charging up to €163 for a cabin bag – airlines are making many of us utterly fed up.
Passengers shouldn’t need a calculator and a spreadsheet to work out the total cost of flights.
