The lowest cabin bag prices advertised by three of the UK’s biggest budget airlines could either not be found at all, or were extremely rare, according to new Which? research.
checked almost 1,500 cabin bag prices for easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air across eight different routes per airline to popular holiday destinations and spread out between peak and off-peak dates.
While easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air advertise prices as low as £5.99 for carry on luggage (easyJet), Which? found that in the vast majority of cases these prices were not available. In the case of easyJet, Which? challenged the airline to send an example of any flight where you could take a standard cabin bag for £5.99 and they declined to do so.
Despite Which? gathering 520 easyJet cabin bag prices, it was not available once for the cheapest advertised price of £5.99. The cheapest price Which? found was £23.49, and the average £30 – about five times more expensive than the lowest price claimed. It’s also worth noting that cabin bag fees are one way so for most passengers the cost would be doubled when returning home from their trip.
Which? has taken its findings about easyJet to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which has said it is now investigating the consumer champion’s complaint.
When Which? looked at Ryanair flights it only found the lowest advertised price, £12, available twice out of 634 flights – 0.3 per cent of the time.
It was a similar story for Wizz Air’s €10, available just twice on the 338 flights Which? checked – 0.6 per cent of the time.
The average fee for Ryanair was £20.50 and for Wizz Air £28.93. One bright spot was that the consumer champion also did not find the top price for a cabin bag Wizz Air advertises – a scarcely believable €163, each way when Which? checked (Wizz Air have since reduced this to €130).
A cabin bag in addition to a small, free underseat bag is likely to be considered an essential by many passengers, but these extra charges often don’t appear in the headline price, making it difficult to compare the true cost of flying with different airlines – many of which still include a standard cabin bag in the fare. Which? believes that airlines should be upfront about these costs, so that travellers know exactly what they are paying for. The airlines’ failure to provide transparent fees means consumers don’t know what they are paying until they have gone through multiple stages of the booking process. Often, the final price of the bag may end up being more than the original ticket.
Budget airlines’ failure to provide transparent fees has led to pushback in Europe. In November last year, Spain’s Consumer Rights Ministry fined five budget airlines €179 million (£149 million) 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.
Aside from murky cabin bag prices, passengers are also falling victim to fines at the gate. This summer it was revealed that some airline staff were paid a bonus for every oversized bag they catch. Ryanair has recently increased the bonus to €2.50 for charges that can be up to £75 per bag. EasyJet has been more coy but admits that its ground crews also get bonuses.
Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said:
“Our research shows that the tens of millions of passengers who need to take a cabin bag will pay much more than the cheapest price advertised – rather than a few pounds, prices for bags can often be more than the flight itself.
“The tactics used by these airlines deserve to be called out, that’s why we have shared our findings with the regulator.”
