40x30x20 Cabin Bag: One Bag, Free on Four EU Airlines

Ryanair, Wizz Air, Vueling and Transavia all publish exactly 40 × 30 × 20 cm as the free personal-item allowance as of July 2026 — one underseat cabin bag size, four route networks, zero luggage fees. The fine print varies slightly between them: Ryanair publishes no weight limit on its free bag, Vueling measures its 40 × 30 × 20 including handles and outer pockets, and Transavia caps its free bag at 10 kg.

easyJet is the roomy outlier: its free cabin bag is 45 × 36 × 20 cm including handles and wheels, up to 15 kg, so a 40x30x20 bag fits with five to six centimetres to spare on two sides. And the 40 × 30 × 20 club is actually bigger than four — TUI fly and Volotea publish the same free size; you'll find both in the live table above, each row linking to the carrier's own baggage page.

One caveat worth its own sentence: these allowances are enforced, sizer and all — so "roughly cabin sized" is a gamble. A bag built to the exact published size isn't.

A 40x30x20 bag holds about 24 litres — 40 × 30 × 20 cm works out to exactly 24,000 cubic centimetres, and a well-designed bag keeps most of that as usable space. That's generous-daypack territory, and the two hardshell halves of the Ryanwear Compression Backpack keep the shape boxy, so you actually get to use the corners. A floppy 24-litre sack packs like 20; a rigid one packs like 24.

In inches, 40 × 30 × 20 cm is 15.7 × 11.8 × 7.9 in. US travelers: that sits comfortably inside the common 18 × 14 × 8 in personal-item standard used by carriers like Frontier and Allegiant, so the same bag that rides free under a Ryanair seat rides free as a personal item across the Atlantic too. One bag, two continents, no fee column in the budget.

The honest caveat: 24 litres is what the bag holds at 40 × 30 × 20. What matters is how much you get into those litres — which is where compression pays rent. Loosely folded clothes are mostly trapped air; pressed flat between two rigid shells, the same 24 litres carries noticeably more fabric. That's the difference between a weekend bag and a week bag.

With compression, a 40x30x20 bag takes roughly a week of mix-and-match clothing — plus a 14–15″ laptop in its padded sleeve. Without compression, the honest answer drops to a long weekend: loosely folded clothes are mostly air, and 24 litres of air fills up fast.

The Ryanwear method is deliberately un-clever: lay clothes flat in the base, keep stacking well past the hardshell rim (the fabric collar is built extra-tall on purpose), cinch the drawstrings, close the lid and press — hand pressure or full bodyweight, the metal buckles and straps are sewn to take it. The pile you'd swear was too big flattens into the shell, and because everything went in flat, it comes out almost wrinkle-free. Every step is photographed in the product section further down this page.

The quick-access box on the back keeps the airport survival kit out of the crush: the liquids bag for security, passport, powerbank, headphones. Nothing you need in a hurry is buried under a week of clothes — which, on a 6 a.m. budget flight, is worth as much as the litres.

Yes. The European Parliament approved a guaranteed free 40 × 30 × 15 cm personal item on 7 July 2026 — and if the rule is finally adopted, it's expected to apply from 2027. That size would be an EU-wide legal floor, not a new ceiling: airlines remain free to allow more, and Ryanair, Wizz Air, Vueling and Transavia already allow more today, at 40 × 30 × 20.

In other words, the coming EU rule guarantees slightly less than these four carriers already give away. A 40x30x20 bag exceeds the proposed guaranteed size by five centimetres of depth, and that extra depth exists because the carriers themselves publish it as their free allowance — which is precisely the number this backpack is built to and holds.

What to watch: the rule is approved by Parliament but not yet finally adopted, so treat 2027 as expected rather than promised. The practical takeaway doesn't change either way. As of July 2026 the free size on all four airlines is 40 × 30 × 20, that's the number printed on their sizers, and it's the number this bag compresses down to — and stays at, thanks to the hardshell.