easyJet Cabin Bag Size 2026: Free 45x36x20 Bag & Fees

Every easyJet fare in 2026 — including the cheapest Standard ticket — comes with one free small cabin bag of 45 × 36 × 20 cm (17.7 × 14.2 × 7.9 in), measured including handles and wheels. It can weigh up to 15 kg, must fit under the seat in front of you, and the only fitness test is that you can lift it yourself. Verified against easyJet's official cabin-bags page, July 2026.

Everything larger is a paid decision. The large cabin bag — 56 × 45 × 25 cm, up to 15 kg, overhead locker — starts at ~£5.99 online and cannot be bought at the airport. Turn up with it unbooked and the gate charges ~£48 per bag while your luggage rides in the hold.

This page is our canonical easyJet hub: the exact dimensions, the fee mathematics, the enforcement stories and a dated change log at the bottom. When a rule moves, it moves here first.

easyJet's free under-seat allowance is the largest of Europe's big three low-cost airlines: 45 × 36 × 20 cm, against the 40 × 30 × 20 cm that Ryanair and Wizz Air allow. And when the A4E airlines agreed a common 40 × 30 × 15 cm minimum in July 2025, easyJet publicly confirmed it would keep its bigger box — a rare case of a budget airline declining to shrink something.

The weight allowance is equally cheerful: up to 15 kg, which happens to be exactly the weight of the smallest hold bag easyJet sells from ~£6.99. Densest packers fly free.

One rule deserves respect: it's strictly one item. A handbag or laptop bag is not a separate allowance and must travel inside the one bag. The only published exception is for adults flying with a lap infant, who get one additional free baby-changing bag at the same 45 × 36 × 20 cm.

The large cabin bag (56 × 45 × 25 cm, up to 15 kg, overhead locker) is a per-flight add-on from ~£5.99 (~€6.99), rising to roughly £30–35 on popular summer routes — pricing is dynamic, which is why every figure here wears a tilde. It bundles Speedy Boarding, sells from a limited quota per flight, and is pre-book only: easyJet will not sell you the allowance at the airport at any price.

It also comes included with Up Front and Extra Legroom seats, FLEXI fares, and easyJet Plus membership (£249/€289 a year), which additionally sends your large bag to the hold free of charge if the lockers fill up.

Hold bags run from ~£6.99 online for 15 kg; a 23 kg bag is roughly £9.49–£50 online depending on route and date, about £50 at the airport, with excess weight at £12 per kg and a hard cap of 32 kg per bag. Verified July 2026.

Not in easyJet's case — and the story is better than the law. In early 2026, easyJet's CEO called the EU plan to guarantee free hand luggage a "lunatic idea". On 7 July 2026 the European Parliament adopted it anyway, 646 votes to 12, and the Council gave final clearance on 13 July.

The adopted text guarantees every passenger one free personal item of at least 40 × 30 × 15 cm, expected to apply from 2027 — it is not in force yet. It does not make the big overhead bag free: airlines may keep charging for that through opt-out pricing, so easyJet's large-cabin-bag fee survives intact.

And easyJet's free 45 × 36 × 20 cm bag already beats the new floor on every axis. The lunatics won, and at easyJet precisely nothing changed. If the details move, the change log below gains a dated line the week it happens.

Strict, with a paper trail. A leaked November 2023 email — reported in mid-2025, scheme confirmed still running — shows gate agents at seven UK and Channel Islands airports, including Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow and Jersey, are paid £1.20 per confiscated bag (£1 after tax) under a programme named, with a straight face, the "easyJet gate bag revenue incentive". Your bag is somebody's employee-of-the-month metric.

Sizer frames stand at bag drop and at the gates, enforcement has visibly tightened since 2024 — especially on busy UK summer routes — and a December 2025 Luton boarding dispute that began at the sizer later went viral even though the bag reportedly fit.

None of that is a variable you control. The bag is. One that genuinely measures inside the published 45 × 36 × 20 cm sails through every sizer regardless of who is on shift, bonus scheme or not — arithmetic doesn't tip anyone.

The gate fee is ~£48 per bag (reported around €57–70 on euro-denominated routes), charged on the spot while your bag is sent to the hold. And because the large-bag add-on is pre-book only, there is no way to pay the ~£5.99 online price once you are standing at the airport — the £48 is unavoidable once flagged. That's roughly an 8× surcharge for optimism.

The people it mostly catches aren't chancers; they're travellers packing to a memory. Until 10 February 2021, easyJet's free allowance was a 56 × 45 × 25 cm overhead trolley, and countless guides older than that date still circulate the old size. Every one of them is a £48 mistake waiting at a gate.

The fix costs nothing: check the date on whatever guide you read, and measure your bag packed against 45 × 36 × 20 cm at home — hallway verdicts are free, gate verdicts are not.

Wheels and handles: yes, explicitly. easyJet's published limit is measured including any handles and wheels, so the flattering "internal dimensions" on a trolley's label are not the number the sizer sees.

Slouch, briefly, also counted. In April 2026 at Gatwick, easyJet trialled lowering a box over bags instead of dropping them into a frame — and passengers reported compliant-but-not-full soft bags failing because they didn't hold their shape. The only baggage check in aviation history where packing too little was the crime. easyJet confirmed the trial ended with no plans to roll it out, but the lesson stands: fabric is negotiable in both directions.

A structured bag is immune to the whole category. Rigid shells have no bulge to measure and no slouch to collapse, so the packed shape, the half-empty shape and the published shape are the same shape — which is the entire design brief of our compression backpack.

Every easyJet figure on this site resolves to a dated line below — each change written up once, in one place, so a rule quoted anywhere else here carries a receipt.

10 February 2021 — easyJet cut the free allowance from a 56 × 45 × 25 cm overhead trolley to the 45 × 36 × 20 cm under-seat bag; outdated guides quoting the old size remain the biggest single source of £48 surprises. 2024–2025 — gate-sizer enforcement visibly tightened, especially on busy UK summer routes. Mid-2025 — the £1.20-per-bag gate incentive scheme was exposed and confirmed still operating. July 2025 — easyJet confirmed it keeps 45 × 36 × 20 cm and 15 kg rather than shrinking to the A4E 40 × 30 × 15 cm minimum.

April 2026 — the Gatwick box-over-bag sizing trial was scrapped without rollout. 7–13 July 2026 — the EU air-passenger-rights reform was adopted (646 votes to 12; expected to apply from 2027). July 2026 — every figure on this page re-verified against easyJet's official cabin-bags page.