RyanAir priority bag size cost vs Wizzair Priority Backpack size cost vs. Easyjet Trolley bag cost!

Which one is cheaper and how much will it cost to bring my large backpack as a carry on!?!?!?!?! Both Ryanair and Wizzair have very similar bag cost and size requirements! I have taken a flight with both a free personal item sized bag and a priority sized bag on both airlines, and sometimes the extra 45L Pacsafe bag can be a bit of an expense! How much? I’ll get into just that soon! I am also going to add Easyjet because it is a similar airline, although in most cases, more expensive!

Insider Tip: In my experience Ryanair tends to be cheaper for both fares and baggage costs… ill explain more in a bit…

First of all, bag sizes, how big are we talking Mr.?!?! A personal item on both airlines is free of charge, or example this is a 20L to 32L backpack or for example a purse or laptop bag (coats can also be carried). Personal item size on Ryanair is 85 linear CM, and on Wizzair its 90cm or something like 40cm x 30 cm x 20cm. What I’ve noticed is that if you go up in linear size, the volume increases exponentially, and ill show you what I mean at the end of the article!

Now for priority bag size, which is the size you need for a train-sized suitcase or in my case my 45L Pacsafe backpack, the limit is this… 55cm x 40cm x 20cm or 115cm total for Ryanair, and for Wizzair its 50cm x 40cm x 23cm or total 113cm so roughly the same. Now to get priority you will need to pay the fare plus in my experience between $15 and $50 extra dollars. Here’s an insider tip, you may be able to get away with NOT paying priority and taking a 45L backpack anyway. I did this once, and another time i was made to pay an additional $50 fee at the gate, almost made it, but i advise you pay up front just to avoid confusion or having to check your backpack in the hold.

Here is an example of fares plus priority on randomly selected routes of both RyanAir, Wizzair and the other airline, Easyjet from their chosen hubs… summertime as of 06/05/2022, within the next 45 days:

Here i looked at some randomly selected routes and chose the cheapest days within the next two months. These are mostly intracontinental European routes between countries, with air miles about equal between the 3 airlines. Easyjet was significantly more expensive than the other two even with my cherry picking the cheapest days. In these cases Wizzair was a bit cheaper than Ryanair but generally Ryanair tends to be cheaper than Wizzair, and also notice that Ryanair was the cheapest on all but 2 of 9 routes selected according to kiwi.com. Also note that Wizzair has hubs in eastern Europe whereas Ryanair focuses more on western Europe with its major hub in Dublin. For the summer of 2022 both airlines seemed to have hiked fares versus the spring time, and for some routes, quite a bit.

Conclusion: Note that the average of adding a full size backpack or trolley bag to all of these fares is $25.07, whereas the base fare is $32.99, that is a 75% increase in the fare. With the supercheap flights that I have personally chosen, the increase in terms of percents is significantly more! Which leads me to consider downsizing from a 45L bag to a 30L bag. We will see in time! ok see you later travelers, thanks for reading!