Carry-On Bags for Women: Which Airline Allowance Each Bag Actually Passes

Airlines do not check with a tape measure. They check with a sizer box at the gate, and a box has three internal dimensions. If your bag goes in at any rotation, it goes in.

Which means the test is simple. Sort both sets of three numbers from smallest to largest, then compare position by position.

Take the Aerolite MiniMAX at 40 × 20 × 25 cm. Sorted, that's 20, 25, 40. Ryanair's free allowance is 40 × 30 × 20 cm, sorted 20, 30, 40. Compare: 20 ≤ 20, 25 ≤ 30, 40 ≤ 40. It fits. Anyone lining the numbers up in the advertised order reads 25 against 20 and concludes the bag fails.

The test cuts the other way just as hard. A bag that is 55.9 cm long fails a 55 cm box no matter how slim the other two dimensions are. Nine millimetres. More on that below, because it catches two of the most expensive bags on this list.

Sources: Ryanair's Bag Policy, easyJet cabin bag rules, Wizz Air cabin baggage, handgepaeck.de on Lufthansa. Verified 2026-07-30.

Two things buying guides almost never mention. First, easyJet is the only airline in that table that puts in writing that handles and wheels count, phrasing it as "including any handles and wheels". The others say nothing on the point, which is not the same as saying they ignore it. Measure over the handles if you have any doubt.

Second, easyJet's free allowance at 45 × 36 × 20 cm is meaningfully more generous than Ryanair's 40 × 30 × 20 cm. There are bags that fly free on easyJet and get charged at a Ryanair gate. The Eastpak further down is exactly that case.

If you fly Lufthansa, our carry-on size guide for 2026 also covers the extra personal item at 40 × 30 × 10 cm, which changes the maths again.

And the specs that have a published, traceable source behind them:

Spec sources: granori.de, Aerolite MiniMAX product listing, Eastpak Tranverz XXS, Pack Hacker on the Osprey Fairview 40, Pack Hacker on the Patagonia Black Hole MLC.

About the prices, plainly: Granori is the only one of the five that publishes a fixed price on its own site that I can date and stand behind. Retail prices on the other four move weekly, and a figure that's wrong tomorrow is worse than no figure. So those cells say "not collected" instead of a range I'd be inventing.

Granori Starter XL

55 × 40 × 20 cm, 100% polyester, folds flat, integrated trolley sleeve, EUR 25.90 from the manufacturer. Granori states the volume as "over 40 l" without giving an exact figure, and states no empty weight at all. I'm not filling that cell with an estimate.

The interesting detail is that it matches Ryanair's Priority limit exactly rather than sitting under it. Pack a soft-sided bag with a double zip to the brim and the middle bulges, at which point 20 cm becomes 23. Soft luggage does compress, but the box does not give.

No laptop sleeve and no internal pockets listed on the product page. For a weekend flight with Priority already bought, it's a very cheap answer. For a free Ryanair fare it isn't an answer at all, at any rotation.

Aerolite MiniMAX

The only bag here that clears all five allowances, and that isn't marketing. It falls out of the dimensions: 40 × 20 × 25 cm, sorted 20/25/40. Plus 18 l of volume and 1.37 kg empty per the product listing, with two wheels and a telescopic handle.

The 1.37 kg is what you pay for it. Against Wizz Air's 10 kg limit on the free bag, 14% of your allowance is gone before you pack a single item. Against Lufthansa's 8 kg it would be 17%, though on Lufthansa you don't need the small bag anyway.

Eighteen litres is genuinely tight. Two days if you're disciplined. A week is not happening, and no packing technique fixes that.

Eastpak Tranverz XXS

This is the case that justifies the whole exercise. 45 × 32 × 20 cm, sorted 20/32/45. Against easyJet's free 20/36/45 it clears on all three. Against Ryanair's free 20/30/40, 32 beats 30 and 45 beats 40, so it fails.

Same bag, same trip, free one week and a baggage fee the next. No product page tells you that.

Eastpak's own site lists 25 l, 1.96 kg and a 30 year warranty. Worth flagging: retailer listings consistently say 28 l. I use the manufacturer figure because it's the one I can attribute. And 1.96 kg against Lufthansa's 8 kg limit is a quarter of your weight budget spent on a shell with wheels.

Thirty years is still the longest commitment on this list. Buying a cheap bag every three years costs more in the end.

Osprey Fairview 40

Osprey lists 55 × 35 × 23 cm, 40 l, 1.5 kg empty, a laptop sleeve up to 16 inches and the lifetime All Mighty Guarantee. The harness is a women's specific version with a narrower back panel than the unisex model, which on a 40 l pack you carry on your back matters more than any pocket layout.

The catch hides in the unit conversion, and it's worth knowing. The US spec is 22 × 14 × 9 inches, which is 55.9 × 35.6 × 22.9 cm. Against a box with a 55 cm internal dimension you may be 9 mm short. On a nylon pack you can squash that away. I still wouldn't count on it if someone is actually measuring at the gate.

On Ryanair Priority it fails outright, because that allowance only permits 20 cm of depth and the Fairview is 23. That isn't a grey area, it's a whole size class.

Patagonia Black Hole MLC 45L

45 l, 1.6 kg, a laptop compartment up to 17 inches, recycled polyester with TPU lamination, YKK zips and the Ironclad Guarantee. REI lists the empty weight as 1,635 g, which lines up with Patagonia's own 3.60 lb figure.

Now the number that appears on no recommendation for this bag: 22 × 14.5 × 7.6 inches is 55.9 × 36.8 × 19.3 cm. Sorted, 19.3/36.8/55.9. Against Lufthansa's 23/40/55 it fails on length. Against Ryanair Priority it fails too. The only allowance in my table it reliably satisfies is easyJet's large cabin bag at 56 × 45 × 25 cm.

Almost everywhere I look, the MLC is described as carry-on approved. Going by the published numbers, it is approved for exactly one of the five rules checked here. Maybe the inch-to-centimetre rounding is doing the damage and in practice it slides through. I can't source that, so it doesn't go in the table.

One more thing the dimensions tell you: 19.3 cm of depth holding 45 l means a flat, wide shape. Good for the overhead bin, awkward for finding anything, because there is not a single exterior pocket on it. Not even a bottle holder.

This belongs in the answer even though other guides skip it.

LOVEVOOK travel bags are everywhere on Amazon.de and include features you rarely see at the price, like a separate shoe compartment in the base. They're absent from the table because there is no single set of dimensions to test. The brand name covers dozens of models at different sizes. A fit row for "LOVEVOOK" would be an assertion, not a check. If you buy one, take the dimensions from that specific listing and run them against the table above yourself.

The North Face Borealis Tote is built as an everyday bag with a backpack mode, not as cabin luggage. I could not find a dependable published dimension set for judging flight compliance.

Berliner Bags Weekender New York XL was going to be the leather option and had to come out. Three different sources give three different dimension sets for the same product name, including 66 × 33 × 28 cm at 60 l and a 60 cm variant at 45 l. I can't determine from the outside which is right. What is certain: every one of those variants exceeds 56 cm in length, so it fails all five allowances above, easyJet's large cabin bag included.

On the material itself, Von Baer notes that vegetable-tanned leather develops a patina over three to five years and needs occasional care. Leather is heavier than nylon, and that's physics rather than opinion. Against an 8 kg limit, or TUI fly's 6 kg, it's not an argument you can talk your way out of.

A few things can't go in a column without being made up.

Durability. I haven't used any of these bags for years, so there's no wear rating here. What I put in the table instead is the warranty, because that's published and it costs the manufacturer money: 30 years at Eastpak, lifetime repair commitments at Osprey and Patagonia, two years at Aerolite, and nothing beyond statutory cover at Granori. That's a harder signal than any star rating.

Carrying comfort. Subjective and body-dependent. The only checkable proxy is the construction, such as Osprey's women's specific harness.

Seams and straps. There are buyer reports of straps tearing on the Granori and shoulder straps slipping on LOVEVOOK bags. I don't count that as a finding, because individual reviews aren't a source I can stand behind. Treat it as a flag, not a number.

And one point that really does matter and almost no product page raises: empty weight eats your weight allowance. Against Lufthansa's 8 kg, the Eastpak at 1.96 kg takes a quarter of it and the Fairview at 1.5 kg takes just under a fifth. For the Granori nobody knows, because there's no published figure. If you regularly max out your cabin allowance, that column is the most important one in the whole table. Our carry-on backpack test goes deeper on this.