Cabin backpacks for two to four nights: the sizes that fly free on Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2 and Wizz Air

This is the size the whole category has reorganised around. When Ryanair moved its free bag to 40 × 30 × 20 cm, Cabin Max re-cut the Metz to exactly that box: 24 litres, against 20 in the old 40 × 20 × 25 shape, for the same zero fee. The extra volume is the difference between two nights and three, or between a wash bag that goes in and one that goes in your coat pocket.

The design is the same as the rest of the Metz range. The bag opens like a suitcase — the whole front panel unzips — so you pack it flat on the bed rather than feeding things down a tube. The front organiser has a compartment sized for an iPad, slots for documents and pens, and a quick-access pocket; there is a discrete rear pocket for a passport, a side bottle holder and a trolley strap for sliding it over a case handle. Padded straps and a padded top handle. Cabin Max quotes 0.6 kg on the page and 0.7 kg in its shop data — call it two-thirds of a kilo, which is light for a bag with this much structure.

The limits are real. There is no laptop sleeve, so a 13-inch machine needs its own sleeve inside the main compartment. Twenty centimetres of depth is not much once a pair of shoes goes in, and the soft sides mean an over-packed bag measures more than 20 cm — it passes the sizer at the volume it was designed for, not at the volume you can force into it.

One practical note: Cabin Max sells the Metz 24L in more than a dozen colours, each with its own Amazon listing, and stock moves between them — the first listing we checked was out, the black one we link to was in. If the linked colour is unavailable, another colour of the identical bag almost certainly is not.

Before 40 × 30 × 20, the Ryanair bag was 40 × 20 × 25, and this is the bag that owned that size: 20 litres, half a kilo, and the same suitcase opening, organiser, bottle holder and trolley strap as the 24L. The recycled edition sold on Amazon is RPET fabric with a cotton-like feel and side compression straps.

Does it still work? Yes. Turned on its side, 40 × 25 × 20 sits inside 40 × 30 × 20 with 5 cm to spare, so it passes every sizer in the list above. What it does not do is use the new allowance: you are carrying 20 litres where 24 are free. For an existing owner that is no reason to replace it. For a new buyer choosing between the two Metz shapes at similar prices, the 24L is the obvious pick unless the narrower, deeper 20L happens to fit under a particular seat better — on some aircraft the under-seat space is shallow but wide, and a 25 cm-tall bag on its side can be easier than a 30 cm-wide one.

The weight is the other argument. At 0.5 kg it is the lightest structured bag here, and with two compression straps it pulls down to a small, dense package for one night. Like the 24L it has no laptop sleeve, only the iPad compartment.

At the time of writing the listing showed a single unit left — Cabin Max’s Amazon stock moves around between colours and editions, so treat any one listing as a starting point.

The Manhattan is Cabin Max’s answer to the one thing the Metz lacks. Same box — 40 × 30 × 20 cm, 24 litres, clamshell opening, side bottle pocket, trolley strap, three-year warranty — but with a rear compartment sized for a laptop up to 13 inches, and a front in twill polyester with faux-suede panels that reads as a work bag rather than a piece of luggage. Cabin Max quotes 0.5 kg on the page and 0.7 kg in its shop data.

What you trade is organisation. The Metz’s front organiser, with its iPad slot, document pockets and pen loops, becomes a single diagonal front pocket and a mesh pocket inside; there are no compression straps, so a half-empty Manhattan does not cinch down the way a Metz does. For someone who packs a laptop, a charger and two days of clothes that is the right trade; for someone who packs by compartments it is not.

A caution about the listing itself: the Amazon page we fetched for this bag carries the Metz’s bullet points word for word, while the photographs — and the shape — are unmistakably the Manhattan. Cabin Max’s own product page is the authority for the specification, and the figures above come from it. Stock on the day was fine.

Cabin Max says the Manhattan is not compliant with SAS Go Light, the one airline in its table that it fails; for the airlines in this article it is a free bag on Ryanair, Wizz Air and Vueling and inside the small-bag limit on easyJet, Jet2 and TUI.

The Eastpak is the outlier: it was never designed as luggage, and that is the case for it. The Padded Pak’r is the school-and-city rucksack Eastpak has made for decades — one main compartment, one front zip pocket, padded back and straps, 100 % nylon — and it measures 40 × 30 × 18 cm at 24 litres, which puts it inside every free allowance in this article with 2 cm of depth to spare. It weighs 0.38 kg, less than any of the Cabin Max bags, and Eastpak covers it with a 30-year limited warranty.

What you give up is everything a travel bag adds: no suitcase opening, no organiser, no compression straps, no bottle holder, no trolley strap, no laptop sleeve. Packing is by the sack method — rolled clothes at the bottom, wash bag on top — and finding anything means taking things out. For a night or two that is a small tax; for four nights it is why the Metz exists.

Two reasons to choose it anyway. It does not look like luggage, so it is the bag you also use on Monday, and a rucksack that gets used weekly is a better buy than a travel bag that flies twice a year. And because the fabric is soft and unstructured, it squashes into a sizer that a rigid bag of the same nominal size fails. The corollary is the one to remember: it also bulges past 18 cm when you overfill it. Pack it to the sizer, not to the zip.

The Amazon listing we used does not name its colour in the title; the photos show an army-green bag. Dimensions and weight are the same across Eastpak’s colours.

easyJet’s free under-seat bag is 45 × 36 × 20 cm — including handles and wheels — and the Metz 30L is built to those figures exactly. That gives you 30 litres for nothing: three or four nights of clothes, a wash bag and shoes, in a bag that opens like a suitcase and has airmesh padding on the back, a front organiser, a quick-access pocket, compression straps, a bottle holder and a trolley strap. Cabin Max says 0.6 kg; its shop data says 0.8 kg. The page also says 600D polyester where the Amazon listing says recycled polyester — the fabric is the difference between the classic and recycled editions, and both are sold under this name.

The catch is in the headline: this is an easyJet bag. On Ryanair and Wizz Air it is 5 cm too tall and 6 cm too wide for the free sizer, so it flies only with Priority & 2 Cabin Bags or WIZZ Priority — where it is then a modest use of a 55 × 40 × 20 allowance. On Jet2 and TUI it counts as your main hand-luggage item, not the small under-seat bag. If you fly easyJet most of the time it is the most litres you can carry free; if you fly Ryanair most of the time, buy the 24L and put the money you did not spend on Priority towards the next flight.

There is no laptop sleeve on this Metz either, and the compression straps matter more here than on the smaller bags: a half-full 30L cinched down will pass a smaller sizer that a loose one fails.

The Farpoint 40 is a different kind of object — a travel rucksack with a real harness — and it is here for the passenger who has already decided to pay. Osprey’s current page gives 40 litres, 55 × 35 × 23 cm and 1.48 kg, with a load range of 7 to 16 kg, an adjustable torso, padded spacermesh shoulder straps and hip belt, a padded sleeve for laptops up to 16 inches, WingJacket compression straps with fabric sidewalls, and a lockable panel-loading opening that lays the bag flat like a suitcase. The main fabric is bluesign-approved 100 % recycled 210D nylon with a PFAS-free water repellent, the base 420D, and Osprey’s All Mighty Guarantee repairs it for any reason, from any era.

None of that is free to fly. At 55 × 35 × 23 cm it is over every under-seat limit here, so it is a Priority bag on Ryanair and Wizz, a paid large cabin bag on easyJet, and the main hand-luggage item on Jet2 and TUI. Watch the depth: 23 cm is 3 cm more than Ryanair’s and TUI’s 55 × 40 × 20, which the bag only meets if you do not pack it to the walls. Jet2’s 56 × 45 × 25 and easyJet’s 56 × 45 × 25 swallow it with room.

The Amazon listings for the Farpoint 40 date from 2019 and describe the earlier generation — a 15-inch sleeve and a zip-away harness — while Osprey’s current page gives a 16-inch sleeve and an adjustable torso; several of them also showed as unavailable when we checked from outside the UK, which for a UK-only seller can be a quirk of location rather than stock. The bag is sold by size and colour as separate listings, so check the one you land on says which generation and size it is, and that it is actually in stock. For four nights, or for anyone who walks from the airport rather than wheels, it is the one bag here that carries like a rucksack instead of a briefcase.