Low-Cost Airlines UK 2026: Ticket Prices, Baggage Fees, Cheapest

The honest answer to “which UK budget airline is cheapest” is that nobody can tell you, including the airlines. A seat on the same route on the same day costs different amounts depending on when you look, and there is no list price to compare.

What is published, and what genuinely separates these airlines, is everything that happens after the fare: the bag, the seat, the change, and the price of turning up at the gate having got it wrong.

Why can nobody tell you the cheapest UK airline?

Because none of them has a price. Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2 and Wizz Air all set seat prices dynamically — the same seat is a different number depending on the route, the date, how full the flight is and when you happen to look. There is no recommended price, no list price and no schedule of fares to compare.

That is why this page compares fees instead. Fees are published in advance, they are the same for everyone on a given route, and on a short European trip with a bag they can easily exceed the fare itself.

Which UK airline includes a cabin bag in the fare?

Jet2 is the only one of the four. Its published allowance is a personal item under the seat plus a large cabin bag of 56 x 45 x 25 cm weighing up to 10kg, both free. In the table below, “small” means the bag that goes under the seat in front of you and “large” means the one that goes in the overhead locker.

On the other three the large cabin bag is the thing they are selling. Wizz Air’s base fare includes only the under-seat bag; the 55 x 40 x 23 cm trolley bag that is guaranteed space in the cabin comes as part of a paid fare bundle. Ryanair sells it as “Priority & 2 Cabin Bags” at £12.49 to £36 when booked online, rising to £19.99 to £45.50 afterwards. easyJet does not publish a price for it at any point before you are in a booking.

Note that easyJet’s free small bag has the most generous weight limit of the four at 15kg, though it must fit the 45 x 36 x 20 cm size and go under the seat.

How much do budget airline baggage fees cost in 2026?

Between £10.49 and £80.99 for a checked bag on Ryanair alone, which tells you how little a single number would mean. Ryanair is the only one of the four that publishes a full advance price range, per checked bag, per one-way flight.

Ryanair states plainly that the fee varies by route and travel dates. The gap between the bottom and the top of the 20kg range is £38.50 — arithmetic on Ryanair’s own two figures — which is more than many of the fares these airlines advertise.

Wizz Air publishes ranges too, in euros, and adds a seasonal split that the others do not. Its peak periods for 2026 are named explicitly: Easter from 21 March to 20 April, summer from 12 June to 30 September, and Christmas from 15 December 2026 to 10 January 2027.

Those are euro figures because the euro list is the real one — see the section on currency below.

Why does easyJet not show baggage prices?

Because it only quotes them inside a booking. Its fee page says the price of a hold bag or a large cabin bag varies with demand, route, flight date and time of booking, and that you will see the exact price at the point of purchase.

The practical effect is that you cannot compare easyJet’s bag prices against Ryanair’s before you start booking. Jet2 does the same thing with hold luggage, listing the price simply as “Varies”.

What easyJet does publish is what happens if you do not buy one, and those figures are precise.

What does it cost to get it wrong at the airport?

Between £45 and £80, which is where these airlines actually make the difference. This is the one row that is genuinely comparable, because all four publish it.

Overweight is charged separately and by the kilo: £12 per kilo on easyJet, £12 per kilo on Jet2 up to 4kg and then a flat £45, and €13–15 per kilo on Wizz Air.

Two other penalties are worth knowing before you travel. Ryanair charges £55 to check in at the airport if you have not done it online, and £50 to make a booking at an airport desk at all. Wizz Air charges an administration fee of €8–13 per passenger per flight on every channel it sells through, including its own app.

Are Wizz Air’s prices in pounds or euros?

Euros, with a pound column calculated from them. Wizz Air’s UK page shows its fee list in euros by default, and sterling appears only if you tick GBP in a currency selector on the page.

Those sterling figures are not a separate price list. Across all 75 euro-and-pound pairs on the page, the pound figure is a constant 0.895 of the euro one — a spread of less than 0.3% from top to bottom — and only one of the 75 is a round number of pounds. Prices set in sterling look like £60 and £12. Prices converted from euros look like £13.42 and £94.41, which is what Wizz Air’s look like.

This matters for one practical reason: a converted fee moves with the exchange rate, and the rate Wizz applies is its own rather than the one your bank would give you. The other three do not have this problem. Ryanair prints a single numeral for both currencies, so its £12.49 is £12.49. easyJet’s UK page is sterling throughout. Jet2 prints £45 and €55 side by side, two different numbers, both real.

What else is worth checking before you book?

The change fees, because they are the largest numbers on any of these pages. Ryanair charges £45 to change a flight online and £60 through an agent or at the airport, per passenger and per one-way flight. Changing the name on a booking costs £115 online and £160 through an agent.

easyJet takes the opposite approach and sells a Flex Pass at £14 per passenger per flight, which allows one change per flight without a change fee. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how likely you are to move the booking.

A few things are genuinely free and worth not paying for by accident. easyJet charges nothing for debit card payments, nothing in airport or security charges and no fuel surcharge. Ryanair’s card fee is a percentage of the transaction that varies with the payment method rather than a flat charge, so it is not comparable to a fixed fee.

So which UK low-cost airline is cheapest?

On fare, the question has no answer. On everything else, it depends on one thing: whether you are travelling with more than an under-seat bag.

If you travel with only a small bag that fits under the seat, all four are free and the fare is the whole story — so compare the fares on the day and ignore everything on this page.

If you travel with a cabin bag, Jet2 includes it and the others charge for it, which on a return trip is a real difference of somewhere between £25 and £72 against Ryanair depending on route and date.

If you check a bag, nobody can tell you in advance except Ryanair and Wizz Air, and both quote ranges wide enough that the answer changes by route. What you can do is avoid the penalties, which are the only figures all four publish and the only ones that are reliably large.

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