Luggage Size Chart: Carry-On Limits for 68 Airlines

We got tired of opening six browser tabs before a connecting flight, so we built the thing we wanted instead. Below is the published carry-on limit for 68 airlines, in inches or centimetres, with the cabin weight cap, the personal item rule and a link to the page we read each one off. Above it sits a checker: type in the bag you already own and it tells you which of those airlines will take it and which will not.

One number is worth knowing before you scroll. A suitcase built to the American standard of 22 x 14 x 9 inches clears only 33 of the 67 airlines here that publish per-side limits. Drop half an inch off the height and it clears 51. The checker below counts 34 out of all 68, because Singapore Airlines sets no per-side limit at all, just a 45 inch total that this bag squeaks under. Carry-on sizing is not a standard with a few outliers, it is a spread, and the half inch you cannot see is usually the one that costs you at the gate.

Check your bag against every airline

A bag that misses almost always misses on depth. Most hardside carry-ons are 9 to 10 inches front to back, and five airlines in this chart cap depth at 20 cm, which is 7.9 inches. If the checker turns red on Ryanair, Vueling, Icelandair, Korean Air and Air India while everything else passes, that is the reason.

The carry-on size chart

Four columns, one unit at a time. Switch the toggle to centimetres and every number in the table changes with it, including the ones in the checker above. Open the full rule on any row for the airline’s own wording, the checked bag allowance, the thing that catches people out, and the page we took it from.

Bags we have measured that clear the chart

These are bags we have handled and written about, listed by the external measurement that matters at a gate, not the capacity on the hangtag. We ran every one of them through the checker above, so the counts below are the same arithmetic you get if you type the numbers in yourself. Every link goes to our own review, not to a shop.

Clears the American 22 x 14 x 9 airlines

• Solgaard Carry On Closet, 20.8 x 13.4 x 9 inches. Clears 61 of the 68, the best score of any hardside carry-on we have measured and 26 airlines better than the next one down. The shelf system inside is a separate argument, and it is the reason we keep recommending it for a week of hotel rooms.
• Osprey Sojourn Porter 46L, about 21 x 14 x 9 inches. Clears 53, the 55 x 40 x 23 cm European majors included, which is a lot of airline for a 46 litre bag.
• Away Carry-On Flex, 22 x 14 x 9 inches unexpanded. Sits exactly on the American limit with nothing spare, which comes to 34 of the 68. There is no slack in that number to absorb the expansion zip.
• Osprey Farpoint 55, about 22 x 14 x 9 inches for the main pack, so the same 34. The detachable daypack is what turns it into a carry-on plus a personal item rather than one oversized bag.

Clears the strict 20 cm depth carriers as well

• Bellroy Transit Workpack, 20.9 x 15 x 6.3 inches. The biggest bag in our set that walks onto all five of the 20 cm carriers, Ryanair, Vueling, Icelandair, Korean Air and Air India, without a conversation. 40 of the 68 overall.
• EVERKI Onyx, 18.7 x 14.2 x 7.9 inches. Thirty-six litres in a profile that lands exactly on the 20 cm rule: it clears Ryanair, Vueling, Korean Air and Air India, and misses Icelandair by a tenth of an inch. 43 overall.
• Aer Go Pack 2, 17 x 11 x 5.5 inches and 1.3 pounds. One of fourteen bags in our set that clear all 68, and the one we actually pack flat inside a bigger case on the way out.

Sized for the seat in front of you

• MATEIN Personal Item Backpack and the WANDF flat profile bag, both 18 x 14 x 8 inches. That is the American personal item allowance to the inch, and it clears only 6 of the 57 airlines here that publish an underseat size. Outside North America it is a cabin bag, not a free extra.
• Osprey Daylite Expandable 26+6, 16.9 x 13 x 6.3 inches. Clears 18 of those 57 as a personal item and all 68 as a cabin bag, which is the more useful way to hold it in your head.
• More of both in our roundups of the best personal item backpacks and the best carry-on luggage.

Sold as carry-ons, but not by most of this chart

• Travelpro Maxlite 5 Carry-On, 23 x 14.5 x 9 inches with the wheels. A 21 inch case by the industry’s own naming, and only Southwest, Frontier and Sun Country will take it. We still like the bag. We would not take it to a gate agent with a sizer.
• Samsonite Omni PC Hardside, 22 x 15 x 9.5 inches. An inch of width and half an inch of depth past the American standard drops it to 14 of the 68 and fails Alaska, American, Delta and United, which is most of the reason anyone buys a 22 inch case.
• July Carry On publishes 20 x 14.5 x 8.5 inches, and that is the interior. The case around it is bigger. Whenever a brand quotes an interior, assume an inch on every side and measure the thing yourself before you fly.

How we measure, and why your bag is bigger than the label says

Almost every airline in this chart measures the object you are carrying: wheels, handles, feet, side pockets, the lot. Manufacturers frequently measure the case body. The gap between those two numbers is usually one to two inches on the height, and it is the single most common reason a bag that was sold as a carry-on gets pulled at the gate.

So measure yours the way the sizer will. Stand the bag upright on a hard floor, packed the way you actually pack it, and measure to the outermost point in each direction. Retract the handle first. If your case has an expansion zip, measure it both closed and open, because the open number is what you will be at on the return leg. We walk through the whole thing in how we measure, and there is a longer illustrated version in how to measure luggage.

To see that difference instead of reading about it, the luggage size visualizer draws your bag against an airline sizer at scale.

Checked bags run on a different rule

Nothing in the chart above applies once the bag goes down the belt. Checked luggage is governed by a single added number, the sum of height plus width plus depth, and the near-universal ceiling is 62 linear inches or 158 cm. Two cases can each pass that on their own and still fail together, which is exactly the trap Air India sets with its 272 cm limit across both economy pieces.

The checked allowance for every airline here is in the full rule on each chart row, and the arithmetic, the airline exceptions and what oversize actually costs are in 62 linear inches explained. If you would rather just do the sum, how to calculate linear inches is the short version.

And if the bag comes back cracked, a wheel short or three days late, the compensation rules are not the airline’s to invent. We collected them in damaged luggage claim rules and in our guide to compensation for lost or delayed luggage.

Questions we get about carry-on sizes

Is 22 x 14 x 9 a universal carry-on size?

No, and it is not even a majority. Fourteen airlines in this chart publish exactly 22 x 14 x 9 inches: eight in the United States, WestJet in Canada, Cathay Pacific and Cebu Pacific in Asia, Jetstar and Qantas in Australia, and Caribbean Airlines, which the region filter files under Latin America. A bag built to it clears 33 of the 67 airlines that publish per-side limits, 34 of all 68 once you count Singapore Airlines and its total-only rule. It is the most common single number, which is not the same thing as a standard.

Which airline here is the strictest?

Measured in inches, Icelandair, at 21.6 x 15.7 x 7.8. Air India, Korean Air, Ryanair and Vueling are a hair behind it at 55 x 40 x 20 cm. All five allow a tall, wide bag and almost no depth, which is the opposite shape to an American carry-on. Switch the chart to centimetres and the title moves: Avelo Airlines publishes 55 x 35 x 22 cm, a smaller box than Icelandair’s 55 x 40 x 20, even though its inch figures of 22 x 14 x 9 are roomier. Singapore Airlines is stricter in a different way again: it publishes no per-side limits at all, only a total of 115 cm across the three sides, so a deep bag can fail there while passing everywhere else.

Why does switching to centimetres change some answers?

Because an airline’s two published numbers are often not exact conversions of each other. Delta publishes 22 x 14 x 9 inches and 56 x 35 x 23 cm, and 14 inches is 35.6 cm, so the centimetre version is the tighter of the two. For a true 22 x 14 x 9 inch bag, twelve airlines in this chart give a different verdict depending on which of their own numbers you use. The checker compares in whichever unit you have selected, using the airline’s own published figure in that unit, and never a conversion we did ourselves. Toggling the unit converts the measurements you typed, so the bag you are asking about does not change underneath you.

Does the cabin weight limit include my personal item?

Often, yes, and it is the detail that catches the most people. ANA, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Cathay Pacific, AirAsia and Cebu Pacific all apply one allowance across the cabin bag and the small bag together, so a heavy laptop backpack eats into the suitcase. Fourteen airlines here, almost all of them North American, publish no cabin weight number whatsoever and ask only that you can lift the bag into the bin yourself.

How often does a bag get measured at the gate?

Unevenly, and that is the honest answer. The metal sizers at European low-cost gates get used constantly because the airline sells the upgrade at the gate. Legacy carriers in North America rarely check on a quiet weekday morning and check hard on a full flight. Our rule of thumb: if the airline makes money when your bag is too big, assume it will be measured.

What happens if my bag is one inch over?

Usually nothing, right up until it costs you a gate-checked bag and a fee larger than the bag was worth. The chart is what the airline published, not what a given agent will do on a given morning. Treat anything marked as tight as a bag you should be ready to gate check, and read the full rule on that row before you commit to it.

How we keep this chart current

Every row here was read off the airline’s own baggage page rather than copied from another chart, and each one carries the date we read it and a link back to the page, so you can check any number yourself in about fifteen seconds. There is one exception and it is marked on its own row: PLAY shut down in September 2025 and its site no longer resolves, so its numbers come from an archived copy of its own baggage page. We left the airline in because its limits still turn up in old bookings and older articles.

We re-check the whole set on a fixed cadence and after any airline announces a change, and the date stamp on both tools above moves with the data, not with the page. Where an airline publishes nothing, the row says so instead of guessing. A missing number is a fact about the airline, and inventing one would make the rest of the chart worth less.

The rest of our measurement work lives in how we measure, the checked bag maths in 62 linear inches, and the bags themselves in the travel gear database.