Effective ticket price
A £19 fare with a cabin bag, a seat and a card fee is £74. A £89 fare with both included is £89 — and every search result on the internet puts it second. Type in the two fares you're choosing between, with what each one charges for, and get the number the comparison should have been made on.
Fare A
Fare B
Every figure is yours, typed from the booking screens you're comparing — we hold no fares and add nothing you didn't enter. Enter everything in one currency. Ancillary fees vary by route and fare bundle, and paying at the airport costs substantially more than paying online.
If this caught a fare that wasn't cheap, a coffee keeps it free.
No ads, no fees, no catch — coffees are what keep it that way.
Bag likely to be overweight? The real fees per airline are in the excess baggage calculator
Why nobody else does this arithmetic
Comparison sites earn on the click-out, and the click-out is won on the headline fare — so the headline fare is what gets ranked, and the bag filters stay coarse and off by default. We earn nothing either way, which is the only reason this page can tell you the cheap fare is the expensive one. No booking links, no affiliate, and your fares aren't stored anywhere.
Where our own data comes in. The one fee family we hold and verify ourselves is overweight and excess baggage — real published figures for 37 airlines, re-checked quarterly, each with its source. Pick an airline above and the link to its fee table is right there; if your bag is anywhere near the limit, that is the number that decides the comparison.
Everything else on the receipt is your own figure, typed from the booking screens — ancillary fees vary by route, bundle and timing, and a representative number pretending to be your number would be worse than asking. Enter everything in one currency.
Real prices — common questions
Why is my cheap flight so expensive by checkout?
Because the advertised fare stopped being the price years ago, and comparison sites still rank on it. On a low-cost carrier the cabin bag, the seat, the boarding order and sometimes the card payment are all separate charges, added one screen at a time. None of them is hidden — they're published — the problem is that the comparison you made happened before any of them appeared.
Is a budget airline actually cheaper than a full-service one?
For a traveller with one small bag who doesn't pick a seat: usually yes, genuinely. For a family with checked bags, chosen seats and a coach from a secondary airport: frequently no — the £89 fare with a bag and a seat included beats the £19 fare once everything is counted. There is no general answer, which is why this is a calculator and not an article.
What costs should I add when comparing flights?
The ones you will actually pay, not the whole menu: cabin bag, checked bag, seat selection if you'll select one, priority boarding if you'll buy it, the card or booking fee (once, not per person), and — the one everyone forgets — getting to and from the airport at both ends. A fare into a secondary airport with a £25 coach each way is £50 more expensive than it looks, and that alone often reverses the answer.
How much does a checked bag cost on a budget airline?
It varies by airline, route, fare bundle and when you pay — the booking screen shows the real figure for your dates, which is why this tool asks you to type it rather than guessing. What is consistent everywhere: paying at the airport or the gate costs dramatically more than paying online in advance, and overweight bags are where the real money is. Our excess baggage calculator holds the verified overweight fees for 37 airlines.
Do fees multiply per passenger or per booking?
Almost everything — fare, bags, seats, meals, transfers — is per person, so it multiplies by your party. Card and booking fees are usually charged once per booking. Mixing those up is the easiest way to mis-compare two fares for a family, and doing that multiplication correctly is half of what this calculator is for.
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