Eurostar Baggage Rules And Bag Storage At Gare du Nord

The Eurostar departures area at Gare du Nord sits one level below the main concourse, and it runs on a clock that has nothing to do with French trains. Airline-style check-in closes 30 minutes before departure on Standard and Plus tickets, and 45 minutes on Premier, after which nobody will let you through. Arrive two hours early, as plenty of travellers do out of habit, and you have a fixed dead window of an hour or more with a suitcase and nowhere useful to take it. That window is exactly what a station bag drop is built for, and Gare du Nord has more ways to solve it than almost anywhere else in Paris.

This guide covers the Eurostar luggage allowance itself, the check-in deadline, the official SNCF left-luggage counter inside the station, and the Radical Storage points around it, with the prices and opening hours each one publishes. It also covers the two situations that catch people out: arriving with more bags than the allowance permits, and wanting to sightsee between hotel checkout and the train. Every figure here comes from the operator's own published pages.

The Dead Window Eurostar Check-In Creates At Gare du Nord

Eurostar check-in at Gare du Nord closes 30 minutes before departure for Standard and Plus, and 45 minutes before departure for Premier and through tickets. Passport and security checks sit between check-in and the platform, so the desk closing is a hard stop, not a suggestion. A traveller who arrives two hours early faces an hour or more of dead time, and luggage storage near Gare du Nord exists largely to fill it.

The maths is worth spelling out because it drives every other decision on this page. If your train leaves at 14:13 and you reach the station at 12:15, you cannot check in before roughly 13:15 at the earliest, and you should not cut it finer than that. That leaves an hour in which you can either stand in the departures hall with your bags, or drop them and go. The streets immediately south of the station, along Rue La Fayette toward the Canal Saint-Martin, and the food options inside and around the concourse, are all within a few minutes' walk once your hands are free.

The window also appears at the other end of a Paris stay. Hotel checkout times rarely align with an afternoon Eurostar, so many travellers checkout in the morning, carry bags to the station, and then have hours to fill. Dropping the bags at the station on arrival, rather than an hour before check-in opens, turns that whole stretch back into usable time. Our page on your last day in Paris with a suitcase works through that scenario in detail.

One thing the dead window is not: a reason to leave a bag unattended anywhere in the station. French law passed on 28 April 2025 sets fixed penalties for abandoned baggage on the SNCF and RATP networks, from 72 EUR for involuntary abandonment up to 180 EUR, rising to 1,500 EUR, for manifest voluntary abandonment, and an unlabelled bag can cost 150 EUR rising to 750 EUR. SNCF publishes a free anonymous QR-code label you can pick up in stations precisely so a briefly unattended bag can be traced to its owner. The safe version of the dead window is a booked bag drop, not a corner of the concourse.

What The Eurostar Luggage Allowance Actually Is

Eurostar Standard and Eurostar Plus each allow two pieces of luggage plus one piece of hand luggage. Eurostar Premier allows three plus one, and a child's allowance is one plus one. On London routes the maximum bag length is 85 cm; on all other routes it is 75 cm. There is no strict weight limit: Eurostar's own wording is that if you can carry it safely yourself, you are good to go.

That allowance is generous by airline standards, and the no-weight-limit line is genuine: Eurostar states plainly that, unlike airlines, it imposes no per-bag weight cap. The size caps are what actually catch people. A 75 cm limit on non-London routes means a large checked suitcase is fine, but a ski bag, a bike box or an oversized duffel is not, and the London route's 85 cm is only slightly more forgiving. Skis and snowboards can count as one of your two pieces.

Excess and oversized items are charged rather than refused. Additional bags start from GBP 35, or EUR 30, with maximum measurements of 85 x 85 x 36 cm, and oversized items start from GBP 60 with maximums of 165 x 135 x 57 cm, and any excess or oversized item must travel in a case no longer than 200 cm. Those prices come straight from Eurostar's own luggage page, which is the only source worth trusting for the allowance, because third-party summaries of it are routinely out of date.

The moment the allowance becomes a storage question is the moment you exceed it. A family of four with a shopping haul, or a traveller combining a city break with a ski leg, can easily be holding one bag more than the ticket covers. Storing the surplus near the station for the day, at EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 per-bag fee, costs less than a single excess-bag charge on the train, and the arithmetic only gets better if the bag would otherwise pay the charge in both directions.

Where To Drop Bags At Gare du Nord Itself

Gare du Nord has two real bag-drop options: the official SNCF consigne on the lower ground floor, next to platform 3 and opposite the exit marked Cour de taxis, open 06:15 to 23:15 daily; and a ring of Radical Storage partner points around the station at EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus a EUR 1.99 fee. Eurostar itself has no left-luggage facility and points passengers to the SNCF one.

Start with the honest framing: Eurostar states on its own help pages that it has no left-luggage facility at Gare du Nord, and directs passengers to the SNCF luggage office. That office, run as "La Consigne Conciergerie de Paris Nord", is staffed rather than a bank of self-service lockers, and its location detail from Eurostar's help centre is more navigable than anything SNCF publishes: lower ground floor, next to platform 3, opposite the exit marked Cour de taxis. The hours, 06:15 to 23:15 daily, comfortably bracket every Eurostar departure.

The Radical Storage alternative around the station is a network of shops, hotels and cafes holding bags behind a counter, not lockers. The Gare du Nord area carries 10 published storage points with a 4.75 rating across 2,937 reviews, and the standard Paris rate applies: EUR 3.90 per bag per day, plus a EUR 1.99 per-bag fee added at checkout, so one bag for one day comes to EUR 5.89 as arithmetic on those two published figures. Hours vary point by point, from the Gare du Nord Grandes Lignes point at 08:30 to 20:00 to others closing as late as 23:59, so the specific point's own card is the thing to check before booking.

Neither option needs to be chosen blind. The SNCF counter cannot be reserved, and SNCF itself warns that its station lockers meet strong demand and can periodically be full, or temporarily closed for works. A Radical Storage booking, by contrast, is a reservation: the point is expecting your bag, and cancellation is free any time before the scheduled check-in. For a traveller with a fixed Eurostar departure and no slack in the plan, that difference is the whole decision.

What The Official SNCF Counter Gives You For The Money

The Gare du Nord SNCF consigne charges by duration: EUR 4 for up to 4 hours, EUR 7.50 for 4 to 12 hours, and EUR 9.50 for 12 to 24 hours, per bag. That makes it cheaper than a Radical Storage day booking for a short stop, EUR 4 against EUR 5.89, and more expensive for a full day. It is staffed, open 06:15 to 23:15, and cannot be reserved.

The duration pricing is the detail most summaries miss. A four-hour drop, which is exactly the shape of the Eurostar dead window, costs EUR 4 at the official counter, and that is the cheapest real bag storage in central Paris by some distance. Stretch the same bag to a full day and the positions reverse: the SNCF price steps up to EUR 9.50 while the Radical Storage total stays at EUR 5.89 for one bag for one day. Neither number is a trick; they are simply two different pricing structures aimed at different uses.

Two caveats keep this comparison honest. First, capacity: SNCF says in its own words that its consignes can periodically be full and may be closed for works, and there is no way to secure a slot in advance, so an unlucky arrival during a busy stretch can find the counter full an hour before check-in opens. Second, the guarantee question: a Radical Storage booking carries the network's guarantee, advertised at EUR 10,000 but capped at EUR 3,000 per claim under clause 9.4 of its terms, and it is explicitly not insurance. The SNCF counter has no published equivalent. A reader deciding between them on safety grounds should weigh the reservable slot and the capped guarantee against the staffed, X-ray-free simplicity of the official desk.

Radical Storage Points Around Gare du Nord

The Gare du Nord area carries 10 published Radical Storage points rated 4.75 across 2,937 reviews, at EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 per-bag fee. The earliest point opens 07:30 and the latest closes 23:59, hours are set per point rather than network-wide, and every point is a real shop or hotel holding bags behind a counter.

The density around Gare du Nord is among the highest in Paris, which matters on a day when the SNCF counter is full or when you want a point that matches your exact timing. The Gare du Nord Grandes Lignes point, for instance, runs 08:30 to 20:00, which covers a morning-to-evening Eurostar day comfortably but not a very early departure. Others in the area open from 07:30 and some close as late as 23:59, so the practical move is to filter by your own check-in window rather than by price, because the price is the same EUR 3.90 essentially everywhere in the cluster.

What you are handing your bag to deserves a plain description. These are local businesses, hotels, restaurants and shops, that hold luggage as a Radical Storage partner; the network's own Paris page lists cards typed Hotel, Shop, Restaurant and Local company. This site neither owns nor operates any of them; every one is a Radical Storage partner location. The guarantee that stands behind the booking is the network's: EUR 10,000 headline, EUR 3,000 per claim cap, and, per clause 9.2.2 of the terms, not a contract of insurance. There is a hard seven-day window to notify a claim after discovering loss or damage, and a signed itemised list of the bag's contents with values is a condition of any payout under clause 9.8.1, so photograph your bag's contents before you hand it over.

One habit worth building whatever you choose: label the bag. The free anonymous QR-code labels available in SNCF stations carry the owner's surname and phone number, and under the April 2025 law an unlabelled abandoned bag draws a heavier penalty than a labelled one. A label does not make an unattended bag acceptable, but it removes the worst-case ambiguity if a bag is briefly separated from you in a crowded concourse.

For a sense of how the Gare du Nord cluster compares with the neighbouring station clusters a Eurostar traveller might reasonably reach, the table below puts the published headline numbers side by side. All three clusters charge the same EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 fee, so the real differences are density, rating and opening span rather than price.

Gare de l'Est is the nearest cluster worth naming, one stop away on the RER and Metro, and its points open later than the Gare du Nord ones, so it is a fallback for a mid-morning drop rather than an early one. Chatelet-Les-Halles sits a few minutes further on and closes earlier, at 23:00, which still covers every Eurostar departure of the day. Neither is a better deal on price; both are simply alternative rooms when the station cluster is full.

Porte Maillot And Other Alternatives When The Station Is Packed

Porte Maillot carries a Radical Storage point rated 4.68 from 518 reviews, open 08:30 to 21:00, at the same EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus EUR 1.99 fee. It is a genuine fallback when the station cluster is full, and it doubles as the drop point for a traveller spending the dead window on the western edge of the city rather than beside the departures board.

The reason a fallback matters is capacity, and SNCF has said so itself: the station lockers can be full at busy times, and the Radical Storage points around Gare du Nord, while numerous, are individual businesses with finite back rooms. On a summer Saturday, when Eurostar runs near capacity and the concourse is dense, the points closest to the Eurostar entrance fill first. Porte Maillot is not close, and this guide will not pretend otherwise: it suits a traveller whose plan already points west, toward the Palais des Congres, Neuilly or a dinner booking on that side of the city, more than a traveller who wants to stay within sight of the departures board.

The honest framing for every alternative is the same: a bag drop is only as useful as its position relative to your day. A point ten minutes from the station is perfect for the dead window; a point at Porte Maillot is perfect for a western afternoon and merely acceptable for the dead window. If the station cluster is full and your plan is to stay central, the better move is usually a point one Metro stop away rather than a cross-city one, and our Paris bag drop map by district exists to make that choice visual.

Sightseeing Between Checkout And The Train

Yes, you can sightsee bag-free between checkout and your train: drop luggage at a Radical Storage point near the Catacombs for EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 fee (rated 4.72 from 344 reviews, some opening as early as 05:00), since the Catacombs themselves ban bags over 40 x 30 x 20 cm and offer no cloakroom, then collect your bags and head to Gare du Nord.

The Catacombs rule is the strictest published bag limit of any major Paris site: suitcases and large bags are prohibited outright, bags no larger than 40 x 30 x 20 cm are allowed and must be carried in front or at your side, and the venue's own pages state there is no cloakroom, with the 700 m gap between entrance and exit given as the reason. A traveller with a suitcase who turns up at the Catacombs on the way to an evening Eurostar does not have a locker problem, they have an entry problem. The storage points in that cluster, opening from 05:00 and closing by 23:59, solve it before it starts.

The wider pattern holds across Paris: no major museum or monument accepts a full-size suitcase, and the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Sainte-Chapelle have no cloakroom of any kind. The Louvre's free lockers cap bags at 55 x 35 x 20 cm and the Porte des Lions entrance closes its locker access at 3 p.m. Our Paris museum and landmark bag rules page carries the full venue-by-venue table, and it is worth reading before planning a last-day itinerary around a suitcase.

Getting To Gare du Nord With Bags, And What Changed On The Metro

The RATP's old 75 cm luggage limit no longer applies: a transport-ministry answer published in the Journal Officiel in June 2025 confirms the dimensional restriction was dropped, and any bag a traveller can carry without obstructing others is allowed on the Metro and RER. Metro line 14 is the only fully step-free line in Paris, with lifts at every station.

The history is worth knowing because older guides still repeat the ban. Until spring 2025 an obsolete internal rule prohibited any bag whose largest dimension exceeded 75 cm, backed by a 150 EUR fixed penalty, and travellers were actually fined on their way to stations and airports with bags that trains and planes accepted. The media row that followed ended with the ministry confirming in a written parliamentary answer, published in the Journal Officiel on 24 June 2025, that the RATP no longer applies any dimensional limit. If you read that a large suitcase is banned on the Paris Metro, you are reading a page that predates June 2025.

Practical carriage advice survives the rule change. Line 14 is the only Metro line that is fully accessible end to end, with lifts at every station and platform floors level with the trains, which makes it the one line where a heavy case is genuinely painless; every other line has stations where you will meet stairs. The RER B runs direct to Gare du Nord from both Charles de Gaulle and Orly connections, and our getting into Paris from CDG and Orly with bags guide covers that journey, including the honest fact that Radical Storage has no storage point at either airport, so a bag dropped at the airport itself must go to the airport operator's own desk, not the network this site features.

One forward-looking note for Eurostar travellers: the CDG Express rail link, a non-stop service between Gare de l'Est and Charles de Gaulle, is reported by French trade press to open on 28 March 2027, running every 15 minutes from 05:00 to midnight. When it opens, Gare de l'Est, one stop from Gare du Nord, becomes the airport-link station, which will shift where airport-bound travellers want their bags held. Until then, nothing has changed.

Whichever cluster you land on, the booking mechanics are the same and worth one last summary. You reserve a slot, the point's own opening hours govern when you can drop and collect, the day rate is EUR 3.90 per bag with the EUR 1.99 fee appearing at checkout, and cancellation is free any time before the scheduled check-in. Match the point's closing time to your Eurostar departure with a margin for a delayed collection, because a point that closes at 20:00 is useless for a 21:00 train no matter how cheap it is.

Common Questions About Eurostar Baggage And Bag Storage At Gare Du Nord

The pattern across everything on this page is the same: the Eurostar deadline creates a fixed, predictable window, and Paris gives you a priced, hourable answer for every version of it. Luggage Storage in Paris exists to keep those answers honest, including the parts the networks' own marketing pages blur, like the EUR 1.99 checkout fee and the EUR 3,000 per-claim cap behind the EUR 10,000 headline. Check the specific storage point's hours against your own check-in time, book the slot if your day has no slack in it, and the dead window becomes the best hour of the trip instead of the worst.