How Much Luggage Can You Bring On The Paris Metro And RER?

For most of the last decade the honest answer to "how much luggage can I bring on the Paris Metro" was a number: 75 centimetres, enforced with a 150 EUR fixed penalty (see Last Day In Paris). That rule is gone. In a written answer to the National Assembly published in the Journal Officiel on 24 June 2025, the Ministry of Transport stated that the RATP "n'a plus de limitation de dimensions", that it no longer applies any dimensional limit, and that any bag a traveller can carry is allowed as long as it does not obstruct other passengers or present a danger. Almost every guide still published online repeats the old 75 cm limit. This page does not, because the government's own answer supersedes it.

The practical picture, though, is unchanged. A suitcase is now legal on every line, but only Metro line 14 is fully step-free, and the stations you are most likely to change at, Chatelet-Les-Halles, Gare du Nord, Montparnasse, were built generations ago with stairs as the default. The rule changed. The stairs did not.

How Much Luggage Can I Bring On The Paris Metro?

You can bring any luggage you are able to carry yourself, of any size, on the Paris Metro and RER. The 75 cm dimensional limit was dropped by the RATP following a ministerial answer published in June 2025, and no replacement size cap exists. The only conditions are that your bag must not obstruct other passengers or their movement, and it must not contain anything dangerous. There is no weight limit and no bag count limit.

That is the whole rule, and it is worth being precise about where it comes from. The Ministry of Transport's answer to parliamentary question 6665, published in the Journal Officiel on 24 June 2025, states that in a spirit of harmonisation the RATP has clarified its baggage rules and no longer applies a dimensional limitation. Bags, parcels and suitcases a traveller can carry are authorised provided they do not disturb other passengers or their circulation in RATP spaces and vehicles, and do not have a dangerous character, meaning blunt or cutting objects.

The answer also recounts why the question was asked at all. The old rule, banning any bag whose largest dimension exceeded 75 cm and any object held vertically such as skis, came from an obsolete internal regulation. It was officially restated on 7 May 2025 after a public controversy over travellers being fined on their way to stations and airports with bags that were perfectly legal on trains and planes. Six weeks later the rule was gone. You can read the full exchange on the National Assembly's published question page.

What this means for you is simple. Two suitcases and a backpack? Legal. A 90 cm duffel? Legal. Skis? Legal again, carried however you can manage them. What is not legal is the bag that blocks a doorway at Chatelet in the evening rush, and the RATP's staff can still ask you to wait for a less crowded train on those grounds. If your plan involves hauling a large case across the network at peak hour, the honest advice is that the rule is on your side and the crowd is not.

For travellers whose real question is where to put the bag before riding, the biggest interchange of all is the obvious candidate. Chatelet-Les-Halles links Metro lines 1, 4, 7, 11 and 14 with RER lines A, B and D, and it has storage points of its own.

Can I Bring Luggage On The Paris Metro At Rush Hour?

Yes, there is no time of day when luggage is banned from the Metro. The rule is the same at 08:30 as at 14:00: any bag you can carry is allowed provided it does not obstruct others. In practice, the weekday peaks of roughly 08:00 to 09:30 and 17:30 to 19:00 are when a large suitcase causes the most friction, and when staff are most likely to ask you to let trains pass.

The distinction matters because travellers often read "allowed" as "advisable". On line 1 between Chatelet and Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, or on any RER A train through the business district, a wheeled suitcase at peak time is a slow-moving obstacle in a fast-moving crowd. Nothing in the rules prevents you from taking it. Nothing about the experience will be pleasant either.

A few practical habits make the difference. Board the middle or rear of the train rather than the carriage by the escalator, where everyone piles in. Stand with the case in front of you rather than trailing it behind, so it moves when you move. On the RER, which has more floor space and fewer stops, luggage is genuinely easier than on the Metro, and the double-decker trains on lines A, B and D have vestibule areas at each end of the carriage where a case fits without blocking seats.

The one moment to plan around is a station change with no lift. That is a question of infrastructure, not rules, and it deserves its own section.

Which Paris Metro Stations Have Lifts?

Only Metro line 14 is fully accessible end to end, with lifts at every station and platform floors level with the trains. Every other Metro line has stations without lifts, a legacy of infrastructure that predates the 2005 accessibility law. The RER is generally easier than the Metro, and at interchange stations you should check the specific exit, because one exit can have a lift while another has only stairs.

Line 14 is the answer most guides never give. It runs from Saint-Denis Pleyel in the north to Orly Airport in the south, fully automated, with platform screen doors and level boarding at every stop, and it passes through Chatelet and Gare de Lyon. If your route can be built around line 14, a heavy case becomes a non-event. Since 2024 it has also reached Orly directly, which makes it the single most useful line in Paris for an airport traveller with luggage.

Everywhere else, the honest position is that accessibility is station by station. The RATP publishes accessibility information per station, and the network-wide count of step-free stations is not a figure this site can responsibly quote, because no official sourced number was found in research. What is solid is the structural fact: line 14 is the only line where you are guaranteed no stairs.

The exit matters as much as the station. At a big interchange, the exit with the lift may be a five minute walk from the exit you actually want, and that walk can be underground corridors with more stairs. If you are arriving at Chatelet-Les-Halles with bags, the practical move is to drop them there: the Chatelet cluster has storage points rated 4.76 across 2,979 reviews on its published points, open from as early as 08:00 and closing as late as 23:00 depending on the point, at the standard Paris rate of EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 per-bag checkout fee.

Taking The RER B With Luggage

The RER B is the main rail link between Charles de Gaulle Airport, Gare du Nord, Chatelet-Les-Halles and Saint-Michel, and luggage is allowed on it with no size or count limit. It is a commuter line at peak times, so a suitcase is easiest outside the weekday peaks. There is no published luggage-specific restriction on the RER, and the same no-obstruction rule from the Metro applies.

The RER B is the line most airport arrivals end up on, whether they planned to or not. It stops at Gare du Nord, where the Eurostar terminal sits upstairs, and at Chatelet-Les-Halles in the centre. The trains are double-deckers with vestibules at each end of the carriage, and those vestibules are where suitcases belong: out of the seating area, against the wall, within your sight.

Two honest warnings. First, the RER B is one of the busiest lines in Paris, and between 08:00 and 09:30 it is standing room only with commuters who have no patience for a case across the aisle. Second, keep the bag with you and keep hold of it. The line passes through the main visitor corridors of the city, and an unattended bag is not merely a theft risk, it is a security event: SNCF states that an unattended bag triggers announcements, then a security perimeter, then sniffer dogs or police, and that dealing with one takes 19 minutes on average, delaying everyone on the line.

One change worth knowing about is coming to the airport side. The CDG Express, a non-stop rail link between Gare de l'Est and Charles de Gaulle, is reported by trade press to open on 28 March 2027, running every 15 minutes from 05:00 to midnight. When it opens, Gare de l'Est becomes an airport-link station, which will change where travellers want to leave bags on that side of the city. Until then, the RER B remains the airport rail link, and the storage clusters at Gare du Nord and Chatelet are where airport bags get parked.

If you are arriving on Eurostar rather than a plane, the baggage allowance is generous and worth knowing before you decide how many bags to drag onto the Metro. Eurostar allows two pieces of luggage plus one item of hand luggage on Standard and Plus fares, three plus one on Premier, and states plainly that "unlike airlines, there's no strict weight limit per bag. If you can carry it safely yourself, you're good to go." The details are on Eurostar's own luggage page.

Excess bags are charged from GBP 35 (EUR 30) each and oversized items from GBP 60, which is often the moment a traveller decides to store a bag in Paris instead of carrying it to London. If that is your situation, the interchange where the Eurostar meets the Metro and RER is the natural place to solve it before you descend into the network.

Fines, Abandoned Bags And The Rules That Still Apply

The 75 cm size rule is gone, but the law of 28 April 2025 created real penalties for abandoned baggage on the RATP and SNCF: 72 EUR for involuntary abandonment, 150 EUR for an unlabelled bag, and 180 EUR for deliberate abandonment, each rising sharply if unpaid. A free anonymous QR-code luggage label is available in stations. Never leave a bag unattended on the Metro, even briefly.

The size limit was the rule everyone remembered, and it was the rule that was dropped. What replaced it in force is a law about abandonment, not about dimensions. The law of 28 April 2025 on transport security, as reported by French consumer press, sets three tiers of fixed penalty applying to SNCF, RATP and other public carriers: 72 EUR, rising to 450 EUR, for involuntary abandonment; 150 EUR, rising to 750 EUR, where the bag carries no label; and 180 EUR, rising to 1,500 EUR, for manifest voluntary abandonment. Labelling is compulsory in SNCF stations and on TER, Corail and TGV services, and after a joint SNCF and RATP trial a free anonymous QR-code label became a permanent service, obtainable in stations and carrying your surname, first name and phone number. You can read the reporting at MoneyVox's summary of the law.

The practical translation: the old advice "just leave the bag by the pillar for a minute" is now a fineable act, and an unlabelled bag is treated more severely than a labelled one. Pick up the free QR label if you are carrying a case through stations for any length of time. It costs nothing and it changes which tier of penalty applies to you if the bag is ever separated from you.

None of this makes the Metro hostile to luggage. It makes the network hostile to unattended luggage, which is a different thing. A bag in your hand, on any line, at any hour, is legal and ordinary. A bag on its own triggers a 19-minute security procedure and a fine.

When Storing The Bag Beats Dragging It Across The Network

Storing beats carrying when your route crosses more than one interchange without a lift, when you are travelling at peak time, or when your day involves a museum or monument, since no major Paris venue admits a full-size suitcase. Radical Storage points across Paris run EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus a EUR 1.99 per-bag checkout fee, so one bag for one day is EUR 5.89 in arithmetic on those published figures.

The venue point deserves emphasis because it catches almost every visitor eventually. Research across the official pages of the Louvre, the Catacombs, the Conciergerie, the Palais Garnier, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe found that no major Paris museum or monument accepts a full-size suitcase. The Louvre caps bags at 55 x 35 x 20 cm, the Catacombs at 40 x 30 x 20 cm with no cloakroom at all, and the Palais Garnier bans travel luggage outright under the Vigipirate security plan. The full venue-by-venue detail is in our guide to Paris museum and landmark bag rules.

So the shape of a typical visitor's day is: arrive at a station with a suitcase, ride the Metro to the hotel, and then discover that the afternoon plan, the Louvre, the Catacombs, the Eiffel Tower, cannot happen with the case in tow. The bag has to go somewhere. That is the moment this site exists for, and it is why the storage clusters sit where they do, at the stations and the interchanges rather than at the sights.

Being honest about the alternatives: the official SNCF consigne inside a station is cheaper for a short stop. At Gare du Nord the staffed SNCF counter charges EUR 4.00 for up to 4 hours against EUR 5.89 for a day at a Radical Storage point, though for 12 to 24 hours the SNCF price is EUR 9.50, which is more expensive. And SNCF itself warns that its station lockers "peuvent ponctuellement etre completes", they can fill up, and can be closed for works. The full worked comparison is in our guide to Paris bag storage versus the station consigne. What the station consigne cannot do is follow you to Montmartre or the Marais, and two stations, Saint-Lazare and Bercy, have no in-station consigne at all, which is why the storage clusters around them matter.

At Saint-Lazare specifically, the station where Metro lines 3, 12, 13 and 14 meet six suburban rail lines, there is no SNCF locker at all. The Radical Storage cluster there covers it instead: 10 storage points, rated 4.79 across 2,305 reviews on its published points, opening from 08:30 at the earliest and running to 23:59 at the latest, at the standard EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 fee.

A Station-By-Station Way To Think About It

Build your Metro day around one storage stop rather than zero or three. Drop the bag at the first major interchange on your route, ride the network unencumbered, and collect it on the way out. The clusters at Chatelet-Les-Halles, Saint-Lazare and the mainline stations all run the same EUR 3.90 per bag per day rate plus the EUR 1.99 per-bag fee, so the decision is about geography and hours, not price.

The reason to think in terms of one stop is that Paris's rail geography funnels you through a handful of nodes whether you like it or not. Chatelet-Les-Halles is the centre of the spider's web: five Metro lines, three RER lines, and a storage cluster of 10 points rated 4.76 across 2,979 reviews. Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon anchor the north and east. Montparnasse and Saint-Lazare anchor the south and west. Almost any cross-city journey with a suitcase passes through one of them, and that is where the bag should come off.

Hours are per point and vary, which is worth saying plainly: these are ordinary shops and hotels holding bags behind a counter, and each point's hours come from its own card. The earliest-opening and latest-closing point in each cluster is what the table shows, not a guarantee that every point keeps those hours. Check the specific point before you plan a 22:00 collection.

If your day ends somewhere specific, a dinner in the Marais, a last walk along the Seine, reverse the logic: store near where you will be at the end, not where you start. The Luggage Storage in Paris directory is organised by district and station so you can pick the end-of-day point rather than the arrival one.

What Changes In 2027, And What Does Not

The CDG Express rail link is reported to open on 28 March 2027, making Gare de l'Est a direct airport station in 20 minutes, which will shift where airport travellers want to store bags. Nothing else sourced changes the luggage picture: no new size rule, no fare change, no new restriction on the Metro or RER is scheduled. The 2025 rules described above are the ones that apply.

The CDG Express is the one dated change on the horizon. Trade press reports it running non-stop between Gare de l'Est and Charles de Gaulle every 15 minutes from 05:00 to midnight, more than three years behind its original pre-Olympics target. When it opens, the Gare de l'Est storage cluster, 10 points rated 4.73 across 1,245 reviews, becomes an airport-side option for the first time, and the RER B loses its monopoly on the airport rail link.

What does not change is worth listing, because the internet is full of stale claims. There is no size limit on Metro luggage. There is no weight limit. There is no hour at which bags are banned. There is no planned return of the 75 cm rule. The rules that do bind you are the no-obstruction condition and the abandonment penalties, and the second of those is solved by a free QR label and by not letting the bag out of your sight.

And for the family heading to Disneyland Paris, one specific note: the parks ban bags over 55 x 40 x 25 cm including wheels, pockets and handles, so the suitcase cannot come in at all, and the park's own Guest Storage charges 15 EUR per day for a large item. The storage cluster at the park's station covers this at the standard EUR 3.90 per bag per day plus the EUR 1.99 fee, with 3 points rated 4.61 from 64 reviews. The full rules are in our guide to Disneyland Paris luggage rules.

The short version of this entire page: the law says yes, the stairs say maybe, and the sights say no. Take the bag on the Metro if the route is lift-friendly and the hour is calm. Store it if it is not. Either way, the 75 cm rule you read elsewhere is out of date, and the fine you should actually worry about is the one for leaving the bag alone.

Common Questions About Luggage On The Paris Metro And RER