Empty Weight

What it is

Empty weight is what the bag weighs with nothing in it. It is the simplest number on this site to define, the simplest to measure, and the one that is missing from every single listing we have gathered.

Zero of forty-seven. Not a handful, not a minority. None of them.

It is worth pausing on that, because empty weight is not a difficult figure to obtain. Anyone with a bathroom scale can produce it in thirty seconds, and every manufacturer knows it, because they pay to ship these things.

Why it matters

It decides The Front Door.

Because it comes off your allowance before you have packed anything. Two cases of the same trade size can differ by a kilogram or more, and that kilogram is gone from every trip you take with the heavier one.

Because it is the difference between a bag you carry the length of a terminal and a bag you resent. Volume is a problem you solve once, at home. Weight is a problem you carry.

Because organizers and covers have weights of their own, and they go in before your clothes do. A fourteen-piece cube set is fourteen zips and fourteen panels of fabric, and its listing calls it lightweight without ever saying what it weighs.

What gets written instead

The word lightweight, which appears across the organizer listings with no figure attached anywhere.
Foldable and packable, which is a genuine weight argument for a spare bag and still not a number.
Padded shoulder straps, which describe how a weight is carried rather than what it is.
A named material such as ABS or polypropylene, which hints at density and stops well short of mass.

The listings that do give it

This table is empty, and it is not an oversight. No listing among the 47 gathered here states this figure at all.

Nothing to tabulate. Across every category on this site, zero listings state an empty weight. The row you are looking for does not exist.

A stated size is the size of the body. Wheels, feet and an extended telescoping handle are not usually counted inside it, and the frame at a gate counts all of them.

How to get the number yourself

Weigh yourself on a bathroom scale, then weigh yourself again holding the empty bag, and subtract. The difference is close enough for planning.
Do it before you pack anything, and write the figure inside the bag where you will find it again.
Weigh your organizer set separately. It is part of the bag as far as the scale is concerned.
If you use a luggage cover, weigh that too, and remember it travels with the case.

Worth being careful about

Your carrier publishes its own weight allowances. We print none, because they differ by carrier, by fare and by route.
Compression reduces the space a load takes up. It does not reduce what the load weighs, and the scale reads weight.
We make no claims about what any weight is comfortable to carry. That is not something a website can decide for anyone.
A bathroom scale is not a trade-approved instrument, and neither is the one at check-in your problem until you are standing on it.