Luggage storage and left luggage in Zurich

Zurich’s main station is also one of the busiest in Europe, and if you’re changing trains, catching a flight later in the day, or squeezing in a day trip before check-in, you’ll need somewhere to put your bags for a few hours. The good news is that Zürich Hauptbahnhof still has plenty of lockers. The less good news is that the staffed counter and the door-to-door baggage services some travellers remember from years ago have both been scrapped, so the options are narrower than they used to be. Here’s what’s actually available, what it costs, and where to find it.

Where to stash your bags at Zürich HB

Zürich Hauptbahnhof runs entirely on self-service lockers now — there is no staffed left-luggage desk where you hand a bag to an attendant and get a ticket back. The lockers are coin- and card-operated, grouped in two main locations, and split into three sizes.

Locker size	Fits	Approx. price per 24h	Typical use
Small	A backpack or laptop bag	CHF 6	Day pack, camera gear
Medium	A carry-on case	CHF 9	Weekend suitcase
Large	A full-size suitcase	CHF 12	Checked luggage, two bags

Payment is by card or Twint at most machines now; a handful still take coins, but don’t count on it. You pay when you open the locker, and if you go over the paid period the door won’t release until you top up at the machine. Most banks are limited to a maximum stay of 72 hours before staff clear them out, so this is not a place to store bags for a multi-day hike in the mountains and forget about them.

The two locations worth knowing:

• Löwenstrasse level — one floor down from the main concourse, near the Coop supermarket and the entrance used by regional and S-Bahn trains. This is the larger bank and the one most visitors use, since it sits directly below where trains for Lucerne, Bern, and the airport depart.
• Sihlquai side — a smaller set of lockers on the north side of the station, useful if you’ve arrived via the Sihlquai tram stop or are staying in the Kreis 5 district and want to avoid the crowds around the main hall.

Both locations fill up on weekend mornings and during the Zürich Street Parade or Sechseläuten, so if you’re travelling at a peak time it’s worth having a backup plan.

What happened to the staffed left-luggage counter

If you’ve used Swiss stations before and remember a proper baggage counter with an attendant, that service is gone at Zürich HB, as it is at most Swiss stations now. SBB phased out the staffed Gepäckaufbewahrung desks in favour of the locker banks described above, partly to cut costs and partly because lockers don’t need opening hours. The practical effect is that if the lockers are full — which does happen — there is no human backstop inside the station itself.

Independent storage near the station

When the SBB lockers are full, or if you need to store an oddly shaped bag, a bike box, or something too large for even the biggest locker, the fallback is a privately run storage point. Several shops and cafés within a short walk of Zürich HB partner with online luggage-storage platforms, where you book a slot, drop the bag with the shopkeeper, and collect it later with a QR code.

Expect to pay somewhere in the CHF 6 to 8 per bag, per day range, similar to the station lockers but with a person to hand the bag to, which some travellers prefer for peace of mind with bulkier items. These points typically keep normal shop hours, so check the listed hours before relying on one for an early morning or late evening drop-off — unlike the lockers, they’re not open around the clock.

With bags safely out of the way, a few hours in the city stop feeling like a chore and start feeling like the reason you came. A guided bike ride through the old town and along the lake with a local covers a lot of ground quickly if you’ve only got a morning free.

If it’s evening and your train isn’t until later, a guided bar crawl through Zürich’s nightlife district is a reasonable way to fill the gap without needing to plan anything yourself. And if you’d rather stay outdoors, there’s a walking and cable car route with panoramic views over the lake that fits into two or three hours without much walking pressure.

Left luggage at other Swiss stations

If your trip includes stops beyond Zurich, the same locker-only model applies almost everywhere on the SBB network, though sizes and exact prices vary by station. Lucerne and Bern both have decent-sized locker banks near their main entrances; smaller stations like those serving the Rhine Falls or Appenzell have only a handful of lockers, and they do fill up in summer. If you’re doing a day trip from Zurich and plan to store a bag at the other end rather than carrying it, check locker availability isn’t something you can do remotely — it’s first come, first served — so build in a few minutes’ buffer on arrival.

Station	Locker banks	Notes
Zürich HB	Löwenstrasse, Sihlquai	Largest selection, most reliable availability
Lucerne	Main hall, lakeside exit	Busy with day-trippers in summer
Bern	Underground shopping level	Good size range
Basel SBB	Near platform 1	Fewer large lockers
Interlaken Ost	Small bank by ticket hall	Limited large sizes, fills up with hikers

Sending luggage ahead: what’s no longer possible

Switzerland used to have a genuinely useful system where you could check a bag at one station and have it appear at another, or check it straight through to your flight from a city-centre desk. Both of those services — station-to-station baggage forwarding and off-airport check-in — have been discontinued and, as of this review, have not returned. It’s worth knowing this before you plan a trip around the assumption that you can drop a bag in Zurich and pick it up in Zermatt or Lugano a few hours later; you can’t. The realistic options if you want your main luggage somewhere other than with you are:

• Carry it and use lockers at each end of a day trip.
• Book accommodation with early check-in or a luggage room, so you drop bags there before you’ve officially checked in.
• Use a private courier or taxi transfer between two fixed addresses, which works but costs considerably more than a locker and needs to be booked in advance.

None of these is as convenient as the old forwarding service, so build extra slack into your itinerary rather than assuming your bags will be waiting for you somewhere.

Getting to the airport with your luggage

Zürich Airport (ZRH) sits about 10 minutes by train from Zürich HB, with departures every few minutes on the S-Bahn and mainline services — see our full breakdown of getting from the airport to the city centre for platform numbers and ticket options. Because off-airport check-in no longer exists, you’ll be carrying your bags the whole way and checking in airside. Zürich Airport itself has luggage lockers in the check-in halls (Airside Center and the main departures level), useful if you’ve got a long layover between checking out of your hotel and your flight, or if you’re catching a connecting flight later in the day and want to explore the airport’s shops without dragging a suitcase around.

Airport lockers cost a bit more than the station ones — typically CHF 8 to 15 for 24 hours depending on size — reflecting the airport’s generally higher prices for everything from coffee to parking. If you’re weighing up a Swiss Travel Pass against a Zürich Card for your trip, note that neither covers locker fees; they’re paid separately regardless of which pass you’re carrying.

Practical tips for using the lockers

A few things make the difference between a smooth locker experience and a frustrating one:

• Have a card or Twint ready. Cash-only machines are increasingly rare and you don’t want to be hunting for coins with a train to catch.
• Note your locker number and code. The machines print a receipt or send a code to your phone; photograph it as a backup, since a lost code means involving station staff to open the locker.
• Check the maximum stay before you pay. Most lockers cap out at 72 hours; if your onward trip is longer than that, a locker is the wrong tool and you should look at accommodation storage instead.
• Avoid lockers for valuables. SBB’s terms explicitly exclude liability for cash, jewellery, passports, and similar items left in lockers. Keep those on your person.
• Weekend mornings are the tightest. If you’re arriving on a Saturday during the Zürich Street Parade or another festival weekend, expect the main locker bank to be close to full by mid-morning.

If you’re new to the Swiss rail network more broadly, or working out how ZVV public transport fits together with your intercity tickets, it’s worth reading up before you arrive rather than figuring it out with a suitcase in hand. Zurich rewards a bit of pre-trip planning, and luggage logistics are one of the few genuinely fiddly parts of an otherwise smooth transport system — see our notes on common first-time mistakes in Zurich for the other ones.

Building luggage stops into your itinerary

If you’re only in the city for a short stay, working out where your bags go matters more than it sounds. Someone spending one day in Zurich between two overnight trains will likely need a locker for the full day; someone following one of our multi-day itineraries has more flexibility, since checked-in accommodation removes the problem entirely for most of the trip. Either way, it’s worth deciding on your storage plan before you land rather than working it out at the station with a queue building behind you.

For visitors adding a side trip to the Rhine Falls or heading out to Lucerne for the day, the same logic applies: if you’re checking out of your Zurich accommodation that morning but not catching your onward train until evening, a locker at Zürich HB is almost always simpler than trying to time a bag drop with a day trip. And if cost is a factor across the whole trip, our guide to Zurich travel costs puts locker fees in context against the rest of a daily budget — a few francs for storage is rarely the expense that catches people out in this city; the coffee and the hotel room usually are.

For a broader sense of where to base yourself so these logistics are less of an issue in the first place, see our guide to where to stay in Zurich, and if you want to make the most of a stopover with bags stowed, a private half-day trip out to Baden along the Limmat is a good way to use a longer gap between trains without needing to touch your luggage again until you’re back.

The bottom line

Zürich HB’s lockers cover the basic need well: cheap-ish, reliable, and open around the clock. What’s missing compared to a few years ago is any staffed alternative or a way to send bags ahead without carrying them yourself. Plan for self-service, keep your payment method and locker code handy, and don’t expect the airport check-in shortcut that used to exist. For everything else — timing your train to the airport, working out passes, or fitting in a day trip — the rest of this site covers the details.