How to Get a Good Seat on Ryanair Without Paying Extra

Flying Ryanair can be extremely affordable, but one of the airline’s biggest upsell tactics is seat selection. If you don’t pay to choose a seat, you’re assigned a seat randomly at check-in. That often means middle seats. However, with this little strategy, you can make sure you get a seat that you are happy with, without paying a thing.

How Ryanair Allocates Seats:

Ryanair hasn’t publicly shared the exact algorithm behind its “random” seat allocation. However, here’s what we know:

• Paid seats go first. Passengers who choose and pay for seats block those seats before the free allocation begins.
• Free allocation happens at check-in. If you wait until the free check-in window opens (24 hours before your flight), the system assigns whatever seats are left.
• Middle seats are often left last. This is why free seat allocation often lands you in the middle — because aisle and window seats are snapped up first by paying passengers.

But what if middle seats were already taken?

How to Get a Good Seat:

1. Create a new booking for your flight with the amount of passengers being the same amount as the seats you would like to avoid (E.g. If there are 8 middle seats left, create 8 passengers).
2. After skipping login and naming your “passengers” you can allocate their seats into the ones that you do not want
3. This will add to the basket all the seats, making sure that they are frozen for a few minutes.
4. Go on to your actual booking in a separate tab to check-in and opt for ‘random seat allocation’ for free.
5. As all the bad seats are frozen, you will receive a seat that you are happy with.

Useful tip - make sure to get your seats when you check in, this means there is a smaller pool of seats and therefore less to add into your basket.