Best TSA-Approved Luggage Locks of 2026

The button on the front is the reason to look at this one. If it's standing proud when you reach the hotel, someone opened your bag between the check-in desk and the carousel; if it's flush, nobody did. SURE LOCK makes it a red button that sits proud of the body rather than a discreet marker, which is the version you notice at one in the morning.

Two locks with an alert for very little is the pitch, and the dials are what we appreciated most: oversized white numbers on a matte black body, the easiest of this group to read in a dim room. The thing to know is that these can jam. A lock that refuses to open with the right code dialed in is the failure worth guarding against, and it is cheap to guard against — set both codes when the box arrives, cycle each lock open and shut a few times, and keep the numbers somewhere you'll have them on the trip.

Two is the right count for one traveler: a checked bag and a carry-on, or a suitcase and the daypack you leave at a hostel. A family with four bags wants the Forge set, and anyone who wants a fourth digit wants Puroma. The braided cable and alloy body are the same recipe as the rest of these, and the lifetime warranty against quality defects matters more on a two-pack, because one failure leaves you with a single lock.

A fourth dial takes the code from 1,000 possibilities to 10,000, and Puroma is the least expensive way to get there. What the extra digit doesn't do is speed up screening: a TSA lock is opened with a screener's key, not your combination, so four digits protect your bag from other people, not from the security queue.

Everything around the dial is conventional in a way that suits a soft bag: a flexible cable that bends through zipper pulls, a zinc alloy body with a protective coating, and a push-button release instead of a pull. The cable is the thin braided kind that threads a small pull, and the body sits flat against the case rather than swinging loose. It is light enough to leave on a backpack between trips, which is how a lock ends up actually being used.

This is our pick for anyone who wants more codes without buying four of anything. Give the release a fair trial before you trust it — set the code, cycle the lock open and shut several times, and photograph the dials with your code showing. The mechanism can stick, and a stuck lock on a suitcase at a foreign airport is a bad afternoon.

Some travelers should not be carrying a combination. If you have ever stood in a hotel corridor cycling through codes you were sure of ten minutes earlier, a key is the honest answer, and this Forge pair is the best version of it here: two locks, keyed alike, so one small dimple key opens both and the spare can live in a toiletry bag.

The body is under two inches tall, which is what you want on a tight zipper pull, and the zinc casting has some heft for its size. Keyed entry also removes a whole category of failure — there is no reset sequence to get wrong, no code to forget, and no dial to misread in the dark. Screeners carry their own key for the TSA cylinder, so inspections still happen without anything being cut.

The trade is that a lost keyring is a locked bag. Put one key on the ring you never check and the other in the bag, and treat the pair as the important part of the purchase. For a carry-on, a laptop bag or a case holding something expensive, this is the least fiddly lock in the group.

At the carousel, a bright orange lock on the handle tells you which black rectangle is yours from twenty feet. That's the pitch, and it's better than it sounds: the orange is a flat, saturated coat rather than a thin gloss, four locks come in the box, and the color stops you picking up the wrong bag on the way to a taxi.

The hardware underneath is the same recipe as most of this group — a three-digit resettable dial, a flexible steel cable that bends through zipper pulls, a zinc alloy body — plus a lifetime warranty. Each lock is about three inches across and light enough that four of them disappear into a suitcase, and the cable is long enough to loop two pulls or a D-ring.

The weak point is the dials. The numbers can be hard to read and harder to line up, which is where this set falls behind the SURE LOCK and Forge locks; set all four codes at the kitchen table in daylight rather than in a departures lounge. If your eyesight or your patience is not what it was, a four-digit model with high-contrast numbers will treat you better. For locking four bags and spotting them again, it's the cheerful option here.

Line this up against our top pick and most of the specification matches: four locks, a braided steel cable, a three-digit code, and a red indicator that rises after an inspection. The difference is the reset — a guarded side switch, kept away from the dials, that needs no tool and no fingernail. It's the same job with a different mechanism.

The cable is the part that decides whether you actually use a lock. This one is braided steel, thin enough to bend through the small zipper openings on a soft bag and long enough to loop two pulls together, with the body sitting flat against the case rather than hanging off it.

One piece of housekeeping worth knowing: the alert stays up until you open the lock with your own code, then drops. Do that when you unpack, or you'll spend the rest of the trip unsure whether the bag was searched once or twice.

Why not the top pick, then? Because Forge's relock design is the more useful piece of engineering — the agent's key won't come free until the shackle is closed, so your bag can't travel open. We rate this one close on design and slightly behind on that single point, which makes it the right buy when the side switch is what you want and four locks are what you need.

Most luggage locks are read in bad light — under a hotel-room lamp, in a taxi, on a jet bridge at midnight. ANVIL's selling point is that you can read this one anyway: white numbers on black, behind a window, at a size that doesn't demand glasses. Readability is where it stands out among these, and it comes on a four-digit dial, so 10,000 combinations rather than 1,000.

The yellow body is the second thing you notice, and it earns its keep: a lock that bright is easy to find on a carousel and hard to leave in a hotel room. We stop short of recommending it for every bag because the shackle is rigid — it wants a metal grommet or a generous pull, not two thin zipper cords on a soft case, where a cable lock is simply easier to thread.

Match it to a bag with a solid anchor — a hard-shell case, a locker, a work bag with a proper locking point — and the readability and the fourth digit do the rest. It's the one here we reach for when the light is bad, which is most of the time.

Four locks, four colors, one box. The colors solve a smaller problem than security but a more frequent one: whose bag is whose, and which combination belongs to which lock. Give each color its own code and the pack becomes an index — no note in your phone, no guessing at the hotel door.

The hardware underneath is solid: zinc alloy body, hardened steel shackle, an open alert indicator, and a limited lifetime warranty. On a hard case or a locker it feels like a proper padlock rather than a travel gadget, which is what you want from something with a steel shackle.

The dials are the problem. Chrome numbers on a chrome background are hard to read in anything but good light, and that is the wrong weakness on a lock you will often use at night in a corridor. The combination mechanism can also fight you, with units that resist a code change no matter how carefully you follow the card.

So this is the set for a household with several similar bags and a system: color for the bag, code for the person, alert for the inspection. It is heavier than the cable locks here, which matters on a small daypack and not at all on a checked case. Set and test all four at home, then let the colors do the remembering.