Best tool bags 2023

Recently we named the best tool kits you can buy, but lugging a tool box around isn’t always ideal. Fortunately, a good tool bag can hold everything from spanners to spark plugs securely when you’re on the move.

Whether you’re a seasoned mechanic, an avid amateur or you only grab your tools in an emergency, it’s helpful to have all everything you might need in one place.

And in those circumstances, a tool bag that you can keep in the boot of your car or in your garage is essential. A bag is more flexible than a traditional tool box, and easier to carry around.

Dimensions 230 x 457 x 260 mm

This is a heavy duty bag made with 600-denier fabric reinforced with leather, so it should be long-lasting. With a rigid plastic waterproof base for sturdiness and protection, strong double zips, an adjustable shoulder strap with padding, and 11 external and five interior pockets, the Stanley Fatmax hard base tool bag was the most useful in our test. We found it had plenty of room to fit all our tools, with a useful load limit of 20kg, and at such a keen price it’s a clear winner in this test.

What Car? rating Five stars out of five

How we found the best car tool bags

To find the best tool bags, we filled a variety of bags to the brim with a variety of tools, including anything that an avid amateur mechanic might wish to carry with them. Our haul included hammers, lights, pliers, spanners, screwdrivers, socket wrenches and more, and we packed each item into each bag to see how well they fitted.

As well as how easy each bag was to carry when full, we also assessed its usability, including whether it had any extra features, plus its durability and material quality. As always, price was also taken into consideration.

Dimensions 200 x ‎400 x 300 mm

If this test were based purely on a price-to-pockets ratio, the Silverline bag would win easily. This great-value product has 10 external pockets, eight internal pockets, plus a key fob. There’s only one zip, but does have a wide opening for easy loading and unloading. It also has a functional plastic base in case of bad weather, and it’s made from water-resistant nylon. The adjustable 1.2m shoulder strap means you don’t have to carry it around with your hands when full, too.

What Car? rating Five stars out of five

Dimensions 300 x 170 x 450 mm

We liked that this Draper backpack made it possible to transport tools without having to bear the weight on our wrists. Despite being easy to cart around, you can still put this bag down on wet ground with its rigid base. Plus, the whole bag is made from water-resistant polyester, so it keeps everything dry. The bag features seven internal, two side and five external pockets, four loops for screwdrivers, plus a card/name pocket to let everyone know whose tools they are.

What Car? rating Four stars out of five

Dimensions 280 x 470 x 425 mm

This is the most expensive tool bag on our list. However, it looks good and is well-made. An extendable handle, tough plastic wheels and three stopper legs make this bag easy to move around, even when it’s packed with the 25kg of tools it can hold. The vast inner space with a wide opening has loads of room for bigger tools and features six compact inner pockets for smaller tools, as well as a large document pocket. Plus, there are 11 well-sized outer pockets for the things you need easy access to regularly.

What Car? rating Four stars out of five

Dimensions 250 x 450 x 300 mm

This DeWalt TSTAK tool bag is very high quality, sturdy, durable and can carry up to 30kg, with a padded shoulder strap to help when carrying heavier loads. It’s a clever design that maximises space and adds lots of handy compartments, including two large zip pockets on the outside, front and back. The zipped opening has an impressively wide aperture to easily load tools in, and inside there are six deep pockets and a large mesh pocket. The plastic base protects contents from wet ground, too.

What Car? rating Four stars out of five

Dimensions 470 x 270 x 310 mm

The Airaj bag is made from waterproof material and comes with a thick plastic base, ensuring everything stays dry when it’s on the ground. Three of the eight exterior pockets have a sealable flap, which stopped things falling out in the boot, but they could be deeper. There are also eight interior pockets, with a loose, small plastic tray included too. Price-wise, it sits in the middle of the bags we tested, but it looks like an expensive product and feels well-made.

What Car? rating four stars out of five

Dimensions 305 x 230 x 420 mm

Draper Tools’ sturdy and well-built tote tool bag represents good value for money. With a rigid construction, soft grip handle, and an adjustable shoulder strap, we found it very useful to keep our car cleaning kit in. It isn’t the biggest tool bag we tested, but there are 15 external pockets, one with an elasticated strap at the bottom for taller items, as well as 10 internal pockets and eight elasticated tool holding loops. It fell over a couple of times while driving, though, so is better suited to being kept at home until you need it.

What Car? rating Three stars out of five

Dimensions 310 x 140 x 200 mm

This bag is made from strong material, and we appreciated its myriad of storage options, including six exterior tool loops, three front pouches and three rear mesh pouches. The inside pockets aren’t so good, however, because they’re lined with lightweight plastic that doesn’t feel very high quality. The external tool loops lead to a few screwdrivers clattering around in our boot, and it can be quite tricky to zip up when the bag is full. It’s also small compared with other bags we tested, so we struggled to fit all of our tools in.

What Car? rating Three stars out five

Dimensions 457 x 279 x 25 mm

For small tools, this is a useful little roll up bag to have in your boot. For anything bigger, you’ll want to look elsewhere. We found screwdrivers and hammers fitted absolutely fine in the five zipped sections, but bigger spanners proved too much of a squeeze. It’s made of canvas which makes it a very lightweight product, and it has a convenient D buckle if you want to hang it vertically, as long as you’ve not overloaded it with weighty tools.

What Car? rating Two stars out of five

Dimensions 460 x 180 x 130 mm

This the the cheapest tool bag on our list by some margin, and If you’re looking for something into which you can simply throw your small tools, it will do the job. It’s made from heavy cotton canvas, with webbing handles and a nylon zip, but doesn’t feel as robust as many other bags we tested. It doesn’t have additional pockets or storage areas, either, and it doesn’t have a solid base to keep everything dry on wet ground.

What Car? rating Two stars out of five

The products or services referenced in this story have been reviewed independently by our experts. When you buy using the links on our site, we may earn a commission, but this will never influence our opinion or ratings.

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