Free tool
Gear Packing List Builder
Add gear with real weights, watch the total, and save or print the list.
Total weight
8.85kg
Items counted
6
Heaviest first
- Tent / swag2,600 g
- Water (2 L)2,000 g
- Food (day packs) ×21,800 g
- Sleeping bag1,200 g
- Stove + fuel700 g
- Sleeping mat550 g
Your heaviest line is Tent / swag at 29% of the total — that is the item to question first.
Against your 20 kg target
11 kg to spare
All calculations run on our servers from the values you enter — nothing is stored.
Please note — A saved list is a planning aid, not a guarantee. Confirm critical items — first aid, water capacity, communication and navigation — against the requirements of the specific park and weather you face, because no generic list knows whether tomorrow's forecast has a storm front in it.
Most packing lists fail at the same moment. The night before the trip, on the lounge floor, surrounded by everything that felt essential at the time. Memory is a bad kit auditor. It remembers the marshmallows and forgets the second tarp guyline. This builder is the fix — one row per item, a real weight against each one. And a total that tells the truth before you are twenty clicks from the trailhead.
The tool is deliberately old-fashioned. The list you build is saved into the page address itself, so there is no account, no app and nothing stored on our servers. Bookmark the address and the list is yours. Share it and your co-packer sees the same list. Download it and you get a printable page with tick boxes for the lounge-floor audit.
The weight column is where the value hides. Naming an item is easy. Naming an item and admitting it weighs nine hundred grams is how you notice that your third cushion is the heaviest thing you plan to carry.
Everything here follows the same principle we use in the pack weight calculator. Cut mass where it hurts least, which is almost never where you expected.
Try a preset
How the builder works
Each row takes a name, a weight in grams and a quantity. The builder multiplies weight by quantity, adds every row together, and sorts the finished list heaviest first. Rows you leave blank are ignored, so the ten rows on the form are a space to work in, not a requirement.
The URL is the storage. When you submit the form, the items travel in the query string, and the address in the bar becomes the saved list. Bookmark it, and next trip you open the same list with every weight intact. Change one item, re-submit, and you have a new address. Old versions survive in your browser history, which makes the whole thing quietly version-controlled by accident.
The download button asks for a printable copy. The server renders your exact list as a standalone page with a tick box beside every item, sized for paper. It is the same pattern as our downloadable checklists. Nothing runs in the browser, and the file you get keeps working with no signal at the campsite.
A worked example
Start from the seed list the builder shows on first load. A tent at twenty-six hundred grams, a sleeping bag at twelve hundred, a mat at five hundred and fifty, and a stove and fuel at seven hundred. Two litres of water at two thousand grams, plus two day-food packs at nine hundred each. That is eight thousand eight hundred and fifty grams — about nine kilograms before you have thought about clothes.
Now add the honest rows: a rain jacket at three hundred, a fleece at four hundred, headtorch at ninety, spare batteries at eighty, a first-aid kit at two hundred and fifty, and sun protection at one hundred and fifty. The list reaches ten point one kilograms across twelve rows, and the sorted view says what the pile on the floor never did.
The three heaviest entries — the tent, the water and the food — carry more than half the total between them. That is normal, and it is also the whole point. If ten kilograms feels heavy, the answer is not folding the fleece tighter. It is shopping a one-kilogram-lighter tent or planning a water carry that is two litres shorter.
How to build a good list
Weigh once, use forever. A cheap kitchen scale and one afternoon gives you real grams for every item you own, and those numbers stay valid for years. When a spec sheet and your scale disagree, trust the scale. Manufacturer weights are famously optimistic, usually quoting the minimum trail weight with no pegs, no ridge and no stuff sack.
Put the water in as its own row, separate from the container. Two litres is two thousand grams of payload plus the bottle. And treating them as one number hides the cheapest mass cut in all of camping. Carrying less water because the next creek is reliable.
Use quantity honestly. The couple who each own a rain jacket carry two jackets. The family that shares one stove carries one stove but four mugs. Duplicate the row instead of writing "×2" in the name, so the maths keeps working.
Reading your finished list
The total tells you what you will carry. The heaviest share tells you what to fix first. When one item is over a quarter of the whole list, it is the single lever with the most force on it. Multi-day walkers chasing a lighter kit should be hunting at the top of the sorted list only. The bottom ten items together rarely justify an afternoon of forum research.
If you set a target, the over-under line is the verdict. Landing under target is a green light, and the honest follow-up question is what snuck in that you did not plan. Landing over target is normal on the first pass. Work down the sorted list and ask each heavy item the same question: what breaks if this stays home?
A list that ends on a cliff is a warning sign. If the last five rows are all small comfort items and the first five are the real gear, the structure of your kit is sound. If the middle of the list is a fog of maybes, that is where the lounge-floor audit will hurt.
The two-list trick
Build the list twice: once as everything you want, once as everything you would survive. The gap between the two totals is your comfort budget, and you now know exactly what it costs in grams.
Honest limits of the numbers
Weights are only as good as their sources. Kitchen scales drift, spec sheets lie by omission, and consumables like fuel and food shrink as you use them. The builder adds what you type and nothing else, so garbage in gives a very tidy garbage out. Where you can, weigh the real item in the real configuration you carry.
This tool tracks a single point in time. A full fuel bottle at the trailhead and an empty one at the takeout are the same row with two different truths. Walkers who want the start-weight versus resupply picture should pair this list with the pack weight calculator, which splits consumables out on purpose.
The URL-as-storage design has one real limit: very long lists make long addresses. Ten rows fits comfortably in any browser. If you are planning an entire group kitchen this way, download the printable copy and keep the paper as the master.
The formula
Total = Σ (item weight × quantity) — your list lives in the page address, so saving it is just bookmarking the URL
- Item weight
- Grams for one of that item, weighed or from the spec sheet. Include the stuff sack and the pegs.
- Quantity
- How many you actually carry. Two rain jackets for a couple is two, not one.
- Target
- An optional ceiling in kilograms. The result tells you how far over or under the finished list lands.
Typical weights to check your rows against
| Item | Typical grams | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 L of water in a bottle | 1,030 | The heaviest thing most lists hold, and the easiest to plan around |
| 2-person tent (packaged) | 2,200–3,200 | Packaged weight beats trail weight for honest lists |
| Three-season sleeping bag | 900–1,400 | A 400 g lighter bag costs more than most other cuts combined |
| Canister stove with igniter | 120–350 | The whole cookset minus fuel is often under 500 g |
| Basic first-aid kit | 200–300 | Building it yourself halves the weight of the shop version |
| Spare batteries (headtorch) | 20–80 | The row everyone forgets until the batteries are dead |
Key terms
- Base weight
- Everything you carry excluding consumables — no water, no food, no fuel. The number light-weight hikers actually compete on.
- Consumables
- Payload that shrinks with distance: water, food and fuel. Their weight is highest at the start and irrelevant at the end.
- Packaged weight
- What the box says including pegs, straps and stuff sack. Closer to truth than the minimum trail weight printed underneath it.
- Query string
- The part of a web address after the question mark. Here it holds your entire list, which is how the builder saves without storing anything.
- Worn weight
- What is on your body rather than in the pack — boots, clothes, hat. Outside this list by design, but part of the real total.
Pro tips
- Weigh every item once at home with a kitchen scale, then keep one saved list as your master template for future trips.
- Name rows with the brand and model — "Feast 26 bag" beats "sleeping bag" when you compare lists against shop prices.
- Put the heaviest three items at the top of the paper copy, where your eye lands first during the pack-up.
- Download the printable list the night before, so the audit happens on the floor with everything out, not in the car with everything in.
× Common mistakes
- Quoting minimum trail weights from spec sheets and acting surprised at the scale.
- Writing quantity as a note in the item name instead of the quantity column, so the maths silently skips it.
- Building the list once and never updating it after gear gets replaced or repaired.
- Counting water twice — once as bottles and once as the load — and then trusting the wrong total.
Frequently asked questions
Is my packing list stored anywhere?+
No. The list lives entirely in the page address, which is why submitting once is also saving. There is no account, no database and no cookie holding your gear. Anyone with the address can see the list, so treat the link like a postcard rather than a sealed letter.
Can I share the list with my camping partner?+
Yes — send the page address. They open the exact same list with every weight and quantity intact, and can submit their own edits, which produces their own address. If you want one agreed master, download the printable copy and keep editing from that until the trip.
What grams should I use for food?+
Plan by weight per person per day, because calories-per-gram arithmetic is where food carries get quietly heavy. Most dehydrated and shop-food combinations land between seven hundred and nine hundred grams per person per day before you add comfort snacks. Round up for the last day, when morale is a real requirement.
Why does my list total differ from the shop weights?+
Shops usually print minimum trail weight: the tent body, fly and poles, with no pegs, no ridge lines and no stuff sack. Your real carried weight includes all of that. Weigh the packaged item and write that number down once, and the argument with the spec sheet ends forever.
Can I use this for a car-camping kit instead of a pack?+
Absolutely. Weight tracking on a swag list has the same effect as on a pack. The third camp chair stops being free the moment it has nine hundred grams next to its name. For vehicle trips, set the target to what your tray or canopy actually carries comfortably and treat the total as load, not pack stress.
Is there a limit on how many rows I can use?+
The form offers ten rows, which covers most overnight kits. Bigger group lists are better split into two saved addresses. Kitchen crew and shelter crew — or moved to the printable download. This has no row limit and lives on the fridge until the next trip.
How we built this calculator
- Written by
- Track & Canopy Editorial Team — Gear Desk
- How we calculate
- Row logic, seed weights and the reference table follow the packaged-versus-trail-weight reality our team logs when weighing gear on the kitchen scale, consistent with the guidance Australian parks agencies give on preparing loaded packs for multi-day travel.
- Sources & standards
- Last reviewed
- 15 October 2026
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Track & Canopy — Practical gear advice for Australian conditions. Estimates are planning aids, not engineering advice.