Which carriers print a parcel price and which make you enquire

What each company publishes

Ordered by cheapest published price. Companies that publish nothing without a quote form are listed after them rather than ranked, and companies whose site refused the request are listed separately again.

1. Large parcels Large is not a description in this trade, it is a band, and the band is set by measurements rather than by how big the box looks to you.
2. Cheap parcel delivery Cheap is answerable only against what companies actually print, and most of them print nothing.
3. Heavy parcels Above about five kilograms the trade stops pricing on size and starts climbing a weight ladder, and the ladders are steep in different places.
4. Collection and drop-off There are two ways to hand over a parcel and they are not priced the same.
5. Overnight and next day Overnight is sold in two quite different forms and only one of them is a guarantee.
6. Ecommerce shipping A shop's shipping problem is not the price of one parcel, it is that every order lands in a different band and somebody has to decide which.
7. China freight forwarding A forwarder does not fly aircraft or sail ships; it buys space in bulk and resells it, and its quote covers a specific set of legs that is almost never the whole journey.
8. Sea and container freight Sea freight is the cheapest way to move a large quantity of anything from China and the most expensive way to move a small one, because its fixed costs do not shrink with the consignment.
9. USA shipping cost The cheapest published price for a parcel from the UK to the USA in this record is 11.59 pounds, the lowest of five services one broker prices on its USA page.
10. Canada shipping cost Canada has a quirk no other major destination shares: the tax the recipient pays depends on which province they live in, so the same parcel lands at different total costs in Ontario and Alberta.
11. India shipping cost India is one of the better value long haul destinations from the UK and most senders assume the opposite.
12. Europe shipping cost European parcel prices cluster tightly and the differences between them have almost nothing to do with distance.
13. Asia and Gulf shipping cost Asia and the Gulf carry the widest price spread of any region in this record, and it is not explained by distance.
14. Business courier services Business shipping is sold on contracts rather than price lists, which is why comparing published figures gets a small business almost nowhere.
15. High value and fragile High value shipping is decided by contract terms rather than by brand, and the terms are mostly a list of things that are not covered.
16. Pallet delivery costs No company in this record publishes a pallet rate, and that is not an omission: pallet work is quoted per consignment because the variables that set the price are specific to the load.
17. Import duty calculator Free import duty calculators are genuinely useful and routinely misused, because almost everyone enters a guessed commodity code and then trusts the answer.

• Australia 2 companies deliver here
• Bahrain 2 companies deliver here
• Belgium 2 companies deliver here
• Brazil 2 companies deliver here
• Bulgaria 2 companies deliver here
• Canada 2 companies deliver here
• China 2 companies deliver here
• Croatia 2 companies deliver here
• Cyprus 2 companies deliver here
• the Czech Republic 2 companies deliver here
• Egypt 2 companies deliver here
• France 2 companies deliver here
• Germany 2 companies deliver here
• Greece 2 companies deliver here
• Guernsey 2 companies deliver here
• Hong Kong 2 companies deliver here
• Hungary 2 companies deliver here
• India 2 companies deliver here
• Ireland 2 companies deliver here
• the Isle of Man 2 companies deliver here
• Italy 2 companies deliver here
• Japan 2 companies deliver here
• Jersey 2 companies deliver here
• Kenya 2 companies deliver here
• Libya 2 companies deliver here
• Lithuania 2 companies deliver here
• Malaysia 2 companies deliver here
• Malta 2 companies deliver here
• Mauritius 2 companies deliver here
• Montenegro 2 companies deliver here
• the Netherlands 2 companies deliver here
• New Zealand 2 companies deliver here
• Northern Ireland 2 companies deliver here
• Norway 2 companies deliver here
• Pakistan 2 companies deliver here
• Poland 2 companies deliver here
• Portugal 2 companies deliver here
• Qatar 2 companies deliver here
• Romania 2 companies deliver here
• Saudi Arabia 2 companies deliver here
• Singapore 2 companies deliver here
• South Africa 2 companies deliver here
• South Korea 2 companies deliver here
• Spain 2 companies deliver here
• Thailand 2 companies deliver here
• the UAE 2 companies deliver here
• the USA 2 companies deliver here
• Vietnam 2 companies deliver here