Questions people actually ask

The cheapest price we hold for a parcel sent within Ireland is €7.00 at the 0.5 kg band with GLS, and €8.85 at 2 kg. Every figure comes from a real quote request rather than a rate card.

A 1 kg parcel starts at €8.85 with GLS, quoted 1–3 days.

The full price table, band by band

For something small and flat, An Post’s packet rate at €4.40 for up to 100 g over the counter is hard to beat, and no courier price we hold gets near it at that weight.

Above packet weight, a courier booked online is generally cheaper, and the gap widens as the parcel gets heavier. The honest answer depends entirely on which of the two you are holding, which is why we publish both sides.

An Post against couriers, by weight

An Post’s published standard rates are €9.00 for a domestic parcel up to 2 kg and €13.00 up to 10 kg, with a 20 kg ceiling. Read on anpost.com 14 August 2026, and they do not refresh with our weekly check.

For comparison, the cheapest courier price we hold at the 10 kg band within Ireland is €10.85 with GLS.

We automatically check up-to-date pricing for every option, every route, every weight band, and store exactly what comes back, so you can find what’s best for you at a glance.

Nothing is estimated, averaged or rounded. If a route comes back empty, we leave the row empty rather than guess at it.

Because couriers price in steps, and we ask in the same steps: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 kg. A 2.4 kg parcel prices at the 3 kg band here, exactly as it would when you book.

Round up, always. A parcel a gram over its band is priced at the next one, at the counter and at the door.

Two reasons, both normal. International lanes are quoted from a Dublin 2 collection address to a reference address in the destination country, so your own Eircode and the delivery address can nudge the figure.

Partner sites also run promotions and surcharges that come and go between our checks. Treat ours as the shortlist and theirs as the price you pay.

More on how the weekly check works

Prices display exactly as the partner’s booking system displays them, so the VAT treatment is whatever that system quotes you. We don’t re-do their sums or strip anything out.

The total you’re actually asked for appears on the partner’s checkout before you commit to anything, so it’s worth a glance there if VAT matters to you, a business sending regularly will usually want the invoice from them either way.

The partner whose site the book link opens. Booking completes on our partner’s secure site at the price shown: they take the payment, they issue the label, and they’re who you deal with afterwards.

There is no checkout on PostCompare and no account to make. We never see your card, your address or your parcel.

Usually yes, you print the label at home and tape it to the box. Some services instead send a code you scan at the drop-off point, and the label is printed for you there.

Every offer is flagged with which one it is, so you can filter the printer-only services out if you don’t have one.

Both exist and they’re priced differently. Some services want the parcel left at a shop or a locker, some collect from your door, and plenty of carriers will do either.

Each price is marked on the results page. Worth checking before you book, a cheap drop-off is no bargain if the nearest shop is twenty minutes away.

For collections, booking before early afternoon usually gets you a next-working-day pickup; after that it rolls to the following day. For drop-offs, what matters is the shop’s own last collection, often mid-afternoon and earlier on a Saturday.

The exact cutoff belongs to the courier and appears on the partner’s site when you pick a date. Transit estimates here are working days and they start when the parcel is collected or scanned in, not when you book.

We quote the 2 kg band with a box of 33 × 25 × 20 cm, which is about a large shoebox: a hardback and a jumper, or a pair of shoes in their box with room to spare.

On size alone, a 2 kg parcel can reach 10,000 cm³, a cube of roughly 22 cm a side, before a courier starts charging on volume instead of the scales.

What every weight band fits

Length × width × height in centimetres, divided by 5,000 for a courier. You are charged on whichever is greater, that figure or the weight on the scales, rounded up to the next band.

An Post divides by 6,000 rather than 5,000, so the same box gives a lower figure at the counter. That difference is published on anpost.com and was read 14 August 2026.

Work out your own box, both ways

We compare parcels up to 30 kg, which is roughly where consumer parcel pricing stops. An Post standard post stops at 20 kg, with a length limit of 1.5 m and length plus girth of 3 m.

An Post packets, the cheaper product, are capped at 2 kg with length plus width plus depth of 900 mm and no single side over 600 mm. Limits read on anpost.com 14 August 2026.

Most services include a small amount of cover as standard and sell more at checkout. Where the included figure is published, we show it on the offer.

The exclusions are the courier’s, not ours, cash, jewellery, glass and similar are usually off the list, and a poorly packed box can void a claim. It’s all on the partner’s page before you pay, and it’s worth ten seconds if the contents matter.

Anything leaving the EU needs a customs declaration saying what’s inside and what it’s worth, and the partner’s booking flow walks you through it. Get the description and value right; vague declarations are what hold parcels up.

Whoever receives it may be asked for duty or VAT before it’s handed over. That charge is set by the destination country and has nothing to do with the shipping price you see here.

Customs for parcels to the UK, field by field

The usual list: aerosols, loose batteries, perfume, alcohol over the counter limits, anything flammable, and cash. Each courier keeps its own version of that list and the partner shows it before you pay.

If you’re unsure about an item, check the prohibited list for that exact service rather than assuming. An undeclared restricted item is the most common reason a parcel gets held.

We stop at 30 kg because that’s roughly where consumer parcel pricing stops. Past that you’re into freight and pallets, which is priced case by case rather than off a grid.

The couriers all have business teams who will quote a heavier shipment properly. Go to them directly, a comparison of the wrong product would only cost you money.

One parcel per quote for now; the weekly grid is built that way. Price the heaviest box to get a feel for the carriers worth using.

If you’re sending a few boxes to the same address, the partner sites handle multi-parcel bookings once you’re on them, and the per-box price usually improves.

Yes, and no customs declaration is needed in either direction. The cheapest price we hold to Northern Ireland at 2 kg is €13.00 with GLS.

An Post prices Northern Ireland in the same zone as the Republic, so its domestic parcel and packet rates apply, which is usually the cheaper route for anything light. Our own transit figures on that lane look slow, and we explain why rather than smoothing them over.

Why Northern Ireland looks slow in our data

The cheapest service we hold to the United Kingdom at 2 kg quotes 1–3 days and costs €13.79 with UPS. Faster services are available at a multiple of that price.

Every estimate is in working days counted from collection, not from booking, and none of them includes time spent in customs clearance. Quoted, not guaranteed.

Transit to every destination

For Great Britain, yes. It has been outside the EU customs union since 1 January 2021, and An Post issues a CN23 declaration for it. For Northern Ireland, no declaration is needed at all.

Value thresholds are set by the UK in sterling, and were read 14 August 2026. Above £135 the recipient is asked for VAT and duty before delivery; at or below it, no duty applies.

The full customs guide

We hold prices to 30 destinations, from a parcel across Dublin to one going to Australia, at every weight band from 0.5 to 30 kg.

If a destination you need is missing, tell us. Adding a lane is a data change rather than a page, and the requests we get decide the order they go in.

Every destination we price

It is an independent Irish price comparison, built and run in Dublin, with no courier or booking platform owning it. We take no payment, hold no bookings and never see your card or your parcel.

The honest test of a comparison site is whether it tells you what it can’t do. Ours are on the page: which prices we don’t hold, why a figure can move at booking, and where our own data looks wrong.

What we are, and how we’re funded

No. We can’t check their counter prices automatically, and leaving them out of the comparison is more honest than guessing at them.

You’ll still see An Post services listed wherever a partner resells them, priced the same way as everything else. Where we quote An Post’s own published rates in a guide, they’re read off their site by hand and carry the date they were read.

An Post’s rates, set against ours

Not yet. Every price here is for a parcel leaving Ireland, because that’s what the weekly check asks for.

Inbound is a different set of quotes entirely, and we’d rather add it properly than approximate it from the outbound ones.

Yes, and there’s no account. We may earn a referral fee from a partner when a booking follows a link from here.

That fee comes out of their end and doesn’t change what you pay, the figure you see is the figure they quoted, and the list is sorted by price no matter whose it is. If that ever changed, this page would say so.

More on how the site is funded