How PostCompare works

Two fields and a list. There is no account, no quote form that emails you back, and nothing to install.

1. 1

   Tell us where it’s going and what it weighs

   Origin is always Ireland. Pick the destination, put in the weight, and if the box is big for what’s in it, add the measurements, size is what quietly pushes a parcel into a dearer band.

2. 2

   See every price we hold for that band

   One list, cheapest first: carrier, service, delivery estimate, whether it’s a collection or a drop-off, and whether you’ll need a printer. Sort it or filter it down to the ones that suit you.

3. 3

   Book it on the partner’s site

   The book link hands you over to the partner’s own booking page with that service already picked, at the price shown. You pay them, they send the label, and we’re out of it.

We automatically check up-to-date pricing for every option, every route, every weight band, to find what’s best for you. Whatever comes back is what you see.

Nothing is estimated, averaged or rounded. If a route comes back empty, the row stays empty rather than getting filled in with a plausible-looking guess, and you’ll see a dash where a price would be. The last check returned 3,767 live prices across 30 destinations and 6 carriers.

This is the published method behind every price on the site. It is short on purpose: seven rules, all of them checkable against what the pages actually do.

One automated check a week, across the market

The same quote request goes out for every destination and every weight band on a weekly cycle, and whatever comes back is stored. Nobody chooses which prices to keep.

Prices are published exactly as they were quoted

No rounding, no averaging, no converting, no re-doing anyone’s VAT sums. The number on the page is the number that came back.

Sorted by price, never by who pays us

The default order is cheapest first, and no carrier or partner can buy a position, a badge or a place on a page. There is nothing to buy.

No fee, no payment, no account

PostCompare takes no payment and adds no markup. Booking completes on our partner’s secure site at the price shown, and we may earn a referral fee from them, which comes out of their end rather than yours.

A blank cell rather than a guess

If a route or a band comes back empty, it stays empty and shows a dash. An estimate dressed up as a price is worse than no price at all.

Every price view carries its date

The date of the last check appears next to the data, not buried in a footer, so you can judge for yourself whether a figure is fresh enough to act on.

We say when our own data looks wrong

Where a lane returns something that does not stand up, we flag it on the page and explain what the check does and does not cover, rather than quietly smoothing it out.

Those rules are why the guides compute their tables from the live feed rather than quoting a figure somebody typed in, and why a figure we cannot confirm gets dropped instead of estimated.

Couriers price in steps rather than per gram, so we ask in the same steps: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 kg. Round up, always, a 2.4 kg parcel prices at the 3 kg band here, and at the 3 kg band when you get to the booking page.

Size can beat weight

A big light box takes up van space that a dense small one doesn’t, so couriers work out a second weight from the measurements, length × width × height in centimetres, divided by 5,000, and charge on whichever of the two is greater. That second figure is the volumetric weight.

Add the measurements to a quote and we do that sum for you before choosing the band, so the price you see is the one the courier would land on.

Collections are quoted from a Dublin 2 address, and international lanes are quoted to a reference address in the destination country, London for the UK, New York for the States. It keeps every carrier being asked the same question, so the comparison is fair.

Your own Eircode and the delivery address can move the figure a little, so the exact price is confirmed on the partner’s site for your addresses before you pay. Treat ours as the shortlist and theirs as the price you pay.

VAT, as the partner shows it

Prices display exactly as the partner’s booking system displays them, VAT treatment included. We don’t re-do anyone’s sums or strip anything out to make a number look smaller.

Worth being blunt about the edges of this, because plenty of comparison sites aren’t.

We never take payment

There is no checkout on PostCompare. Booking completes on our partner’s secure site at the price shown, and your card details never come near us.

We don’t add a markup

The number you see is the number that came back in the last check. We don’t pad it, round it or nudge one service ahead of another.

No accounts

Nothing to sign up for, no saved addresses, no newsletter waiting at the end of it. Look up a price and go.

We can’t track your parcel

Once you’ve booked, the booking, the label, the tracking and any claim sit with the partner and the courier. We have no view of them at all.

What we can do is tell you when a price is stale and where it came from. If a price here was wrong, tell us , that one is ours to fix.