Postage rates and mailing guides

What this section covers

You have a letter or a card in front of you and you want it in the mail without guessing. It might be a single birthday card, a few dozen wedding invitations, a stack of holiday cards for clients, or one document that has to reach an office in another country. The questions behind all of these are the same: what a stamp costs today, how many stamps this envelope needs, how to write the address so it arrives, and which envelope fits what you're sending. This section answers each of them on its own page, and this page tells you where to begin.

The pages fall into three groups, so it helps to know which one you need. The price pages list what the postal operator charges for letters, postcards and large envelopes, and that is enough when your letter is an ordinary one. The stamp calculator works out postage for one particular envelope, which matters as soon as yours is heavier, bigger or stiffer than a plain letter. The guides and envelope size pages deal with the envelope itself: where everything goes, what size to buy, and how to print the addresses when you have more than a few to write.

Stamp prices by country

For letters within the United States, and from the US to other countries, start with US stamp prices. That page opens with the price of a Forever® stamp, which is what most people mean when they ask how much a stamp is, and then covers postcards, large envelopes and international letters, because USPS prices each of those differently. If you're sending holiday cards, the page on mailing Christmas cards in the US puts the stamps, the last mailing dates and the addressing in one place, so you don't have to piece it together from three pages.

For letters within the United Kingdom, and from the UK to other countries, go to UK stamp prices. It covers Royal Mail's 1st and 2nd Class stamps, Large Letters (Royal Mail's category for envelopes too big, too thick or too heavy to count as an ordinary letter) and letters abroad. For an ordinary letter the main choice is between the two classes: 1st Class is the faster and dearer service and 2nd Class the slower and cheaper one, so the choice depends on how soon the letter has to arrive. Around Christmas, the UK posting dates page lists Royal Mail's last posting dates for each service, so it does the same job for UK senders as the US Christmas cards page.

Every price in this section comes from the operator's own published price list, which means the one USPS publishes for the US and the one Royal Mail publishes for the UK, rather than from news articles or other websites, which often lag behind a price change. Postal operators change their prices from time to time, so each price page shows when it was last updated. If you're reading it long after that date, or right around the time a new price takes effect, the counter at the post office has the final word. Beyond prices, the envelope size pages include the ISO sizes used in the UK and the rest of Europe as well as the Japanese sizes, and the addressing guide has examples from different countries.

Working out postage for your envelope

What a letter costs depends on four things: where it's going, how much it weighs, how big it is, and how stiff or uneven it is. A card in a standard envelope sent within the country is the simple case, and the price page alone answers it. The harder cases are the ones people get wrong: an invitation with several inserts, a square card, documents sent flat in a large envelope, or anything going abroad. In each of those the envelope can land in a different weight step or a different category, which means one stamp may not be enough, and a letter with too little postage can be returned to you instead of arriving.

Take two envelopes that look the same from the outside. The first is a 5×7 birthday card in an A7 envelope, a single card that goes through the sorting machines like any other letter. The second is a wedding invitation in the same A7 envelope, but with a reply card, a reply envelope, a vellum wrap and a wax seal. It can weigh up to twice as much, and the seal makes it stiff and lumpy, so it can cross a weight step and may have to be sorted by hand, which costs extra. Documents work the same way: three sheets folded into a #10 envelope travel as a letter, but the same three sheets sent flat in a 9×12 envelope are priced as a large envelope, which costs more.

How many stamps do I need? does this sum for you. You choose the envelope and say what's in it, and the calculator tells you which stamps to use, based on the operator's published price list. It estimates rather than weighs, so if your letter is close to a limit, put it on a kitchen scale or take it to the counter, where the post office's own scale decides. For a quick check at home, an A4 sheet of ordinary 80 g/m² paper weighs 5 g, because an A4 sheet is one-sixteenth of a square meter, and a US Letter sheet of ordinary 20 lb paper weighs about 4.5 g. Add the envelope and any card or insert on top of that.

Addressing the envelope and choosing a size

Once you know the postage, the envelope itself needs to be right. How to address an envelope shows where the recipient's address, the return address and the stamp go, with examples from different countries. The order of the lines isn't the same everywhere: in the US the ZIP Code follows the city and state on the last line, while in much of Europe the postal code comes before the town, and a letter going abroad needs the country name on a line of its own at the bottom. Getting this right matters because sorting is done by machine, and an address in an unexpected order is more likely to be delayed.

Envelope sizes lists the US, ISO and Japanese envelope sizes you can print on, and the most common ones have their own page explaining what fits inside. The quickest way to choose is to start from what you're sending. A 5×7 card goes in an A7 envelope, a US Letter sheet folded in three goes in a #10 envelope, and an A4 sheet folded in three goes in a DL envelope, the standard letter envelope in the UK and Europe. If you like square cards, read the square envelopes page before you buy a box, because the square shape is one of the most common reasons a card needs more postage than its sender expected.

Printing the addresses

For one or two envelopes, a neat hand is all you need. Once you're addressing twenty wedding invitations or two hundred client cards, printing saves you an evening and gives the sorting machines an address they can read without trouble. OpenLabelMaker prints the address straight onto the envelope in your browser, at 70 envelope sizes including all the ones above, with the return address top left, the recipient in the middle and the stamp corner left free. Your printer has to be able to take the envelope, and most home printers handle envelopes up to 8.5 in (216 mm) wide; how to print envelopes walks you through printing at home, from a single envelope to a whole list.

If your printer won't take your envelopes, or you want the same return address on every card, address labels are the alternative. The button on this page opens the label editor, with label sheets such as the Avery® 5160 size with 30 labels on a US Letter sheet, A4 sheets with 21 labels, and label printers such as DYMO and Brother. For a mailing list, you can print address labels from Excel or a CSV file and get one envelope or one label per address. This mail merge needs a free account, which includes 5 batch exports a month.