How much is a first class stamp? UK stamp prices now

1st or 2nd Class: what each stamp pays for

The difference between the two stamps is speed, not size. A 1st Class stamp at £1.80 pays for a letter that Royal Mail aims to deliver the next working day, while a 2nd Class stamp at £0.91 buys a slower service that usually takes two to three working days. Both cover exactly the same kind of item, a standard Letter, so a birthday card, a postcard or a sheet of A4 folded into a DL envelope needs one stamp either way. If the card only has to arrive by the weekend and you post it on a Monday, 2nd Class does the job for less; if the birthday is tomorrow, it has to be 1st Class.

The everyday 1st and 2nd Class stamps, and the Large Letter versions of both, have no price printed on them, only the service, such as "1st" or "2nd Large". That is deliberate, because the stamp is worth whatever its service costs on the day you post it, so a book of 1st Class stamps bought years ago for less still pays for a 1st Class letter today. You never have to top up an old stamp after a price rise, as long as it has a barcode, which the section on old stamps below explains.

Timing matters most at Christmas, when the post is busiest. Royal Mail's last recommended posting date is 18 December 2026 for 2nd Class and 21 December 2026 for 1st Class, so posting a pile of cards 2nd Class a few days earlier gets them there for less. Our page on Christmas posting dates also has the dates for tracked and Special Delivery services.

Letter or Large Letter: measure your envelope first

Royal Mail prices post within the UK by format first and weight second. The format depends on the envelope's size, its thickness and its weight, and if your item goes over even one of the Letter limits, it becomes a Large Letter and costs more. Check your envelope against these two sets of limits, which are the same for 1st and 2nd Class:

• Up to 24 × 16.5 cm, 5 mm thick, 100 g: that is a Letter, and one ordinary 1st or 2nd Class stamp pays for it.
• Up to 35.3 × 25 cm, 2.5 cm thick, 750 g: anything bigger than a Letter but within these limits is a Large Letter, with its own stamps and weight steps.

Anything over the Large Letter limits goes as a parcel, but most post never comes close, and three typical envelopes show where the line between the two formats falls. A greetings card in a C6 envelope, which measures 114 × 162 mm, is comfortably inside the Letter size, and with its envelope it usually weighs 20 to 40 g, so one 1st or 2nd Class stamp is enough. The catch is thickness: a card with a badge, a wax seal or a ribbon can be light and still too thick for a Letter, and then it has to go as a Large Letter.

A C5 envelope, at 162 × 229 mm, also fits the Letter size, so a few sheets of A4 folded once still go as a Letter. Put a 30-page report in the same envelope, though, and it will be around 6 mm thick and weigh about 160 g, which makes it a Large Letter in the second weight step. An A4 certificate you don't want to fold goes in a C4 envelope of 229 × 324 mm, which is longer and wider than any Letter, so it is a Large Letter even with one sheet and a piece of card inside, at around 50 g in total.

Large Letters are priced in weight steps, which you can read off the price table above. The lightest step, which is what the Large Letter stamps pay for, costs £3.30 with 1st Class and £1.55 with 2nd Class, so the certificate needs one Large Letter stamp. The C5 report in the second step costs £3.60 1st Class or £1.90 2nd Class, and at the heaviest step 2nd Class goes up to £2.70, so for heavier items you add stamps to make up the price or have the envelope weighed at a Post Office counter. If the paper doesn't have to arrive flat, folding it into a C5 envelope and staying within the Letter limits is the easiest saving.

Large envelopes are also the ones most home printers can't take, because a C4 is 229 mm across its short side and most printers feed no more than 216 mm. An address label gets round that: you print the addresses on an A4 label sheet, for example 21 to a sheet, and stick them on, and for a whole mailing list you can print labels from an Excel or CSV file with a free account. The stamps still come from Royal Mail, though, because OpenLabelMaker doesn't sell or print postage.

Sending a letter or card abroad

A standard letter or postcard abroad costs £3.60 wherever it goes, and Royal Mail's international price list is clear that 1st Class UK postage is not enough for post to any overseas destination. So a card to Spain or a letter to Canada needs international postage. The size, thickness and weight limits are the same as for a UK Letter, so the C6 card from the example above costs the same to Paris as to Sydney. You can buy international postage at a Post Office counter.

Large Letters abroad are priced by zone as well as by weight. In the lightest step, a Large Letter to Europe costs £3.80, while further afield it costs £4.60 to World Zone 1 (Canada, for example), £4.60 to World Zone 2 (Australia and New Zealand, for example) and £4.60 to World Zone 3 (the USA). The gap widens as the weight goes up: an A4 brochure of about 200 g in a C4 envelope costs £6.15 to France but £8.50 to the USA, and at the heaviest step a Large Letter to Australia costs £19.55. Wherever it goes, write the country in capitals on the last line of the address; our guide on how to address an envelope shows the layout for each country.

Old stamps: which ones are still valid

Barcoded stamps don't expire. The everyday 1st and 2nd Class stamps sold today have a square barcode on a coloured strip beside the portrait, and as long as that barcode is there, the stamp keeps its value for good, whatever happens to prices. Christmas stamps and special (commemorative) stamps were not part of the barcode switch and are still valid, so a sheet of old Christmas stamps found in a drawer can go straight onto this year's cards.

Old everyday stamps without a barcode are a different matter. They stopped being valid for postage at the end of July 2023, and they are easy to recognise: the Queen's head on a plain coloured background, with no strip at the side. A letter posted with one is treated as if it had no stamp at all, which can leave the person you wrote to with a fee to pay before they get it.

You don't have to throw them away, though. Royal Mail's Swap Out scheme exchanges non-barcoded everyday stamps for barcoded ones free of charge: you fill in a Swap Out form, send it with the stamps to the Freepost address Royal Mail gives, and new stamps come back by post. The scheme has no end date, so there is no deadline to beat, but it is worth doing before the stamps get lost.

When Royal Mail stamp prices go up

Royal Mail changes its stamp prices about once a year, usually in April. As of 8 November 2026, this is where things stand: Royal Mail has not announced new stamp prices for 2027; it usually announces its April price change in late February or early March, and Ofcom has proposed keeping the cap on 2nd Class prices, which follows inflation, until March 2028. Ofcom is the regulator for postal services, and its cap is there to keep the basic way of sending a letter affordable, which is why 2nd Class can only rise in line with inflation. 1st Class has no such cap, and that is why the gap between the two prices has grown so wide.

The price history table on this page follows the 1st Class stamp, and it shows how fast that price has climbed in recent years, in some years with one rise in spring and a second in autumn. That makes the rule from the top of this page worth remembering: barcoded stamps keep their value. If you send a lot of post, a few books of stamps bought once the new prices are announced, but before they apply, are a small and safe saving on every letter.