Royal Mail prices from 5 October 2026: what a small shop pays per parcel now, and the one switch worth making

Royal Mail's second price change of 2026 takes effect on 5 October, and for once the story for a small shop is not just "it went up". The way the tariff is now arranged, a tracked parcel bought online costs less than an untracked stamp for the same parcel. The shop that is still buying 2nd Class stamps for £4.40 is paying more for a service that cannot prove delivery than it would pay for one that can.

The prices

From 5 October 2026, as stated in eBay UK's announcement of the Royal Mail tariff, for a small parcel up to 1 kg (Royal Mail's own service pages, which still showed the old prices on 1 October, list a single small-parcel band up to 2 kg, so re-read them after the 5th):

A small parcel is up to 45 cm by 35 cm by 16 cm. Heavier bands and medium parcels have their own prices; the pattern, tracked online under stamp, holds across them on the figures we have seen but we have not verified every band, and on 2 October Royal Mail's own price page still showed the tariff in force before 5 October. Read the live price list before you reprint a rate card.

What the 65p buys

Tracked 48 at £3.75 against a 2nd Class stamp at £4.40 is 65p cheaper and comes with a delivery scan. The scan is the difference between a "where is my order" email that takes thirty seconds and one that takes a week, and between a chargeback you win and one you lose. Our chargebacks guide sets out why: for a "product not received" dispute, proof of delivery is the whole case, and an untracked packet has none.

Under the Consumer Rights Act the parcel is at the shop's risk until the customer has it (section 29). An untracked service does not change that; it only removes the evidence. So the untracked saving, when it existed, was always a bet against your own claim. Now there is no saving to bet.

The switch

Three settings, in an afternoon.

Buy postage online, not at the counter. Click & Drop, or the postage built into Shopify, Etsy or your marketplace, gives the online price and prints the tracked label. The counter sells the stamp price.

Set Tracked 48 as the default for everything over a few pounds. Keep an untracked large-letter option only for the items that genuinely fit a large letter, where the price gap runs the other way and the loss on a missing one is small.

Put the aim in the dispatch email. "Tracked 48 usually arrives in two to three working days" with the tracking link removes most WISMO emails before they are sent. The where-is-my-order reply writer handles the ones that still come.

What to do about the price itself

Postage is now the largest fee on a low-value order, bigger than any marketplace fee. On a £15 item, £3.75 is 25% before anything else. The choices are the usual ones and none is free: raise the free-delivery threshold so the average order rises; charge postage at cost and say so plainly; or build it into the price and offer "free" delivery, which converts better and hides the problem rather than solving it. The fee calculator shows what each channel leaves after its own fees, which is the number postage has to come out of.

A shop sending more than a few hundred parcels a month should ask Royal Mail for a business account, and ask Evri and DPD for their rates on the same day. The consumer tariff above is the ceiling, not the market.

Dates to diary

Royal Mail now changes prices in April and October. Put both in the calendar, and put the postage settings review in the same week, because the October change and the pre-Christmas peak arrive together and the shop that reviews in January has paid the old price on its busiest month.

Figures are as published on the date above and will change; check the live tariff before relying on them.