Royal Mail parcel prices went up on 5 October. Franked prices didn’t.

Published 5 September 2026, updated 14 October 2026 · 12 min read · Angler Fulfilment

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Updated 14 October 2026. The new prices took effect on Monday 5 October and this page now describes them as they are. It adds the Click & Drop online prices, which rose by more than stamps, and corrects an earlier line that said Click & Drop without an account is billed at stamp prices: it has its own, lower, online prices. On 17 September we had already corrected a line saying account prices were unchanged.

On Monday 5 October 2026 Royal Mail put up the price of parcels. Not letters. A First Class letter is still £1.80 and a Second Class letter is still 91p. A standard parcel up to 2kg went up by 35p to 65p with a stamp and by 45p to 85p on Click & Drop, and the tracked and guaranteed services rose with them.

That much has been reported widely. The part worth your attention has not: Mailmark franking prices did not change on any format. Account prices rose, but by a fraction of the retail rise. The heavy increase is on the prices the public pays, which means it falls hardest on one group: sellers who still buy postage the way a member of the public buys postage.

Royal Mail stamp prices from 5 October 2026

These are the prices at a Post Office or with a stamp. Every parcel figure is the published price for a parcel up to 2kg.

Royal Mail Tracked, Signed For and Special Delivery Guaranteed went up as well. Letter and large-letter stamps did not. Nor did Mailmark franking, on any format at all.

So a Second Class small parcel bought with a stamp went from £4.25 to £4.60, while the same parcel franked stayed at £4.25. The two prices were identical before. Since 5 October one of them is 8% higher for an identical journey by an identical van.

Click & Drop prices from 5 October 2026

Postage bought online through Click & Drop without a business account has its own price list, a little below the stamp price. It went up by more than stamps did, so the discount for buying online shrank.

Online is still the cheaper way to buy a single parcel’s postage, by 20p on a small parcel and 50p on a medium one. Before 5 October the gap was 30p and 70p. Letters and large letters cost the same online as before: £1.80 and 91p for a letter.

The part almost nobody is reporting: account prices rise too

Most coverage of this change said account and contract prices were untouched. They were not. Royal Mail’s own Prices 2026 page carries a separate entry for business account customers on the same date, covering Royal Mail 24 and Royal Mail 48 barcoded and basic barcoded parcels, and the Business Price Guide effective 5 October prices them higher than the guide it replaced.

Three things to hold on to about those figures. The guide lists more than one account column, including legacy sortation options that rise by £1.15 to £1.30, so the numbers above are the lowest published price for each service. They exclude VAT, which is charged at the standard rate on account parcels, so a seller who is not VAT registered should add 20% before setting them beside a stamp price. And they are published prices: an individual account can be priced differently, which is exactly why the only rate that settles your decision is the one on your own invoice.

And a peak surcharge on top, from 2 November

Separately from the October change, account customers carry a peak surcharge on domestic parcel and international products from 2 November 2026 to 10 January 2027 inclusive. If you are costing a Christmas on an account, that surcharge is the figure that will show up on your invoice, not the 30p above. Royal Mail publishes the detail at royalmail.com/surcharges. We have set out every surcharge on a Royal Mail business parcel, fuel and green included, and the Royal Mail peak surcharge for 2026 in full, with every other date between now and January that changes what a parcel costs.

Royal Mail Tracked prices from 5 October 2026

Tracked is where a lot of seller volume actually sits, and those online prices moved as well, by less than the standard parcel prices.

Tracked with Signature moved by the same order: a small parcel went from £6.25 to £6.40 and a medium from £8.15 to £8.35.

What it costs you, in your own numbers

Percentages are easy to shrug at. Here is the same increase expressed as money, for a seller sending mostly Second Class small parcels, the single most common shape in UK e-commerce.

That is the 35p stamp rise multiplied out, nothing cleverer. Send First Class instead and it is 45p, so add roughly 29% to every figure in that table. Send medium parcels and it is 55p or 65p. On Click & Drop without an account every figure is higher again: 45p on a Second Class small parcel, so £135 a month at 300 parcels.

The number that tends to land is the annual one. A seller doing 300 parcels a month is looking at £1,260 a year of additional postage for shipping precisely what they shipped last year, to precisely the same people, at precisely the same speed.

Three ways not to pay it, and the honest break-even on each

1. Move to an Online Business Account

An OBA is Royal Mail’s account product, and account prices sit well below retail. It is still the direct answer to the increase for most sellers: the volume thresholds are lower than people assume, and it is the same collection, the same network and the same tracking. What it is not is a freeze. Account prices rose on 5 October as well, by 15p to 30p on a parcel up to 2kg, and they carry the peak surcharge from 2 November. The saving is in the level of the price, not in escaping the rise. If you are sending a few hundred parcels a month with stamps or a retail Click & Drop login, this is still the first call to make and it costs nothing to ask.

2. Frank your post

Franking held its price through this change, which is the whole point of the story. The honest caveat is that a franking machine is rented, not free, and the rental is a fixed monthly cost regardless of how little you send. Work out your own crossover: divide the monthly rental by 35p and that is roughly how many Second Class small parcels a month you need before franking pays for itself on this increase alone. Below that number it is a worse deal, and nobody selling you a machine will volunteer that.

3. Let someone else’s account carry it

A fulfilment provider buys carriage on account rates across everything it ships, so your parcel leaves at a price no individual small seller is offered. Being straight about it: our own Royal Mail rates went up on 5 October too, the same as everybody else’s on an account. What a 3PL hands you is the level of those rates and your time back, not immunity from the increase. We should be straight about our interest as well: we are a 3PL, so this is the option that involves paying us. It is worth saying plainly that it only makes sense if the postage saving plus the labour you get back exceeds the pick-and-pack fee, and at 100 parcels a month it very often does not. We have written separately about where that line actually falls, including the volumes at which the answer is honestly “keep doing it yourself”.

Five things worth doing now the new prices are in

1. Find out what you are actually paying. Not the price you think you are paying. Open last month’s postage spend and divide it by the number of parcels. Sellers are routinely 20 to 30p out on this.
2. Check which side of the change you are on. If you buy postage through a Click & Drop login without an account behind it, you are on the online price list, which took the biggest rise of all.
3. Re-measure your top ten products, boxed. Measure the parcel you actually send, taped and filled, not the product. The small-parcel limit is where most avoidable money goes, and it costs more than this entire price rise.
4. Repost your shipping charges. If you offer free delivery over a threshold, 35p a parcel comes straight off your margin unless you move the threshold. Decide deliberately rather than discovering it in November.
5. Do it before peak. Whatever you change, change it in October, before the peak surcharge starts on 2 November. Nobody should be switching carrier accounts in the third week of November, and peak planning starts earlier than most people think.

Questions we have actually been asked

Does this affect letters and large letters?

No. First and Second Class letter and large-letter stamps did not change on 5 October. A First Class letter is still £1.80 and a Second Class letter is still 91p. If you ship flat items that genuinely post as large letters, this change did not touch you.

Is franking really unchanged, or just increasing by less?

Unchanged. Mailmark franking prices did not move on any format on 5 October. That is what created the gap: the stamp price rose away from a franked price that stayed still, so franking a parcel now saves roughly 7 to 9% where before it saved nothing.

I use Click & Drop. Am I affected?

Yes, and by more than most. Click & Drop used without a business account bills at Royal Mail’s online prices, which went up by 45p to 85p on a standard parcel up to 2kg: a Second Class small parcel is now £4.40. Click & Drop linked to an Online Business Account bills at account prices, which rose by 15p to 30p on a parcel up to 2kg. If you are unsure which you have, that is the single most valuable thing to check this month.

Should I just move to another carrier?

Possibly, but not because of 35p. Carrier choice should follow your parcel profile, your delivery promise and your returns experience, and switching carrier in the run-up to peak to save a few pence per parcel is how sellers end up with a worse Christmas. Fix your account type and your box sizes first; those are reversible and they are usually worth more.

When did the prices go up?

On Monday 5 October 2026. Postage bought before that date at the old price is not affected retrospectively, but a parcel has to carry enough postage for the price on the day it is posted.

The point underneath all of this

Two sellers can ship the identical parcel to the identical address on the identical day and pay prices that differ by 8%, and the only difference between them is a piece of admin one of them did and the other did not. That was true before 5 October. It is simply more expensive to ignore now.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your own numbers, send us what you are paying now and what you ship, and we will tell you which of the three routes above is actually cheaper for you, including when the answer is that you should stay exactly where you are.

Prices in this article are Royal Mail’s published rates for parcels up to 2kg, in force from 5 October 2026. The stamp figures were read from Royal Mail’s “Our prices” guides for April and October 2026, the Click & Drop and Tracked figures from the online price guides for July and October 2026, and the account figures from the Business Price Guides for August and October 2026. The stamp and online figures were checked again on 14 October 2026. Royal Mail publishes its current tariff at royalmail.com/prices2026. Always confirm against your own account rates before making a decision.