UPS, FedEx and USPS Rate Increases for 2027: What an Online Store Pays From January
UPS raises rates an average net 5.9% on 21 December, FedEx 5.9% on 4 January, and USPS has filed new prices and an 11% fuel surcharge for 17 January. What each carrier announced, where sources disagree, and how to re-check a product's margin.
The UPS rate increase for 2027 arrives first, on 21 December 2026: an average net 5.9 percent on daily rates for Ground, Air and International services. FedEx follows on 4 January 2027 with an average 5.9 percent on its US list rates. And the US Postal Service has filed new shipping prices for 17 January 2027, the day its two temporary 2026 increases were due to end.
Those are averages across every weight, zone and service, and they cover base rates only. A store's shipping line is its own mix: mostly home addresses, a few box sizes, a spread of zones, and surcharges that rise on their own schedule. This guide covers what each carrier has announced, where the sources disagree, what it means for orders you ship yourself, and how to re-check one product's margin before January.
The USPS figures come from the Postal Service's own releases and the Federal Register. UPS's and FedEx's pages would not open for us, so their figures are as reported by the trade press that read them.
UPS From 21 December 2026
UPS's daily rates for Ground, Air and International services rise an average net 5.9 percent on 21 December 2026, as Supply Chain Dive and Logistics Management reported from UPS's rates page on 26 October. The same reports list four other changes:
Small Business Rates, UPS's published rates for smaller shippers, rise 4.5 percent, with a 5 percent domestic and international fuel surcharge applied to them.
Additional Handling gets a higher minimum billable weight: 50 pounds instead of 40, whatever the scale says.
A per-package surge fee applies on or after 21 December to some customers' Ground and Ground Saver shipments from specified ZIP codes. The October notice did not give the amount.
The delivery area list changes, and so do some ZIP codes' zones. A store with customers outside the big cities can pay the surcharge on more parcels without any rate in the table moving.
UPS's 2026 peak demand surcharges run through 16 January 2027, as Supply Chain Dive reported in August.
FedEx From 4 January 2027
FedEx's standard list rates for US, US export and US import package services rise an average of 5.9 percent on 4 January 2027, as Supply Chain Dive and Logistics Management reported in September from FedEx's announcement. Ground Economy, Ground Multiweight and some international services rise too, by amounts that announcement did not state.
FedEx's 2027 surcharge and fee document, as tabled by Supply Chain Dive, shows the charges a home delivery business pays on almost every parcel rising with it. The residential delivery charge on US package services goes from $6.95 to $7.35. The residential delivery area surcharge goes from $6.60 to $7.00, and the commercial one from $4.45 to $4.70. Weight-based additional handling in zone 2 goes from $46.00 to $49.50, and the FedEx Home Delivery oversize charge in zones 3 and 4 from $275 to $290.
From 18 January, FedEx adds a $25 fee when trade documents are supplied on paper rather than electronically, and a $5 fee on US domestic and export shipments started with a manual paper airbill. Its peak demand surcharges, $0.50 to $0.80 a package on Ground Residential and Home Delivery, run until 17 January 2027 (Supply Chain Dive, July).
USPS on 17 January 2027: The Temporary Increases Give Way to New Prices
USPS has two temporary increases in force on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select. The first, 8 percent, began on 26 April 2026 "to better align its transportation costs with the market". The second, the peak holiday increase, began on 4 October 2026 and averages 6.0 percent. It is set in dollars by weight and zone: for commercial Ground Advantage, $0.40 on a parcel of up to 3 pounds going to zones 1 to 4, and $7.70 on one of 26 to 70 pounds going to zones 5 to 9.
Both run "until 12:00 a.m. CST on January 17, 2027", in the words of the Federal Register notices. That is midnight at the start of the 17th, so 16 January is the last day at the temporary prices. It is why one source gives the 16th and most give the 17th: they describe the same moment.
On 12 November 2026 the Postal Service filed the prices that take over that day, pending favorable review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (Docket No. CP2027-1):
Domestic packages rise 5.9 percent on average: Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select.
The April increase does not simply end. USPS will "convert the 8 percent transportation-related price change implemented in April" into "a permanent 8 percent fuel surcharge", "plus an additional 3 percent given the recent further elevation of fuel prices", "for a total of 11 percent". It does not apply to international products for now, and it "will be reevaluated in July 2027 based on fuel prices in the first half of 2027."
International package prices rise 7.9 percent on average. Stamp prices do not change.
Postal Explorer, USPS's price site, lists the January 2027 price files as proposed. Until the Commission rules, treat them as the plan rather than the price.
The sources disagree on how the fuel surcharge will work. In October, Supply Chain Dive reported, from a USPS question and answer page we could not open, a surcharge that resets weekly with diesel and jet fuel prices, charged as a percentage of base postage. The November release describes a fixed 11 percent reviewed in July. Budget on 11 percent, and read the final filing before relying on either.
Why January Is Not a Step Down for USPS Shippers
Here is the arithmetic on one commercial Ground Advantage label, a parcel of up to 3 pounds going to zones 1 to 4. The $10.00 starting price is an example, not a USPS price:
Before 26 April 2026: $10.00. Since 26 April, plus 8 percent: $10.80. Since 4 October, plus the $0.40 holiday increase: $11.20. From 17 January, the base rises 5.9 percent to about $10.59, and an 11 percent fuel surcharge on that base, charged on base postage as reported, adds about $1.16: about $11.75.
So a store expecting postage to fall back after the holidays will see it rise instead, by about 5 percent on this label against December and about 17.5 percent against March. The 5.9 percent is an average, so your own weights and zones will land either side of it. Heavy parcels going a long way, where the holiday increase was largest, are the ones that may come out lower than in December.
The Surcharges Move More Than the Headline
Each carrier's average describes its rate table. Your invoice is the rate plus everything added to it, and for a business selling to consumers three additions do most of the work.
Residential delivery. Almost every order a store ships goes to a home. On FedEx the residential delivery charge alone rises $0.40 a parcel, as reported, on top of the base rate.
Delivery area. UPS's ZIP code list is changing and FedEx's charges rise. A store with many customers in small towns pays this on a large share of its parcels.
Fuel. A fuel surcharge is a percentage, so the same percentage costs more on a higher rate. From 17 January USPS adds one of its own.
Then the handling charges: UPS's 50 pound minimum and FedEx's higher additional handling and oversize charges. One long box can add more in January than the rest of the range combined.
Dimensional Weight: The Change Many Stores Missed in July
On 12 July 2026, USPS lowered the divisor it uses for dimensional weight from 166 to 139 across all its domestic package products (Postal Regulatory Commission notice, Docket No. CP2026-8). The same filing put the average price increase for commercial Ground Advantage at 11.8 percent, with retail unchanged. Trade press reported that base rates were not raised across the board, so on our reading most of that average comes from the new divisor; the filing does not split the two. If your label costs jumped in July and nobody could say why, this is a likely part of it.
The rule for commercial Ground Advantage, from USPS's Domestic Mail Manual: a parcel over 1 cubic foot, 1,728 cubic inches, is charged at its actual weight or its dimensional weight, whichever is greater. Round each side up to the next whole inch and multiply them. If the result is over 1,728, divide by 139 and round up to the next pound.
An example. A cushion weighing 4 pounds ships in a 16 by 12 by 10 inch box: 1,920 cubic inches, over a cubic foot, so it is billed at 14 pounds (1,920 divided by 139 is 13.8). Under the old divisor it was 12. Pack it in a 14 by 12 by 10 box, 1,680 cubic inches, and dimensional weight no longer applies: it is billed on its actual 4 pounds. Two inches of cardboard are ten pounds of postage.
USPS is also checking. Since 12 July 2026, commercial parcels on a manifest must carry accurate dimensions, and USPS's price list sets a Dimension Noncompliance fee of $3.00. For now it is charged on parcels over a cubic foot or 22 inches; a second phase, tentatively scheduled for early 2027, charges it when dimensions are missing. UPS and FedEx bill by dimensional weight under their own rules, so take their divisors from your own service guide or account.
What It Means for Orders You Ship Yourself
Where the change reaches you depends on who sells you the label.
Amazon, merchant-fulfilled. Labels bought through Buy Shipping are priced at the discounted rates Amazon offers, and a carrier's correction for a wrong weight or size comes back weeks later as an adjustment, which our guide to Buy Shipping carrier adjustments explains. A lower divisor means more of those when a listing stores the product's dimensions rather than the packed box's. If you are weighing self-fulfilment against FBA for 2027, both sides move in January, so rerun the FBA or FBM comparison with the new label costs and Amazon's 2027 FBA fee changes side by side.
Walmart. Ship with Walmart, Walmart's label programme for sellers who fulfil their own orders, sells USPS, FedEx and UPS labels in Seller Center, with a shipping calculator to compare them. Its rates follow Walmart's own carrier terms rather than the public tables, so price a few of your usual parcels in the calculator after each carrier's date instead of assuming the headline.
TikTok Shop. On Seller Shipping you buy the label and pay the carriers' new rates directly; on TikTok Shipping the label is bought through TikTok. Either way, the delivery clocks in TikTok Shop's rules for orders you ship yourself do not move, so a cheaper, slower service is only a saving if it still meets them.
eBay. The peak surcharges in our eBay holiday guide end in mid January as the new rates start, so January's labels are no clean comparison with October's.
A Shopify store. If checkout shows carrier-calculated rates, customers see the new prices on their own. If you charge a flat rate or offer free shipping, the whole increase lands on you, and the order value at which free shipping pays for itself moves up with it. The free shipping threshold arithmetic is worth redoing with January's label cost.
What to Re-Quote and Re-Price Before January
Pull the last 90 days of labels by carrier, service, zone and billed weight. That mix, not the carrier's average, is what you are re-pricing.
Measure your best sellers packed, each side rounded up to the inch, against the dimensions stored on each listing and in your shipping settings.
Re-quote the ten parcels you send most at the new rates, with the surcharges from a recent invoice rather than the rate card, and again once the Commission rules on USPS's prices.
Look at the box before the price. A box that drops under a cubic foot, or under a handling threshold, can save more than the increase costs.
Read your agreement if you have negotiated rates: whether the increase passes through, and from when, is in the contract.
Then re-price what still does not earn its keep, starting where shipping is the largest share of the price.
A Worked Example: Re-Checking One Product's Margin
The numbers here are illustrative, chosen to show the method; they are not a real product or a real rate. A product sells for $40.00 on a marketplace that takes a 15 percent fee, and the seller ships it themselves.
Price $40.00. Marketplace fee at 15 percent, $6.00. Product cost, landed, $12.00. Packaging $1.00. Shipping label $9.00. Advertising per order $5.00. That leaves $7.00 an order, 17.5 percent of the price.
Now suppose January's rates and surcharges put that label up 9 percent, to $9.81, and nothing else changes. The product now leaves $6.19, 15.5 percent of the price. A 9 percent rise in one cost has taken 11.6 percent off the profit, because the profit is the thin slice left after everything else.
To earn $7.00 again, the product needs $0.81 more after fees. The marketplace takes 15 percent of any price rise, so the price has to go up by $0.95, to $40.95, not by $0.81. Or the box gets smaller: if a tighter box takes the label back to $8.50, the product leaves $7.50 and the price can stay.
Run that for every product, sorted by shipping as a share of price, and the re-pricing list writes itself: heavy, cheap, bulky products at the top, small, expensive ones barely moving.
Where We Start
When we re-price a catalogue for a carrier change, we start from what was actually billed, label by label, not from the rate card, because the surcharges and the billed weights are where the surprises are. A 5.9 percent average is a fact about the carrier; a product that stops earning is a fact about your business.
If you sell on Amazon, xRack, the analytics platform we built for the brands we manage, shows sales performance beside profit and loss, so a cost that moves in January shows up in the numbers a brand and its account team both read. It reads Amazon accounts today, with Walmart, TikTok Shop, eBay and Shopify coming soon. And if you would rather have the January re-quote and re-price done product by product, that is the work of our unit economics service.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions that come up most often on this subject.
On 21 December 2026. UPS's daily rates for Ground, Air and International services rise an average net 5.9 percent that day, and its Small Business Rates rise 4.5 percent with a 5 percent fuel surcharge applied to them, as reported from UPS's rates page in October. The minimum billable weight for Additional Handling packages rises from 40 to 50 pounds, and some customers' Ground and Ground Saver shipments from specified ZIP codes carry a new per-package surge fee. UPS's 2026 peak demand surcharges run until 16 January 2027.
An average of 5.9 percent on US, export and import list rates from 4 January 2027, as reported from FedEx's rate change page. Surcharges rise too: as reported from FedEx's 2027 surcharge document, the residential delivery charge goes from $6.95 to $7.35 and the residential delivery area surcharge from $6.60 to $7.00. New fees for paper trade documents and manual paper airbills start on 18 January, and FedEx's peak demand surcharges run until 17 January 2027.
Not on the Postal Service's filing of 12 November 2026. Both temporary increases end at 12:00 a.m. Central time on 17 January 2027, and new prices take over the same day, pending the Postal Regulatory Commission's review: Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select rise 5.9 percent on average, and the April 8 percent increase becomes a permanent fuel surcharge of 11 percent, to be reviewed in July 2027. Worked through on an illustrative light parcel, postage in late January is higher than in December; only heavy parcels going a long way, where the holiday increase was largest, may come out lower.
139. USPS lowered it from 166 on 12 July 2026 across its domestic package products, and the 12 November release for January 2027 does not mention a change. For commercial Ground Advantage it applies to parcels over 1 cubic foot (1,728 cubic inches): round each side up to the next inch, multiply, divide by 139 and round up, and USPS charges the greater of that and the actual weight. Parcels at or under a cubic foot are not charged by dimensional weight.
Almost certainly not. The 5.9 percent figures are averages across each carrier's rate table, and they cover base rates, not surcharges. Your increase depends on your own mix of weights, zones and services, how many orders go to homes and to delivery area ZIP codes, how big your boxes are, and any negotiated rates. One analysis of FedEx's 2027 tables, reported by Logistics Management, found Ground rising 6.06 to 6.15 percent in every zone while Express Saver rose about 3 percent. Re-quote your ten most common parcels at the new rates to see your own number.