eBay shipping calculator
Postage is the second largest cost on a clothing sale and the easiest one to get wrong, because three of the rules that decide it are invisible on the label. Under a pound is its own price, and it is CHEAPER than the one pound price, so a package that creeps from 15 to 17 ounces costs more to send. Past one cubic foot USPS stops weighing your parcel and starts measuring it, which is how a two pound puffer jacket gets billed as nineteen pounds. And flat rate is a bad deal on most single garments and a very good one on a heavy box going coast to coast. Enter what you are actually sending and this compares the services against each other rather than quoting one.
USPS commercial prices, effective 2026-08-08. That is the tier you pay buying a label through eBay or any online provider, not the Post Office counter price, which runs 30 to 40 percent higher. eBay's own rates are at or below this, so read a result as a ceiling rather than a quote.
What are you sending?
Packed weight, including the mailer. 16 ounces is a pound.
About 2,465 miles apart, which is Zone 8 (1,801+ miles).
Billed as 2 lb to Zone 8
Cheapest is USPS Ground Advantage at $12.87
| Service | Speed | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| USPS Ground Advantage | 2-5 business days | $12.87 |
| USPS Priority Mail | 1-3 business days | $16.37 |
No flat-rate box or envelope is big enough for these dimensions, so weight-based pricing is the only option.
Nothing you type here is sent anywhere. The zone is estimated from the distance between your two ZIP prefixes, which is close but not the official USPS chart, so it can be one zone out near a boundary.
The cliff at 16 ounces
Ground Advantage charges one price for everything under a pound, and it is lower than the one pound price. So the cheapest thing you can do to a 17 ounce package is take an ounce out of it.
| Zone | Distance | Under 1 lb | Exactly 1 lb | What the extra ounce costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 | 0-50 miles | $6.93 | $7.61 | $0.68 |
| Zone 2 | 51-150 miles | $6.94 | $7.68 | $0.74 |
| Zone 3 | 151-300 miles | $7.30 | $8.00 | $0.70 |
| Zone 4 | 301-600 miles | $7.46 | $8.15 | $0.69 |
| Zone 5 | 601-1,000 miles | $7.69 | $8.74 | $1.05 |
| Zone 6 | 1,001-1,400 miles | $7.86 | $9.63 | $1.77 |
| Zone 7 | 1,401-1,800 miles | $8.07 | $9.98 | $1.91 |
| Zone 8 | 1,801+ miles | $8.40 | $10.67 | $2.27 |
A folded t-shirt in a poly mailer is comfortably under a pound. The same shirt in a box usually is not, and the box has bought you nothing.
Flat rate, and what actually fits
Same price to any zone, up to 70 lb. The catch is the interior, which is smaller than sellers picture, and the price, which is above Ground Advantage for anything light.
| Container | Price | Inside dimensions | What it holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat Rate Envelope | $11.12 | 12.5" x 9.5" | A folded t-shirt or a pair of shorts, flattened. Not a hoodie. |
| Legal Flat Rate Envelope | $11.66 | 15" x 9.5" | The same, with room for a longer fold. Jeans fit if you roll them. |
| Padded Flat Rate Envelope | $11.99 | 12.5" x 9.5" | A sweatshirt or thin jacket. The padding costs you interior room. |
| Small Flat Rate Box | $12.10 | 8.6" x 5.4" x 1.6" | Shoes will not fit. Belts, hats, folded knitwear will. |
| Medium Flat Rate Box | $21.17 | 11" x 8.5" x 5.5" or 13.6" x 11.9" x 3.4" | A boxed pair of sneakers, or two or three folded garments. |
| Large Flat Rate Box | $31.00 | 12" x 12" x 5.5" | A winter coat, or a multi-item bundle. |
The postage you pay twice is on the item that comes back
A return costs you the label out, the label back, and the sale. On used clothing most returns are not about fit, they are about condition: the buyer expected one thing and opened another. Postage is the only cost on this page you can plan for. Setting the condition expectation before the buyer clicks buy is how you avoid paying it twice.
The postage you actually paid, against the item you sold
An estimate before you list is useful. What decides your margin is the label you really bought, matched to the item it went out with. FlipDesk keeps that pairing, so the shipping cost in your profit number is the one on the receipt.
Common questions
- What is the cheapest way to ship clothes?
- For a single garment under a pound, USPS Ground Advantage in a poly mailer, which starts at $6.93 and never passes $8.40 no matter how far it goes. That is cheaper than every flat rate option and cheaper than the one pound Ground Advantage rate. Above about ten pounds, or for anything travelling to Zone 7 or 8, a Priority Mail Flat Rate box usually wins because it ignores both weight and distance.
- Why did my package cost more than the scale said?
- Dimensional weight. Once a parcel is bigger than one cubic foot, USPS charges on length times width times height divided by 139, if that number is larger than the actual weight. A puffer jacket in an 18 by 14 by 10 box is 2 pounds on the scale and 19 pounds on the invoice. USPS also rounds every fractional dimension up to the next whole inch before it does the arithmetic, so a 10.2 inch box is an 11 inch box.
- Is Priority Mail Flat Rate worth it for clothing?
- Sometimes, and the crossover is sharper than sellers expect. A Padded Flat Rate Envelope is $11.99 to anywhere, so it beats weight-based pricing on a heavy sweater going across the country and loses badly on a t-shirt going across town, where Ground Advantage is $6.93. The rule of thumb: flat rate wins when the package is heavy, far, or both, and loses on everything light and local.
- What are USPS zones and which one am I in?
- A zone is the distance between the sending and receiving ZIP codes, from Zone 1 at under 50 miles to Zone 8 at over 1,800. Ground Advantage and Priority Mail both price by zone, so the same package costs different amounts depending on where the buyer lives. Flat rate does not, which is the whole point of it. This calculator estimates the zone from the two ZIP codes you enter.
- Are these the rates eBay charges me?
- These are USPS commercial prices, which is the tier you pay when you buy a label online rather than at a Post Office counter. eBay label rates are at or below this tier, so treat a result here as a ceiling rather than a quote. Counter prices are roughly 30 to 40 percent higher than what you see here, which is why buying the label through eBay is worth doing even when the postage looks the same.
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