Comparing European letter rates

There has been a lot of talk about Royal Mail increasing the cost of a First Class stamp to £1.80 from 7th April. Most people think this is too high, and I agree as the jump in price isn't going to persuade many people to write more letters.

I get the "cycle" argument - people are using digital communication more, which means there are fewer letters to deliver, which means that the price needs to go up to deliver fewer letters to more addresses, which means that fewer people write letters... and so on. There aren't easy answers especially when we see what happened in Denmark last year.

But I have been thinking how other postal services are managing and I decided to check out the cost of posting a First Class (or Priority) letter in other European countries to compare this to the UK. I've deliberately not added small countries like Malta, Gibraltar or even the Channel Islands (all of which have very low domestic rates) but I have added a few non-European countries to get a more global view. As I often say Google is your friend and it was definitely interesting! Russia 24 ₽ (£0.23) Japan ¥85 (£0.40) Turkey 29 ₺ (£0.49) Romania 3 lei (£0.51) USA $0.78 (£0.58) Hungary 270 Ft (£0.60)

Portugal €0.69 (£0.60)

Croatia €0.72 (£0.62)

Serbia 90 RSD (£0.66)

Albania 80 Lek (£0.69)

Canada $1.44 (£0.79) Germany €0.95 (£0.82) Spain €0.96 (£0.83) Slovenia €1.20 (£1.04) Luxembourg €1.20 (£1.04) Switzerland 1.20 CHF (£1.06)

Austria €1.30 (£1.12) Australia $2.20 (£1.17) Poland 5.80 zł (£1.17) Netherlands €1.40 (£1.21) Slovakia €1.40 (£1.21)

Czechia 36 Kč (£1.27) Greece €2.00 (£1.73)

Sweden 22 kr (£1.77)

UK £1.80 £1.80

Norway 28 kr (£2.16) Belgium €2.52 (£2.18)

Finland €2.75 (£2.37) Italy €2.90 (£2.49)

France €3.15 (£2.71) Some of these may not be exactly the same service as Royal Mail 1st Class - for example, France's Lettre Service Plus is a priority tracked service - they also have a cheaper standard Lettre verte rate of €1.52 but neither are exactly like our First Class. But overall I think this is useful. Services across Europe are seeing a problem with reduced mail volume but they're not all hiking up prices and instead are finding different ways of dealing with the problem. Most prices are much lower than the UK.

Does the price of a stamp matter? Is it a big deal? I think it is. Of course, people don't write as many letters as they used to but they still post important documents, birthday cards and so on. If the price rises too high, people may stop sending letters altogether unless they absolutely have to, which makes the whole system harder to sustain. So keeping stamps reasonably affordable doesn't just keep customers happy, it helps ensure that the postal system remains useful for everyone.

When prices rise too fast, people may simply give up on using the service. Driving away customers won't help Royal Mail.

It may also be worth learning from countries that have accepted that letter writing is changing and have adapted their systems around that reality. This might mean delivering letters less often or finding ways to keep basic postal services affordable. The Royal Mail of course has a universal service obligation and this makes some sense, but perhaps it is time to take a look at this and ask whether it is sensible to require Royal Mail to deliver letters six days per week. Perhaps this could be made more flexible (especially as Royal Mail isn't meeting the target anyway), less expensive and in line with other European countries where standards and expectations have changed in recent years. La Poste in France is doing this so why not Royal Mail?

If you pay higher prices then you expect higher standards and that just isn't happening. There seems to me to be no point in forcing Royal Mail to aim for standards that made sense in 1996 but in 2026 are unrealistic. The service needs to meet today's needs, not the needs of 30 years ago. My view is that Royal Mail (and the government) should look more closely at how other European postal services are responding to challenges. Instead of putting up prices, perhaps it could think more about what a modern postal service should look like and what is working for other postal services. There's no point in alienating customers with massive price increases when you keep failing to meet standards that are no longer realistic. Something has to change, and hopefully not just the prices! Editor's note: Most of the prices of postal services were obtained from the most recent update on the Postcrossing website. Their quoted prices relate to the cost of sending a postcard; Xanthe's criteria was a First Class letter - the kind she'd send her penfriends (i.e. a single sheet of paper in an envelope). In most cases the rates would be the same; in a few there are clearly specific domestic postcard rates so we looked at postal administrations' websites to confirm the price for a letter (e.g in the cases of the USA and Greece). Conversions to Sterling were carried out by the editor and were correct on 11th March 2026. There may be mistakes in the prices listed, especially if prices have recently risen, but Xanthe and I have done everything we can to check them. It should be noted, if not immediately obvious, that this is not intended as a forensic study, merely a 13 year-old's enquiry into differences in postage rates. She is perfectly aware that there are differences in the levels of service offered by the various postal administrations; the object of her piece was not to scrutinise such differences but to establish the cost of sending a small envelope containing a single sheet of paper (i.e. under 20g) in different countries using their First Class or Priority service. She also wanted to make suggestions in relation to the future of Royal Mail's services.

I would have hoped this would have been understood and that Xanthe's contribution to the discussion would be seen as positive, and an attempt at understanding the wider situation - something that the UK media, in reporting on Royal Mail's price increase, have recently have failed to do.