What It Costs to Write Abroad, and Where the Multiple Bites Hardest
Everyone expects posting abroad to cost more. What surprises people is how much the multiple changes depending on what is inside the envelope.
Run the three mail classes through the postage calculator at each of the three zones and the pattern is clear.
The same item, three destinations
| Class | Weight | Domestic | Canada / Mexico | International | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letter | 1 oz | $0.82 | $1.75 | $1.75 | 2.1× |
| Large envelope (flat) | 3 oz | $2.27 | $5.45 | $6.05 | 2.7× |
| Small package | 8 oz | $9.45 | $20.15 | $25.70 | 2.7× |
The prices in this post are USPS retail prices effective July 12, 2026; the domestic package price is for the farthest US zone, and where countries in a zone are priced differently the calculator uses the highest. Check the current rate before you post: prices usually change each January and July.
A letter abroad is 2.1× the domestic price. A small package abroad is 2.7×. Sending paper across a border is expensive; sending objects across one is in a different league: $25.70 for an 8 oz package against $1.75 for a letter.
Why letters travel so well
A letter is flat, light and machine-sortable, and the international postal agreements that move letters between countries have existed for a hundred and fifty years. The infrastructure is old, shared and enormously efficient — which is why $1.75 still sends a sheet of paper to the other side of the world.
A package is a physical object that has to be weighed, tracked, customs-declared and hand-handled at both ends. None of that is automated in the same way, and the price reflects the labour rather than the distance.
Weight abroad, in detail
| Letter weight | Domestic | Canada / Mexico | International |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 oz | $0.82 | $1.75 | $1.75 |
| 2 oz | $1.11 | $2.60 | $3.50 |
| 3 oz | $1.40 | $3.50 | $5.25 |
| 3.5 oz | $1.69 | $4.15 | $5.75 |
The additional-ounce charge abroad is $1.75 against $0.29 at home, about 6 times as much. So the multiple grows as the letter gets heavier: 2.1× at one ounce and 3.8× at three.
That is the surprise waiting at the heavier end. Outside Canada and Mexico, every ounce of a letter costs as much as the first: a three-ounce international letter costs $5.25, against $1.40 at home. It is still far less than a package abroad, which starts at $25.70, but a heavy letter abroad is worth trimming.
Canada and Mexico cost the same at one ounce
A one-ounce letter to Canada or Mexico is $1.75, exactly the same as a letter anywhere else. Geography buys far less than people expect.
The gap opens only as the letter gets heavier: $2.60 against $3.50 at two ounces, and $3.50 against $5.25 at three. That is worth knowing before choosing a pen pal on the assumption that nearer is cheaper. For an ordinary one-ounce letter it should not decide anything.
What this means for what you send
Send paper, not objects. Drawings, photographs, pressed leaves, stickers, a page of a comic — all flat, all inside the letter rate, all far more interesting than they sound.
Keep it under the class limit. An international letter that tips into the flat class jumps from $5.25 to $6.05, and the same cliff exists at home.
Save objects for once a year. One properly good parcel at a birthday costs less than four small ones and arrives as an event rather than as postage.
Buy stamps in advance. International rates are not covered by a domestic Forever stamp, and discovering that at a postbox on a Sunday is how letters sit in a bag for a fortnight.
The customs form nobody mentions
Anything that is not plainly a letter needs a customs declaration abroad — contents, value, signature. Plain correspondence does not. That is a second, quieter reason to keep an international envelope to paper: it is not only cheaper, it is a form you do not have to fill in, and a package without one comes straight back.
The number worth remembering
$1.75 sends a one-ounce letter to almost any country on earth. Whatever else is true about international post, that remains one of the better bargains available to a child with a couple of dollars and a friend somewhere else — and it is the reason pen-pal writing survived the arrival of everything that was supposed to replace it.
The return-envelope problem
A thoughtful habit at home becomes a trap abroad: you cannot enclose a stamped envelope for the reply, because your country's stamps are not valid in theirs.
A stamped addressed envelope sent to another country is simply an envelope the other child cannot post. What does work is enclosing a spare unstamped envelope with your address already written on it — that removes the hardest part of replying for a young child, which is finding out how to write a foreign address correctly.
Write your own address in the format your postal service expects, with the country name in capitals on the last line. It is the single most useful thing you can put in a first letter abroad.
What cannot go in the envelope
Restrictions vary by country and a few are near-universal: seeds and plant material, food, batteries, liquids, and anything flammable. A pressed flower is a plant, and some countries take that seriously.
Coins and banknotes are legal almost everywhere and a bad idea everywhere — an envelope with a coin in it is visibly different from one without, and that is exactly the problem.
The safe list is generous and covers nearly everything a child wants to send: paper, photographs, drawings, stickers, fabric patches, flat souvenirs, tickets, maps, a page from a comic. All flat, all inside the letter rate, none of them a customs form.
Addressing it so it arrives
An international address is written in the destination country's order, with one exception: the country name goes last, in capitals, in your own language. Postal workers at your end need to read the country; postal workers at the other end need to read the rest.
Leave the rest exactly as the other child wrote it, including anything that looks like a mistake. Postcodes in other countries have shapes you will not recognise, and "correcting" one is a reliable way to lose a letter.
What it costs a year
A one-ounce letter a month to one friend abroad is $21.00 in postage over a year, plus envelopes and paper. That is the entire price of the thing — no subscription, no device, no account, and nothing that stops working when a company changes its mind.
Set against almost any other way for a child to keep a friendship across a border, it is remarkably cheap, and it is the only one that leaves a shoebox of letters at the end of it.