Estimated delivery date calculator
Add a service's typical transit time to a ship date, with weekends, public holidays and customs clearance already accounted for — and see exactly which holiday pushed the date out.
When will it arrive?
Pick a ship date to see the estimated delivery window.
How it works
The arithmetic people do in their heads — ship date plus five days — is wrong in three predictable ways. It counts weekends the carrier does not. It ignores the public holiday sitting in the middle of the window. And it starts transit on the day the label was bought rather than the first working day the parcel could actually move.
- 1
Set the ship date
The day the parcel is handed to the carrier, not the day the order was placed. If the seller needs time to pack, add it as handling days.
- 2
Pick the carrier and service
Each service carries its own typical transit window. Guaranteed services are labelled — they are the only ones with a commitment behind the date.
- 3
Read the window, not the date
You get an earliest and a latest date, with weekends and public holidays already excluded, plus a note on any holiday that pushed the window out.
dispatch = ship date + handling days (business days)
earliest = dispatch + minimum transit (business days)
latest = dispatch + maximum transit (business days)
international: + 1–5 days for clearance
Business-day arithmetic rolls forward, never back: a parcel handed over on a Sunday begins its transit on the Monday. That single rule accounts for most of the gap between a naive estimate and reality on weekend orders.
Typical transit times by service
Published windows for the services people ask about most. These are typical, not guaranteed, and they exclude the day of dispatch and any seller handling time.
USPS — domestic market: United States
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground Advantage | Domestic | 2–5 business days | Estimate only |
| Priority Mail | Domestic | 1–3 business days | Estimate only |
| Priority Mail Express | Domestic | 1–2 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| First-Class Package International | International | 7–21 business days | Estimate only |
| Priority Mail International | International | 6–10 business days | Estimate only |
UPS — domestic market: United States
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground | Domestic | 1–5 business days | Estimate only |
| 3 Day Select | Domestic | 3–3 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| 2nd Day Air | Domestic | 2–2 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| Next Day Air | Domestic | 1–1 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| Worldwide Expedited | International | 2–5 business days | Estimate only |
| Worldwide Saver | International | 1–3 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
FedEx — domestic market: United States
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground / Home Delivery | Domestic | 1–5 business days | Estimate only |
| Express Saver | Domestic | 3–3 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| 2Day | Domestic | 2–2 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| Standard Overnight | Domestic | 1–1 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| International Economy | International | 4–6 business days | Estimate only |
| International Priority | International | 1–3 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
DHL Express — domestic market: Global
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Express Worldwide | International | 1–4 business days | Guaranteed / dated service |
| Economy Select | International | 2–6 business days | Estimate only |
| DHL eCommerce | International | 5–15 business days | Estimate only |
Royal Mail — domestic market: United Kingdom
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracked 24 | Domestic | 1–1 business days | Estimate only |
| Tracked 48 | Domestic | 2–2 business days | Estimate only |
| International Tracked | International | 3–7 business days | Estimate only |
| International Economy | International | 10–35 business days | Estimate only |
Canada Post — domestic market: Canada
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Parcel | Domestic | 2–9 business days | Estimate only |
| Expedited Parcel | Domestic | 1–7 business days | Estimate only |
| Xpresspost | Domestic | 1–2 business days | Estimate only |
| Tracked Packet International | International | 6–12 business days | Estimate only |
Australia Post — domestic market: Australia
| Service | Scope | Typical transit | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parcel Post | Domestic | 2–6 business days | Estimate only |
| Express Post | Domestic | 1–2 business days | Estimate only |
| International Standard | International | 6–15 business days | Estimate only |
Sourced from carrier service guides and reviewed annually. Lane, origin and destination move these figures considerably — a coast-to-coast ground shipment sits at the top of its range while a two-state one sits at the bottom.
Worked example
A Friday order with two days of handling
An order placed Friday 20 November 2026, seller handling 2 business days, UPS Ground (1–5 business days), US federal holiday calendar.
Fri 20 Nov + 2 business days handling → dispatch Tue 24 Nov
Tue 24 Nov + 1 business day → earliest Wed 25 Nov
Thu 26 Nov is Thanksgiving — skipped
Tue 24 Nov + 5 business days → latest Wed 2 Dec
Twelve calendar days from order to the far end of the window, for a service badged “1–5 days.” Nothing went wrong: two weekends, a federal holiday and the handling time did all of it. This gap is the single biggest source of “where is my order” contacts in e-commerce.
Why estimates and reality diverge
- Cutoff times. Every origin has a last pickup. A label bought at 6pm ships tomorrow, and one whole business day vanishes before anything has moved.
- Peak season. Between late November and Christmas, networks run over capacity and most guarantees are formally suspended. Add two to four days to anything in that window.
- Customs. The least predictable leg of any international shipment. Our buffer of 1–5 days covers routine clearance, not a hold — see the customs delay helper for that.
- Address problems. A missing unit number adds one to three days and, at several carriers, a correction fee for the shipper.
- Final-mile handoffs.Economy international services hand the parcel to the destination's postal operator, which runs on its own schedule and often adds days that the original carrier's transit table never accounted for.
Once it has shipped, the estimate stops being the best answer
A live tracking timeline beats any calculator the moment the first scan lands, because it reflects where the parcel actually is rather than where a table says it should be. Use this tool to plan; use tracking to know.
Accuracy
Estimates only. Carriers and customs authorities determine the final figure — confirm with your carrier before you ship.
How we source and maintain this data
Transit windows come from each carrier's published service standards. Where a carrier publishes a single figure we show it as a range anyway, because a single date implies a commitment that non-guaranteed services do not carry.
Holidays are the part most calculators get wrong twelve months after they are built. Rather than hardcoding dates, we generate them from the statutory rules — 5 national calendars, including the weekend-substitution rules and the Easter computus — so the calculator is as correct in 2031 as it is today. It covers national holidays only; regional ones vary too much to include responsibly.
Review cadence: Transit tables are reviewed annually and at service changes. Holiday dates are generated from statutory rules, so they do not go stale. Last reviewed August 2026. This tool is built and maintained by the ParcelTracking team, who run multi-carrier tracking across 3,000+ carriers.
Primary sources
Delivery date FAQ
We add the service's typical transit time to your ship date, counting only business days, and skipping weekends and the public holidays for the calendar you select. Handling days are applied first, also in business days, because a label bought on a Friday evening does not start its first transit day on the Saturday. International services get an extra one to five business days for customs clearance.
No. They are typical published windows, not commitments. Only guaranteed services — overnight and dated express products — carry a money-back commitment, and even those are suspended during declared peak periods and severe weather events. Treat the later date as the one to plan around.
For most standard ground services, no — they neither deliver nor count weekends, which is why a '2-day' service shipped on a Thursday arrives Monday. Some express and postal services do deliver on Saturdays, and a few metropolitan networks deliver on Sundays. Our default excludes weekends; turn the toggle off to count calendar days instead.
Five things account for most of it: a missed carrier cutoff on the day it shipped, peak-season volume between late November and Christmas, customs clearance on international lanes, an address problem that needs correcting, and weather or network disruption. None of them are visible at the point of estimating, which is exactly why the answer is a range.
It knows the statutory national ones for the calendars offered — US federal, UK (England and Wales), Canadian federal, Australian national and German nationwide — and it generates them from the rules rather than a fixed list, so they stay correct in future years. It does not know state, provincial or regional holidays, which vary enormously and do close local depots.
Transit time is how long the carrier takes once it has the parcel. Delivery time as a customer experiences it also includes the seller's handling time, which is frequently the larger of the two and is the part no carrier controls. Add it in the handling days field to see the real answer.
Related tools
Want the real answer instead of an estimate?
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