Will stamp price rises push small businesses to rethink strategy?

An increase in stamp prices could force small online businesses to rethink their products, pricing strategy, and shipping processes. 

Royal Mail released the latest stamp prices from 7 April and the cost of a first class stamp is now £1.80 – a 10p increase on the previous price. And with fresh analysis finding the price has risen 136% since 2020, business owners may be left wondering how high postage can get before they need to rethink their model. 

How much will postage cost in 2026? 

The current prices for sending a letter and parcel are on the Royal Mail website. Here’s what prices start at, as of April 2026: 

• First class stamps: £1.80
• Second class stamps: £0.91
• First class parcels: £5.15
• Second class parcels: £3.95

Some businesses save money by using a franking machine, which lowers the price per stamp. You can also reduce costs by having a business account with Royal Mail, whether you need to send one off parcels or more regularly.  

1st class stamps could cost £7 by 2035

New research estimates that a first class postage stamp could cost £7 by 2035, based on the rate of increase over the past nine years. 

Sticker experts at Quote My Wall tracked Royal Mail price rises from every year since 2020, calculated the average annual rate of increase, and used that to project a price in 2035.* 

First class stamps cost 76p in 2020 and are £1.80 today – a rise of 136% in six years across eight separate price increases. 

Second class stamps have also risen, though more slowly – from 65p in 2020 to 91p today, a rise of 40% over the same period.

How can you adapt your online business? 

If your small business relies on postage, whether for sending contracts or shipping goods from your online shop, then stamp price rises can directly affect your bottom line. 

Yet putting up prices can feel difficult for many reasons. We know from research that small businesses are often choosing between absorbing costs or risking losing customers. A Simply Business survey earlier in 2026 found 82% of small businesses say they’ve seen operating costs rise in the past 12 months, yet only 12% are increasing their prices for customers. 

Protect your profits 

In a time where high street businesses are struggling to survive, online businesses are faced with their own cost pressures too. That’s why it’s vital to have a plan that builds your business’s financial resilience, helping you protect profits despite costs rising around you. 

Our finance guides could help you work out the health of your business 

• How to work out profit margin – profit margin calculator
• How to price a product 
• ‘How I secured £25,000 for my business’: 7 business grants for women

To see how these extra pennies per parcel affect your bottom line, use this guide to calculating your break-even point.

*To arrive at the 2035 figures, Quote My Wall took the official Royal Mail price of each stamp in 2020 and in April 2026 and calculated the compound annual growth rate for each — that is, the average percentage by which the price increased each year across those six years. For first class stamps that works out at approximately 15.5% per year. Applied to today’s price of £1.80, and projected forward nine years to 2035, that produces an estimated price of £6.69. For second class stamps the annual rate was approximately 5.8%, producing an estimated price of £1.51 by 2035. Both figures are projections based on the historical rate of increase and are not a forecast of what Royal Mail will charge.