01 · The stakes
Why the carrier matters more in COD than anywhere else
In prepaid ecommerce the courier is a logistics decision. The money is already yours, so a slow or clumsy delivery costs you goodwill and a support ticket. In cash on delivery the courier is a revenue decision, because the courier is the one collecting your money. If they cannot get the parcel into the buyer's hands, you do not get paid at all.
That changes what you should care about:
- Delivery attempts. A carrier that tries once and gives up will quietly cost you more than one that costs fifty cents more per parcel and tries three times.
- Transit time. Impulse buys cool off. A parcel arriving on day one gets accepted far more often than the same parcel arriving on day six, and refusals are pure loss.
- Return cost. Every carrier will bring a refused parcel back. What varies enormously is whether that costs you nothing, a flat euro or two, or the entire shipping rate a second time.
- Cash handling. The courier collects, reconciles and remits. That process is why COD collection carries a fee at all, and why payout timing differs by market.
The cheapest label is rarely the cheapest parcel. Price the route including what refusals cost you, or you are optimising the wrong number.
02 · The data
The full comparison
Every carrier on our network, every route, sorted by what a parcel actually costs to put on the road. Total includes the warehouse fulfillment fee for the hub it ships from, because a cheap label out of an expensive warehouse is not cheap.
Every COD route we run
Per parcel, 300 g to 1.2 kg. Rates depend on the route, never on your volume.
| Carrier | Route | From hub | Transit | Total per parcel | If refused |
|---|
Where two hubs can serve the same country, both rows are shown. Fulfillment is free out of Romania, €2.20 out of Bulgaria, €1.20 out of Spain and €1 out of Italy.
03 · The carriers
Carrier by carrier
Sameday · Romania and Bulgaria
The backbone of the network and the cheapest route we have at €3.31 door delivery in 24 hours. Romanian carrier, strong domestic coverage, and it also carries our Bulgarian traffic. Out of the Romania hub, Romanian returns are free, which makes Romania the most forgiving market on the whole network to test in. Out of Bulgaria the same routes return for a flat €1.
Geniki · Greece
24 hour transit into Greece, which surprises people who assume Greece is a slow market. €4.44 out of Romania. Bulgaria ships it cheaper at €3.44, but add that hub's €2.20 fulfillment fee and the Bulgaria total is €5.64, so Romania still wins on cost. Greece is the one route where the Bulgaria hub becomes genuinely competitive if your return rate is high, because returns there are €1 flat.
GLS Hungary · Hungary
48 hours, €5.98 out of Romania. On the expensive end for the region, but Hungarian returns out of Romania are free, so a refusal only costs you the outbound leg. That combination makes it safer than the headline rate suggests.
InPost Home · Poland
48 hours, €4.34. Note the word Home. This is InPost's door delivery service, not the locker network they are famous for. Lockers are a different product with different buyer behaviour, and for COD specifically the door service is usually the right default. More on that below.
PPL · Czechia
48 hours, €4.67, and free returns out of Romania. Czechia is one of the quieter markets in the region, and free returns make it a sensible second country once your first one is working.
SPS · Slovakia
48 hours, €4.83, free returns. Small market, low competition, and it pairs naturally with Czechia because the two behave similarly and you can often reuse creative across both.
DPD Slovenia · Slovenia
48 hours, €5.76, free returns. The smallest of the Eastern routes. Best used as an add-on to a working campaign rather than as a country you launch into cold.
Correos · Spain, Portugal and the Spanish islands
24 hours to mainland Spain and Portugal at €7 shipping plus €1.20 fulfillment. The Spanish islands run €10.50. Returns are €4.50 on the mainland and €5 on the islands, so this is a market where a poor delivery rate genuinely hurts. Higher average order values in Spain usually offset the higher shipping, but not a bad delivery rate.
On Italy
Italy is servable two ways: from the Italy hub at €7 shipping plus €1 fulfillment, or from Romania at €6.44 with free fulfillment. Romania is cheaper on paper and slower in practice. Ask us which fits your product before you commit stock, because the answer depends on how time sensitive your buyer is.
04 · Coverage gaps
The carriers we do not use, and why we are telling you
If you read anything else about ecommerce in this region you will run into Fan Courier in Romania and Speedy and Econt in Bulgaria. They are major domestic carriers and they matter in those markets. They are not the carriers on our routes: our Romanian and Bulgarian traffic goes with Sameday.
Two reasons to put that here. You may have a reason to want a specific carrier, and it is better to know before you ship stock than after. And a comparison that leaves out the alternatives is an advert.
If a particular carrier is a hard requirement for your product or your buyers, ask before you commit stock. Sometimes the answer is no.
05 · The format question
Lockers versus delivery to the door
Parcel lockers have taken over large parts of Central European ecommerce, InPost most visibly in Poland. For prepaid orders they are excellent: cheaper, greener, no failed delivery attempts, collect whenever you like.
For cash on delivery the calculation is different, and it is worth understanding before you assume cheaper is better.
- A locker adds a step the buyer has to choose to take. With door delivery, the parcel arrives and the buyer decides yes or no on the spot. With a locker, they have to travel to it. Some do not, and an uncollected parcel is a refusal with extra stages.
- Impulse decay works against you. The gap between ordering and collecting is exactly the window in which enthusiasm fades.
- Cash handling is more complex. Paying cash into a machine is not the same simple transaction as handing notes to a courier.
That is why our Polish route is InPost Home by default. Lockers can work, particularly for repeat buyers and lower ticket items, but they are a deliberate choice rather than an obvious saving. If you want to test them, ask.
06 · The decision
How to actually choose
In practice you are not choosing a carrier. You are choosing a country and a warehouse, and the carrier follows. So the sequence is:
Pick the country on market grounds, not shipping grounds
Ad cost and COD adoption swamp a fifty cent difference in the label. A cheap route into a market you cannot advertise profitably is worth nothing.
Price the route including refusals
Take the total per parcel, then add the return cost multiplied by your expected refusal rate. That is your real per-order shipping cost, and it reorders the table more than people expect.
Prefer free-return routes while you are still testing
Romania, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Slovenia return free out of the Romania hub. When you do not yet know your refusal rate, that is a genuinely cheaper place to find out.
Only then look at transit
24 hours beats 48 hours for acceptance, but a 48 hour route with free returns often beats a 24 hour route that charges full shipping to bring parcels back.
The COD Europe guide has a route explorer and a profit calculator that runs this arithmetic for you, and the complete rate tables for all four warehouses are on the fees page.
07 · FAQ
Questions people ask
Sameday into Romania and Bulgaria at €3.31 per parcel out of the Romania hub, where fulfillment is free. That is the cheapest route on our network. Cheapest is not always best though: price the route including what a refused parcel costs to bring back.
Nine of the nineteen priced routes deliver in 24 hours: Sameday into Romania and Bulgaria from either hub, Geniki into Greece from either hub, and Correos into Spain, the Spanish islands and Portugal. Everything else is 48 hours, except the two Italy routes where transit is quoted on request.
No. Those are significant domestic carriers in Romania and Bulgaria, but our routes in both countries are carried by Sameday. If a specific carrier is a requirement for you, tell us before you send stock and we will say honestly whether we can serve it.
Our Polish route is InPost Home, the door service, by default. Lockers add a collection step the buyer has to choose to take, and that gap is where impulse purchases go cold. Lockers can work for repeat buyers and low ticket items, but treat it as a deliberate test rather than a straight saving.
Out of the Romania hub: Romania, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Those five are the most forgiving routes on the network and the best places to test a new product. Out of the Bulgaria hub, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece return at a flat €1.
The courier collects at the door and remits to us, we reconcile it, and you receive your COD to your own bank account every Friday. That handling is what the 4% COD collection fee on delivered orders under $45 covers.