The clearance fee inverts — who is cheapest depends on the amount
Posten charges 46 kroner on a small parcel where UPS charges 195. On a large one it reverses. Four carriers' published rates, and what each is calculated on.
The fee a carrier charges to clear your parcel is often larger than the duty on it. On a clothing consignment worth 800 kroner including freight, the duty is 86 kroner — and somebody wants between 78 and 195 kroner for handling the paperwork. Which of those two figures is larger depends on who is carrying it, and you did not choose that. The seller did, at the moment you pressed buy.
So who is cheapest? The answer changes as the parcel gets bigger.
The four rates
What each carrier publishes itself, read on 30 August 2026.
Posten charges on the value of the consignment, in three steps: 46 kroner below 500, 78 kroner up to 3,000, and 278 kroner above that. If the goods came from a VOEC-registered shop and cost under 3,000 kroner per item, there is no clearance at all and Posten charges nothing.
UPS charges 78 kroner below 350 kroner, and above that 4 per cent of the duty and VAT it advanced on your behalf — but never less than 195 kroner.
FedEx charges 2.5 per cent of the tax it advanced, never less than 174.50 kroner. No steps, no lower band.
PostNord publishes no rate for private recipients. Not in the consumer price list, and not on the customs pages, which cover business exports out of Norway.
Where it turns over
Look at what the two bases do. Posten calculates on what the consignment is worth. UPS and FedEx calculate on what the tax came to. Those are not the same number and they do not grow together — so the ranking swaps places somewhere along the way.
| Consignment | Duty and VAT | Posten | UPS | FedEx |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 360 kr | 138 kr | 46 kr | 195 kr | 174.50 kr |
| 800 kr | 307 kr | 78 kr | 195 kr | 174.50 kr |
| 2,200 kr | 844 kr | 78 kr | 195 kr | 174.50 kr |
| 8,400 kr | 3,224 kr | 278 kr | 195 kr | 174.50 kr |
Calculated on clothing at 10.7 per cent duty and 25 per cent VAT, with freight inside the customs value. Use the calculator for your own figures.
On a small parcel Posten is four times cheaper than UPS. On a large one Posten is the dearest of the three. The crossing point sits near 3,000 kroner, where Posten’s top step begins while the percentages are still below their minimums.
Those minimums are the other half of the story. Four per cent of 138 kroner is 5.52. You pay 195. In practice the express carriers’ percentage is a flat fee for anything a private buyer normally orders — the percentage only starts to matter once the tax passes roughly 4,900 kroner at UPS and 7,000 at FedEx.
What it means in practice
Below 500 kroner, the carrier’s fee is most of the bill. A 360-kroner parcel attracts 138 kroner of tax. Arriving with Posten, clearance costs 46. Arriving with UPS, it costs 195 — more than the tax itself.
VOEC makes the whole question moot. If the shop is registered for VOEC and the item is under 3,000 kroner, the VAT was collected at checkout and the parcel passes straight through: no clearance, no fee, whichever carrier brings it. That is why it is worth checking whether a shop quotes Norwegian VAT at the till. It is the one thing in this article you actually get to choose.
You can clear it yourself. Posten charges 155 kroner to process a self-declaration including customs storage; FedEx charges 300 kroner to hand over the paperwork. Both cost more than letting them do it on a small consignment, and save money only if you already have the customs knowledge.
If the parcel sits, it costs. FedEx charges 100 kroner per package per working day after three days. That is not a tax, it is storage, and it runs while you are working out what the bill is for.
The United Kingdom, briefly
There is less to go on here, but the two rates we have read stand in sharp contrast. Royal Mail charges £8, flat, and only where HMRC has actually raised a charge. FedEx charges 2.5 per cent of the tax, minimum £12.90. On anything below roughly £516 of duty and VAT, FedEx is 61 per cent dearer than Royal Mail for identical work.
About these figures
Every rate here was read at the carrier that charges it, and the date is in the source list. None of them comes from a comparison site or a news article.
That makes the list shorter than it might be. DHL publishes no disbursement fee on any page we could find: the Norwegian and British personal-shipper pages do not exist, the Italian one that does states no amount, and DHL’s own UK guide to the duty and VAT invoice spends two pages explaining the invoice without naming the fee once. Parcelforce has a heading that reads “What is the Customs Clearance fee?” and contains no figure at all.
They are recorded as not published, not as free. The difference is the whole reason this page exists: a fee you cannot find until the parcel is at your door is not a fee you agreed to.
Rates are re-checked quarterly. Next review November 2026.
Figures quoted above were correct on 30 August 2026. Rates change; the pages linked from this guide carry the current ones, refreshed from the source.