Parcel lockers in Europe compared: 10 networks (2026)

A parcel locker is a pickup point without opening hours: the carrier fills a compartment, the customer gets a code, and nobody has to be home. In some countries it is how most online orders arrive; in others it barely exists. For a shop selling across Europe that means the question is not “should we offer lockers?” but “which network, in which country, at what price?”.

This comparison covers the locker networks that are bookable as domestic services on our rate card today, with prices we measured ourselves and network sizes only where the carrier publishes them.

Which parcel locker network is cheapest? #

Domestic prices from our own shipping options, measured on 29 September 2026, for a small parcel (35 × 25 × 15 cm, up to 5 kg). They include our flat platform fee, the same everywhere, so differences between networks are the carriers’. Złoty and koruna are converted at the ECB reference rate of that day (€1 = zł 4.3653 = Kč 24.411).

Three patterns. The Baltics and Central Europe are cheap: every network there came in under €5. The extra cost of the door varies widely — zł 9.82 at DPD in Poland, €5.93 at Matkahuolto, €2.75 at Omniva — and was smallest at InPost Poland, where the courier cost only zł 0.92 more. And in Finland and France a locker cost about three times the Baltic price, in line with domestic parcels costing more there in general; see the European shipping rates index for the carrier rates by country.

How big is each locker network? #

A cheap locker is only useful if there is one near your customer. These are the network sizes the carriers publish themselves. Where a carrier does not publish a current figure we could open, the cell says so rather than borrowing a number from a news site.

One network is conspicuously absent: InPost in the UK. InPost reported almost 14,000 machines there at the end of 2025, but on our UK rate card InPost appears only through Yodel — one company with InPost since 2025 — as a home-delivery service called “InPost Collection”, so we do not list it as a locker option. The same goes for Germany, where DHL is booked as home delivery on our rate card and the Packstation is not a service you can choose.

What fits in a parcel locker? #

Every locker has compartments, and every compartment has a maximum. This is where a locker default goes wrong most often: the order is placed, the parcel is packed, and it does not fit.

• InPost Paczkomat (Poland): size A 8 × 38 × 64 cm, B 19 × 38 × 64 cm, C 41 × 38 × 64 cm, all up to 25 kg.
• DPD Pickup locker (Poland): up to 50 × 44 × 59 cm and 20 kg.
• LP Express and Unisend (Baltics): compartments from XS to XL, the largest 35 × 61 × 74.5 cm, up to 30 kg.
• Balíkovna (Czechia): parcels up to 15 kg and 50 × 50 × 50 cm, according to Balíkovna’s own brochure.
• InPost Italy on our rate card: at most 35 × 25 × 8.8 cm for a small parcel and 45 × 35 × 8.8 cm for a medium one. In practice: flat items only, like clothing in a mailer.
• Omniva and Unisend Estonia on our rate card: the large size is capped at 60 × 39 × 38 cm.

What goes wrong with lockers? #

• The locker is full. The carrier diverts the parcel to a nearby point or locker, and the customer gets a different message than expected.
• The customer does not collect in time. Holding periods at lockers are short. La Poste, for example, holds a Colissimo in a Pickup locker for 5 working days, against 14 days at a post office. After that the parcel goes back to the sender — with local stock, to your sender in that country, not across a border.
• The parcel does not fit. See the limits above. A parcel that is too big is refused or rerouted, and your delivery time is gone.

None of this outweighs the price where lockers are the habit. It does mean a locker is the wrong default for large, heavy or expensive items. For how the point-or-door choice plays out country by country, see pickup point vs home delivery in Europe; for the two biggest locker markets in detail, InPost vs DPD in Poland and shipping to the Baltics.

Which locker network should you use per country? #

France is the one country where the locker network is not the cheapest way to a point — the details are in Colissimo vs Mondial Relay.

How to use lockers with AirPost #

With local fulfilment through AirPost, a verified person in your customer’s country holds a batch of your stock and ships each order as a domestic parcel — to a locker, a point or the door. You pay the label, the fee you agree with your sender, and our €0.85 platform fee per parcel. No subscription, no storage costs.

1. 1

   Find a sender in the country

   On /en/senders. Every sender’s identity and payout account are checked before they get stock or orders.

2. 2

   Set a default per product and country

   For example a locker service in Poland and the Baltics, and home delivery for your bulky products everywhere. We look for the cheapest rate within the service level you choose.

3. 3

   Pick the locker with the order

   When you create an order to a point, you choose the locker or point near the delivery address. From Shopify: a pickup point chosen at checkout is not passed on yet, and an order whose shipping address is itself a locker (a Paczkomat, for example) is held back. Create those orders manually with the right point.

4. 4

   Track it in one place

   Your sender drops the parcel off; tracking reaches you in the same conversation and goes back to Shopify when the order came from there.