Freight

Courier or air freight, and the weight band where it flips

Under a pallet of air freight there is a smaller decision a first-year importer makes a dozen times: put the reorder on the courier account, or book it as air cargo. The forwarders publish the weight where it flips. They stop before turning it into units.

Marcus VolstedCo-founder, Restocio Published 21 October 202612 min read

Every source on this page was opened and read, and each one is dated in the Sources section at the foot.

Three forwarders checked on 10 October 2026 put the crossover between express courier and air freight at 100 to 150 kg a shipment. Under it, the courier's one door-to-door price is usually the cheaper one. Over it, air freight's lower rate per kilo starts to beat the courier even after the fixed charges at each end are paid. At your unit weight that band is a number of units, and it is worth knowing before the next small reorder, because the shipment that crosses it is priced one way and the shipment that stays under it another.

This page is the small end of the freight ladder. Air or sea freight owns the mode split and the bridge arithmetic, and FCL vs LCL owns the container question. Neither is repeated here. What follows is about the shipment under a pallet, where a courier account and a forwarder's air quote are both on the table and the question is which to use, for how much of the order.

What the forwarders actually say

The number is the same on three pages written by three companies on three continents. FreightAmigo, a Hong Kong forwarder, writing on 29 July 2026, gives air freight “potentially lower per-kilogram costs for shipments over 100-150 kg” and says that “when shipments exceed 150 kg” it “often provides better economics”, while express earns its place “for parcels under 30-50 kg with high urgency”. iContainers, updated 20 August 2026, says it in one line: “For shipments over 100-150 kg, air freight is usually more cost-effective.” LooperBuy, a China sourcing and shipping agent, writing on 9 April 2026, puts courier's best use at “smaller, frequent inventory replenishments (typically under 100kg to 150kg)” and says that “once your shipment exceeds 100kg to 150kg, the economies of scale offered by air freight make it the more economical choice”.

The wording is close enough across the three that it reads as a rule of thumb the trade repeats rather than three separate measurements, and it is worth treating it as one. Two importers who have shipped plenty of both draw the line higher. Dave Bryant at EcomCrew, in a post last updated 9 January 2023, writes that “Air Freight tends to become a better option than Air Courier for packages 200kg and above” and that “it's somewhere in that 200-300 kg mark”. A China-based importer writing on Wedoimport in March 2020 goes higher still, “at around 400-500Kg chargeable weight”, and gives the reason the forwarders' pages leave out.

Why the band is a band

A courier price is one number, door to door, customs included. An air freight price is a rate per kilo plus a set of charges that do not scale with the kilos. Wedoimport's line is the plain version: “there is a fixed cost at each end for customs clearing, forwarder's fee, and domestic trucking, therefore using courier is normally a no-brainer when it comes to small packages & samples”. FreightAmigo says the same thing from the forwarder's side, noting that the airport-to-airport model carries “additional costs of ground transportation at both ends” and customs that is “managed by shipper or forwarder” rather than included in the price.

So the per-kilo gap has to earn those fixed charges back before air freight is the cheaper option, and where that happens depends on how large the charges are on your lane and how wide the gap is. Wedoimport's own worked example makes it concrete. Ten cartons quoted at $5 a kilo by courier and $4.50 by air freight came to “$5 x 320Kg = $1600” door to door against “$4.5 x 267Kg = $1200 + $750 = $1950” by air freight once an assumed $750 of charges at the two ends went on, and “in the above scenario, courier is clearly the better option”. Double the cartons and the same page has air freight winning. The two weights differ for the same ten cartons because courier and air cargo convert volume to weight at different rates, which is the one thing about this decision landed cost for Shopify stores already covers. The 100 to 150 kg band is where the forwarders expect the crossover with their own charges. An importer paying a separate broker at each end meets it later, which is why the two importers above put it at 200 kg and beyond. Even a cross-border guide that starts recommending air cargo from 30 kg, Goods Across Borders, updated 13 May 2026, has the courier winning its own 60 kg example “on cost AND speed”.

	Express courier	Air freight
Who runs it	One integrator, DHL, FedEx or UPS, from collection to delivery	A forwarder books the space, customs is yours or the forwarder's, a truck collects at the destination airport
Priced as	One door-to-door price for the shipment, clearance included	A rate per kilo plus fixed charges at origin and destination
Transit, per FreightAmigo's table	1 to 3 days, fixed schedule	2 to 7 days, moves with flight availability and consolidation
Cheaper when	Under the band	Over the band, once the fixed charges are earned back
The band, three forwarders, read 10 October 2026	Up to about 100 kg	From about 100 to 150 kg upward

The band in units, at your unit weight

Divide 100 and 150 by what one unit weighs packed and the band becomes two unit counts. A reorder between them is the one to get both quotes for. Under it, book the courier and stop thinking about it. Over it, air freight is the default and the courier has to justify itself with days.

Packed weight per unit	Band starts at	Band ends at
0.2 kg	500 units	750 units
0.4 kg	250 units	375 units
1 kg	100 units	150 units
2 kg	50 units	75 units
5 kg	20 units	30 units

Use the chargeable weight, not the scale weight. Courier and air cargo both bill the greater of actual and volumetric weight, and the courier's conversion is the stricter of the two, so a bulky, light product reaches 100 kg on paper with fewer units than the scale suggests, and reaches it sooner with the courier than with the forwarder. Wedoimport's cartons are the effect in numbers: 320 kg to the courier and 267 kg to the airline for the same goods. The divisors, and where to read yours off a quote, are in landed cost for Shopify stores and are not repeated here. The 0.4 kg row is the product in the air or sea example, and it is the one the next section uses.

A courier top-up now, or wait for the air freight

Under the band there is nothing to decide. The courier is cheaper and faster at once, which is what Goods Across Borders' 60 kg example shows on its own figures: about USD 350 and 4 days door to door by courier, against about USD 520 and 7 to 10 days by air cargo once destination customs and the last mile are added. Over the band the courier costs more and arrives sooner, and the only question left is whether the days it buys are days you would otherwise be out of stock. That is the question air or sea freight answers for the boat, with the same arithmetic, and it is not re-derived here. The numbers are smaller, and the gap is days rather than weeks.

Take that page's product: 0.4 kg a unit, 12 a day, $14 of margin a unit. Its band is 250 to 375 units. Say the reorder is 800 units, 320 kg, well over the band, and there are 3 days of stock on the shelf, which already means this is the bill for a late order. Illustrative rates, chosen so the arithmetic is visible and not quotes: the courier at $7.00 a kilo door to door, air freight at $4.50 a kilo plus $300 of handling, clearance and delivery at the two ends. Courier transit 3 days and air freight 7, the slow end of each of FreightAmigo's ranges.

Plan	Freight	Days out of stock	Margin lost	All in
Everything by courier	320 kg × $7.00 = $2,240	0	$0	$2,240
Everything by air freight	320 kg × $4.50 + $300 = $1,740	4	48 units × $14 = $672	$2,412
Split, 48 units by courier and 752 by air freight	$134 + $1,654 = $1,788	0	$0	$1,788

The split wins, by $452 against the all-courier plan and by $624 against all-air once the four empty days are priced. It is the bridge the boat gets, scaled down. The courier carries only the units that cover the days until the air freight lands, 4 days at 12 a day, and everything else goes at the cheaper rate. Those 48 units weigh 19 kg, far under the band, so the courier leg sits in the zone where the courier was the cheaper option anyway. The split does not fight the band. It uses it. Which of your products deserve even that small leg, when several are short at once, is the triage in which SKUs to fly.

Two things change the answer. If the shelf covers the 7 days, there is nothing to bridge: air freight the lot for $1,740, and the band was the whole decision. And if the fixed charges on your lane are closer to Wedoimport's $750 than to the $300 here, the split and the all-courier plan finish within a few dollars of each other at this weight, which is the crossover moving up to meet you, exactly as the two importers above say it does. Price your own lane. What this page can give you is the shape of the answer: a reorder well over the band rarely belongs entirely on a courier account, and a reorder under it rarely belongs anywhere else.

How a courier shipment lands in Restocio

Now the limitation, since it is ours. Restocio has four freight routes, Boat, Train, Plane and Truck, and courier is not one of them. There is no courier switch, no courier rate field, and nothing in the app that knows a delivery came on a DHL account rather than a forwarder's air waybill. A courier shipment is booked as the Plane route and the PLAN prices it at whatever you typed into Settings, Freight & Margin for the store, which is the only rate the plan reads. A supplier's own Freight tab can hold a different price per kilo, but that field prices only that supplier's purchase orders and goods-in receipts, not the plan; the field's own hint says so. If the store's setting holds your air freight rate, a courier delivery is costed too cheaply in the plan. If it holds your courier rate, every air freight plan is costed too dearly. The app even says “express” in a couple of its own labels, and it means the Plane route when it does.

Two things soften it. At Goods in, the delivery dialog pre-fills the route's rate and lets you type the rate this delivery actually cost, with a tick box to make it the new default or leave it for this delivery only, so the landed cost of courier units can be right even when the plan's rate is the air freight one. And the days you type for the Plane route on Settings, Freight & Margin are the days the plan uses whenever it sizes a fast leg, so if your courier reliably lands in 3 days and your forwarder in 7, type the one you actually book. What stays open is the rest of this page. The fixed charges at each end have no field at all, so an air freight plan is costed at the per-kilo rate alone and reads cheap by exactly those charges, and the weight it prices is the actual weight, never the chargeable one, as landed cost already says. The band, in kilos and in units, lives in your head and in your forwarder's quote, not in the app. Where the rate and the route feed the plan is in the freight mode toggles guide, and the loop the plan sits inside is Shopify replenishment, end to end.

Common questions

At what weight should I switch from courier to air freight?

Around 100 to 150 kg a shipment, by the rule of thumb three forwarders publish, all read on 10 October 2026: FreightAmigo, iContainers and LooperBuy each put air freight's lower per-kilo rate ahead of a courier's door-to-door price from about that weight. Importers who have shipped a lot of both put it higher, at 200 to 300 kg or even 400 to 500 kg, because an air freight shipment carries fixed charges at each end that the per-kilo saving has to earn back first. Treat the band as the range to get both quotes in, not a line you cross.

Is DHL Express cheaper than air freight for a small reorder?

Usually, under about 100 kg. A courier price is one number, door to door with customs included, while air freight adds origin and destination handling, clearance and a truck from the airport on top of its per-kilo rate. Wedoimport's example has a 320 kg courier shipment at $1,600 beating air freight at $1,950 once $750 of those charges is added, so on a lane with heavy fixed charges the courier can stay cheaper well past the band. Get both quotes with every charge on them before deciding.

How many units is 100 kg?

Divide 100 by the packed weight of one unit. At 0.4 kg a unit it is 250 units, at 1 kg it is 100, at 2 kg it is 50, and the top of the band at 150 kg is one and a half times each of those. Use chargeable weight rather than scale weight, since both courier and air cargo bill the greater of actual and volumetric weight, and the courier's conversion is the stricter one, so a bulky, light product crosses the band with fewer units than the scale suggests.

Should I pay courier rates for a quick top-up or wait for the next air freight shipment?

Price the days. If the shelf covers the air freight transit, there is nothing to bridge and the courier premium buys nothing. If it does not, put only the units that cover the gap on the courier, and the rest on air freight. In the worked example on this page that split costs $1,788 against $2,240 for everything by courier and $2,412 for everything by air freight once four empty days are priced. The courier leg of a split is nearly always under the band, which is where the courier was the cheaper option anyway.

Does Restocio have a courier freight mode?

No. Restocio's routes are Boat, Train, Plane and Truck, and a courier shipment is booked as the Plane route at whatever rate per kilo you typed for it. At Goods in you can type the rate a particular delivery actually cost without changing the default, so the courier units carry the right landed cost. There is no field for the fixed charges at each end of an air freight shipment, and freight is priced on actual weight rather than chargeable weight, so the band on this page is a decision you make before the units reach the app.

Sources

Every source below was opened and read on the date shown against it. Rules, rates and schedules change, so check the current page before you act on a number that matters. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

FreightAmigo, Air Freight vs Air Express: Understanding Paquetería Aérea Differences and Trends for 2026, Ivy Tse, 29 July 2026 (read 10 October 2026)
iContainers, Air Freight vs Air Express: What's the Difference? (updated 20 August 2026) (read 10 October 2026)
LooperBuy, Express Courier vs. Air Freight: Understanding the Logistics Differences for Global Sourcing, 9 April 2026 (read 10 October 2026)
EcomCrew, Air Courier and Air Cargo: Which One Should You Use?, Dave Bryant, last updated 9 January 2023 (read 10 October 2026)
Wedoimport, Air Freight and Courier from China, Basics, Strategies and Issues, 8 March 2020 (read 10 October 2026)
Goods Across Borders, Air cargo vs sea freight vs courier: choosing the right mode (updated 13 May 2026) (read 10 October 2026)

Marcus Volsted

Co-founder, Restocio

Marcus co-founded Restocio and works on it daily with a Swedish importer who plans their purchasing in it every working day. Restocio is built in Sweden by two founders, one Swedish and one Danish, and Marcus is the Danish one. Why we are building it.