DDP Cost Calculator

Delivered Duty Paid against the refusals DDU causes.

Compare DDP against DDU, weighing the prepaid duty and clearance against the refusal and return costs DDU produces.

Written and maintained by Mohit PatelLast checked August 4, 2026How we build these

Destination country

Order value

Outbound freight

Duty rate for your commodity code

Clearance & handling per parcel

Refusal rate under DDU

Cost of goods as share of order value

Duty rates and thresholds change with trade policy. These are planning estimates, the entry filed with customs decides the actual charge.

Cost of shipping DDP

£49.69

35.5% of order value

Duty & import tax prepaid£38.69

Clearance & handling£11.00

DDP cost per order£49.69

Expected DDU refusal cost per order£14.58

At a 18% refusal rate, DDU is cheaper on expected cost: but it also produces the doorstep bill that generates complaints and lost repeat custom, which this figure does not capture.

How the DDP Cost Calculator works

Under DDP you pay duty and tax up front and the customer receives the parcel with nothing to pay. Under DDU they are billed on the doorstep: and a meaningful share simply refuse, costing you the outbound freight, the return freight and the sale.

Also known as: delivered duty paid calculator · DDP vs DAP cost · all-in delivered cost calculator

How it is calculated

Delivered duty paid means the seller bears every cost to the buyer's door: goods, export clearance, freight, insurance, import duty, import tax, clearance charges and inland delivery. The DDP price is the sum of all of them plus the seller's margin on the logistics.

For the buyer the calculation is simply whether the DDP price beats doing it yourself. For the seller it is whether the quoted price covers a set of costs that includes several they cannot control.

Numbers on it

The shipment costs $18,000 of goods, $2,400 freight, $95 insurance, $1,332 duty on a CIF basis, $945 of destination charges, $22,772 before tax, or $22.77 a unit landed.

A supplier quoting DDP at $25.50 a unit is charging $25,500: a $2,728 premium, or 12% on the logistics cost. That is a reasonable margin for handling it, and it is money for a service you would otherwise perform.

The question is what it buys. If you have a forwarder and a broker and do this monthly, $2,728 is expensive. If this is a first import and the alternative is learning customs procedure on a live shipment, it may be cheap.

What it does not tell you

The critical issue for a commercial import is who is the importer of record. Only the importer can reclaim import VAT, and a DDP shipment cleared in the supplier's name may leave the VAT unrecoverable by anyone, turning a cash flow item into a real cost of 20% of shipment value.

DDP also gives you no visibility into the declared value or the classification, both of which are legally your responsibility in many regimes regardless of who filed. A supplier under-declaring to keep their DDP costs down creates an exposure that lands on you.

What follows from it

For commercial imports of any size, establish who will be the importer of record before agreeing DDP, and confirm the VAT can be recovered. If it cannot, DDP costs 20% more than it appears to.

For consumer-facing cross-border sales, DDP is nearly always right. The alternative is a customer receiving a demand for duty before their parcel is released, which produces refusals, refunds and reviews that cost far more than the duty.

DDP in cross-border ecommerce

The consumer case is different from the commercial one, and the arithmetic is dominated by refusal rates. A parcel refused at the door costs the original shipping, the return leg, and the order, typically two to three times the duty that caused the refusal.

Landed cost quoting at checkout, where the customer sees a single all-in price including duty and tax, is now supported by most cross-border shipping platforms. It converts noticeably better than an unpriced DDU shipment and it removes the support burden entirely.

The cost is complexity: the seller has to calculate the correct duty and tax for each destination, remit it, and handle the returns. That is why the service exists as a product, several providers will take on the calculation and the liability for a percentage, which is usually cheaper than building it and considerably cheaper than the refusals.

Where to go next

The DDP Cost question rarely arrives on its own. These are the ones that usually come with it:

International Shipping Cost Calculator — Cross-border cost including duty and clearance.
Import Duty Calculator — Duty and import tax on the correct valuation basis.
Duty and Tax Calculator — Both charges, and how they compound.
Etsy Fee Calculator — Every Etsy fee on one sale, itemised.

Sources

Not financial advice. Marketplace fees change, and they vary by country, plan and seller status. Every rate here is an editable default, not a quoted price, check the platform's current fee schedule before you price a product against it. This is not tax or business advice.

Frequently asked questions

What does DDP actually cover?

The seller pays everything to the buyer's door: freight, export clearance, duty, import tax and import clearance. The buyer pays nothing on delivery, which is why it converts far better for consumer sales.

How often are DDU parcels refused?

It varies by market and value, but refusal rates in the double digits are common when the unexpected bill is a significant fraction of the order value. Each refusal costs both freight legs plus the lost sale.

Is DDP always better?

For consumer sales, usually. For B2B it often is not, a registered business buyer can reclaim import VAT itself and may prefer to control clearance. DDP also requires the seller to be able to act as importer of record, which is not always possible.

What is DAP and how does it differ?

Delivered at Place: the seller covers transport to the destination but the buyer handles import clearance, duty and tax. It sits between DDP and the older DDU term, and it produces the same doorstep-bill problem for consumers.