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About-France.com - the connoisseur's guide to France
Sending postcards and letters from France
1. French domestic postage rates at a glance
Inland domestic postage within France - 2020
TIP !! Prices rose on 01 January... . Standard stamps (with no price marked on them, just 'lettre verte' or whatever ) increase in value in line with the cost of the service : stamps with a monetary face value (such as.1.30 €) do not.
There are 3 rates for letters up to 250 grammes, and two for letters up to 3 kg.
The standard rates for letters up to 20 grams are:
- First-class or priority rate : 1.16 € (1 priority stamp)
- Lettre verte rate: 0.97 € (1 lettre verte stamp)
- Ecopli rate: 0.86 € (1 Ecopli stamp)
- First-class or priority rate : 2.32€ - (2 priority stamps)
- Lettre verte rate: 2 lettre verte stamps = 1.76 €
- Ecopli rate: 1.72 € - (2 Ecopli stamps)
Note: the 20g - 50g rate has been suppressed, purportedly in order to simplify the system.
2. French international postage rates at a glance
Below you will find the main international air-mail postage rates for France, and the cheapest - or rather, least expensive - rates for sending parcels from France.
For all other postal rates (notably pre-paid envelopes, recorded delivery, heavier items), it is best to visit a local post office.
It is advisable to include an air-mail sticker on international mail, though this is not essential. Virtually all international mail within the European Union is sent by airmail unless surface mail is faster.
Last collections from mail boxes in urban areas are usually around 4 p.m., but later from main post offices. In rural areas, letter boxes are often emptied just once a day, frequently before midday. Stamps can be bought in post offices, but often also from 'tabacs', or tobacconists selling postcards.2.1. Postcards and simple letter rates from France 2020
How much does it cost to send a postcard abroad from France ?Destination | Cost: |
All countries worldwide (same price everywhere) | €1.40 |
How much does it cost to send a letter up to 20 gm from France ?
Destination | Cost (airmail) |
All countries worldwide (same price everywhere) | €1.40 |
2.2. Documents and heavier letters
Take care ! Sending International packages from France
La Poste's postal rates are complex , and information is not always clear - not even to all post-office staff.By shopping around, you may be able to get rates 50% cheaper than La Poste's rates, for tracked delivery.
It is a good idea to check rates online before taking a parcel or package to a post office.
For alternative offers, see shop around below
How much does it cost to send heavier international mail from France?
(for books & brochures, see below)There is only one tariff category for letters : it is called 'priority international letter'. There is no second-class or economy rate, nor surface mail rate, for letters
LETTRE PRIO Internationale | |
Weight/ Destination | Whole world ( same price everywhere) |
20-100 gms | € 2.80 (two international stamps) |
100-250 grams | € 7.00 (five international stamps) |
250-500 gms | € 11.20 (eight international stamps) |
500 gms - 2 kg | € 18.20 |
2.3. Small packages - parcels
IMPORTANT : SHOP AROUND
'La Poste' has no monopoly over parcels delivery, neither within France nor abroad. Cheaper rates(up to 50% off) can often be found by using other carriers, specially if sending city-to-city.
Check out Mondial Relay, which works with thousands of drop-off points (points relais) all over France.
Or check other options on this price comparison site. Packlink.fr (in French) : also
Example: a 1 kg package to the UK costs over 15€ with Colissimo, even more with with Chronopost (at a post office), but from 7.74 € if you drop it off at a 'Point relais'
'La Poste' has no monopoly over parcels delivery, neither within France nor abroad. Cheaper rates(up to 50% off) can often be found by using other carriers, specially if sending city-to-city.
Check out Mondial Relay, which works with thousands of drop-off points (points relais) all over France.
Or check other options on this price comparison site. Packlink.fr (in French) : also
Example: a 1 kg package to the UK costs over 15€ with Colissimo, even more with with Chronopost (at a post office), but from 7.74 € if you drop it off at a 'Point relais'
2.3.1. Standard rate ; use the Lettre prio internationalerates up to 2 kg, if appropriate (packets no more than 3 cm deep), but be ready to insist when handing over your package for franking..... see above. For other packages, see Colissimo below.
2.3.2. Colissimo International - fast package rate, - anything up to 30 kg for Europe, or up to 20 kg for other countries..
Colissimo International Main destinations | Europe (see list of countries) | Norway, Serbia, Turkey, Russia etc | Rest of world |
Up to 500 g | €12.30 | 16.65 | 24.35 |
Up to 1 kg | € 15.20 | 19.90 | 27.10 |
Up to 2 kg | € 17.20 | 21.75 | 37.30 |
Up to 5 kg | 22.00 | 27.95 | 54.55 |
Up to 10 kg | €36.30 | 46.25 | 103.10 |
Up to 20 kg | €60.30 (up to 30 kg) | 72.15 | 164.60 |
Colissimo packages are accepted up to 30 kg, at degressive rates (7kg, 8 kg, etc.)
While the existence of a 'priority' rate supposes the existence of another non-priority rate, this is no longer the case. There is no longer any eco or slow international parcel rate from 'La Poste'. For alternative options, use a different carrier (see above)
Paquet prio & colissimo Europe rates are available for the following countries:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, including Liechtenstein, San Marino, United Kingdom, Vatican
2.3. Books and brochures
The latest info available provides tarifs as of January 2019. The Livres et brochures rate is for books, bruchures and printed documents in the French language or French regional languages, not containing advertising. It is available for bookshops, businesses and private individuals, as indicated clearly in the 'En pratique' section of this page of the La Poste website.![France France](https://comps.canstockphoto.com/french-post-box-stock-photograph_csp39907497.jpg)
Books and brochures - international | ||
Weight/ Destination | Great Britain Netherlands Germany, Switzerland, and all other countries in the European Union | Rest of World (Including USA, Canada, Australia) |
up to 100 gms | € 0.50 | €0.80 |
100-250 grams | € 0.90 | € 1.53 |
250-500 gms | € 1.35 | € 2.25 |
500 gms - I kg | € 2.60 | € 4.356 |
1 - 2 kg | € 3.50 | € 5.95 |
Max weight: 2 kg, but extended to 25 kg for dedicated mailbags to a single destinee.
Request rates and a mailbag from your local post office.
About-France.com Home page - Site search - Regions - Maps of France
Postal codes in France are similar to ZIP Codes in the United States. For example, the postal code / ZIP Code for the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France is 75007. Paris has approximately 20 ZIP Codes or postal codes. These codes help La Poste (the French postal service) efficiently sort and deliver post and parcels.
(If you're looking for the ZIP code/postal code for a specific address in France, you can use this free postal address verification tool.)
Contents
French Postal Codes
A French postal code today is five digits consisting solely of numbers; no letters, no spaces, no hyphens, much like the US ZIP Code system. La Poste does not utilize ZIP+4 Codes. There are over 30,000 officially recognized postal codes in France.
(If you're looking for the ZIP Code/postal code for a specific address in France, you can use this free postal address lookup tool)
The composition of the postal codes is based on what are called 'départements'—administrative subdivisions that roughly resemble a US county. The first two numbers match the number of the département where you can find the destination city. Department numbers were originally assigned alphabetically back in the 1800s, though there have been a number of small changes to the list over the years, so the organization is not as strict as it once was. The other three numbers in the code indicate what post office will actually handle the job of dropping the letter off.
Most postcodes end in a zero, though there are some exceptions. Those exceptions include some of the larger cities, overseas territories, and post office boxes, to name a few. Some postcodes encompass multiple villages, which usually happens because said villages are all served by the same post office. Occasionally, one of those villages may actually belong to a different département, which means that the first two digits of the postal code won't match that village's département. This is very similar to how the ZIP Code system works in the US.
Another example of variation from the strict system is what's called 'CEDEX,' which stands for Courrier d'Entreprise à Distribution EXceptionnelle, or 'special business mail.' This term is applied to a number of different categories of nonstandard mail, including recipients who receive large quantities of post and post office boxes. For all of these, an individualized post code is given. This is similar to systems in other countries, where a particular building, organization, or business might require its own designated post code.
French Address Example
Here's an example of a properly formatted French address:
The address should be placed on the bottom right hand corner of the face of the envelope.
French Address Format
The three core details of any French address are the recipient (or addressee), the street address, and the postcode/locality lines, just like in most countries. These are the lines that will be in every address. Additional information is often used to add specificity or clarity to the delivery instructions.
Here is the order for address details in a French address. Note: required items are in BOLD.
Line 1: Name, title, and other pleasantries
Line 2: Secondary address information (apartment number, etc.)—optional
Line 3: Information regarding access (building name, entrance number/location, etc.)—optional
Line 4: Street name and number
![France Post Box France Post Box](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134186873/337711241.png)
Line 5: Additional information for aiding in delivery (PO box, lieu-dit, etc.)—optional
Line 6: Postal code and name of city or other applicable locality
Line 7:Country of destination—optional (only necessary for international mail)
France's postal address format accommodates a surprising amount of supplemental information. The format's pretty strict though. For starters, address cannot be any longer than six lines (seven for international). There's also a lot of CAPS LOCK going on. We'll show you what we mean.
The example address we shared previously in this article was a pretty standard French address. It's almost as short as an address can be. The only way it could be shorter is if it was a domestic letter, and didn't need the international line. If that was the case, it would look like this:
France Post Box For Sale
That's as basic as a French address can get. The thing is, there can be up to twice as many lines as this. So you might instead be encountering this:
The only two remaining details that need discussing here are corporate addresses and CEDEX addresses (the two of which are not mutually exclusive). A corporate address, for lack of better words, installs a supervisor over the addressee, thereby shifting the recipient's name to the second line. Behold:
Aside from the self-assertion of the corporation over the terminal addressee, the address remains unchanged. Also, business names (or at least the last word in the name) are capitalized, similar to the last names of recipients.
Now, to complicate things a little bit further—CEDEX addresses are addresses with their own postal code, most frequently seen in the case of post office boxes. If that business address was, say, a PO box rather than an internal address in a building, it would look like this:
The PO box number—preceded by the letters 'BP' for 'Boîte Postale,' or 'postal box'—takes its seat on the fifth line, and the word 'CEDEX' is added after the locality of the post office, in all caps. Also, the PO box doesn't replace the physical address of the recipient; that keeps its seat at the cool kids table.
Now there is the confusing occasion where that creates a problem: sometimes the post office where the box in question is located is not in the locality where the recipient keeps an address. There's a fix for that. Simply add the locality of the post office to the line with the PO box number, like so:
You may note that in this last example the CEDEX had a number; that's in case a city has multiple post offices, to indicate which one is the destination.
La Poste
La Poste is the primary postal courier for the nation of France. Like otherpostalproviders that we have discussed here at SmartyStreets, France has a long and rich postal history, and it is a diversified organization that capitalizes on that history to serve its customers in a wide variety of ways. Among the services they offer are traditional postal services, banking and insurance, real estate, and a mobile phone network. Though not as sizable as DHL/Deutsche Post, they are a sizable organization—they're the second-largest employer in France, behind only the French government. La Poste is the result of over 800 years of shipping endeavors; here are some highlights of that history.
Things started in the Middle Ages with private enterprises. Universities were the big players starting back in the 13th century, which makes sense—a large group of people who regularly need to communicate information with other groups of eggheads. 1576 saw the debut of 'royal envoys'—the first government-run postal organization that offered services to private individuals in France. Use of the royal envoys eventually led to the creation of the very first post offices later that century.
Skip forward another hundred years, and France saw the first telegram in the world. Fifty years later, France started using postage stamps less than a decade after the UK invented them. And in 1874, France was one of the founding members of what was then the General Postal Union; we now know this organization as the Universal Postal Union, or UPU.
Now you might have been confused by the telegraph mention, thinking 'That's cool, but what does it have to do with the mail?' The post managed the telegraph service, leading to the name P&T (Postes et télégraphes; which means, as you may have guessed, 'posts and telegraphs' in English). When phones were invented they took the helm on that too, changing their name to PTT (Postes, télégraphes et téléphones; which means . . . actually you've probably got that one).
1964 brought the rise of postal codes in France, and the '90s saw the split of PTT. The company was broken down along the line of 'Does a postman carry it?', separating the telecommunications from the mail. The mail service became La Poste, and the other part became France Télécom, which is now known as 'Orange.' Like the color.
Orange was turned into a private company almost immediately, but La Poste has resisted progressive moves like that; they only opened up their monopoly to competition in 2005 (to competitors like DHL) and as of 2015 still holds the status of 'public limited company,' even as La Poste's contemporaries like Royal Mail and Deutsche Post have made the jump to privatization.
La Poste Services
Behind DHL, La Poste is the second biggest mail provider in Europe; they hold an impressive 15% of the market. La Poste also offers one of the widest selections of services possible for a business like theirs. Their full name is 'Groupe La Poste,' and it's quite the umbrella, containing the following subsidiaries:
France Post Ems
- La Banque Postale
- Geopost
- La Poste Mobile
- Mediaprism
- Docapost
- Poste Immo
La Banque Postale is a bank. It provides regular banking services, as well as insurance. Geopost covers logistics, and that's apparently a big deal. They're an umbrella within an umbrella, housing all express subsidiaries. In France, that's the courier services Chronopost and Exapaq. Worldwide, it's the brands DPD, Yurtiçi Kargo, and Seur GeoPost.
La Poste Mobile is an entire mobile network (yes, like the ones that brag about 4G LTE), run by a parent company that also runs the mail. Mediaprism is communication counselling, Docapost handles document archiving, and Poste Immo is real estate (of all things). So, yes, they're casting quite a wide net, and that net is helping counteract the downturn in business coming from the rise in internet communications.
France Post Box Size
Now, for La Poste itself: they offer first class, second class, and 'green letter' delivery. Green letter is a more eco-friendly alternative that was introduced in 2011, and produces 15% less CO2 than first class. At the time of this article, it catches about 20% of the French market.
French Post Box
Now let's set all of this aside, and talk about the really fun stuff.
La Poste Prohibitions
It's important to know what can and cannot be sent in the mail. But while many prohibited items are just common sense (like substances that might turn the mail truck into another Hindenburg), others require a bit of a heads up. Otherwise, we might not know the dangers of balloons [anchor tag] or of shipping a cat of ambiguous vitality [anchor tag].
So we put together a handy list of things that you shouldn't send, but might not otherwise think of on your own. Now La Poste does not have a an official English list of what's permissible to ship into and within the nation of France. And though we're all talented at a great many things here at SmartyStreets, only two of us knows any passable French.
To counteract this deficiency, we did some research, and found out what other postal carriers are allowed to ship to France and the French postal system. We figure, if other big name couriers aren't allowed to ship it, then you're bound to have a hard time getting it in and out of the country. Here's the list:
- Certain U.S. Beef hormones
- Why would you need to, and where do you get them?
- Collectable stamps:
- We just have to giggle at the irony of using a stamp to mail a stamp
- Also, can you get away with it if you use the collectable stamp on the envelope?
- Doping Products:
- Drugs are bad, kids; stay in school
- Diskettes:
- Does anyone even know what these are anymore?
- 'Dura mater (the tough fibrous membrane covering the brain and the spinal cord and lining the inner surface of the skull)':
- Wait…what?
- Gambling devices:
- It's a bad habit anyway
- Game meat:
- They cite specifically two animals with weird names: Chamois or the Rupicapra rupicapra (don't confuse with 'chupacabra') and Marmot or Marmota Marmota
- Hemp Cannabis:
- See 'drugs are bad' comment above
- Melatonin:
- Don't expect a good night's sleep in France, apparently
- 'Medical thermometers containing mercury intended for human consumption':
- Since when is mercury intended for human consumption?
- 'Pajamas and nightdresses made of artificial fibers that are not fire-retardant':
- That's…awkwardly specific…again
- Plastic kitchenware:
- Apparently Chinese plastic diningware can sometimes be hazardous to your health
- Playing cards:
- Again, dangerous in the hands of gamblers…or Gambit
- Personal effects:
- This is literally as specific as they get on the topic, and we can't help but wonder, what all does this include?
- Products made in Iran:
- This would normally merit a 'Just anything they make—we don't want that' kind of joke, but this is evidently a serious embargo, so, no Iranian goods
- 'Rubber erasers that are similar in appearance to food products that are easily ingested':
- That's…awkwardly specific
- Shoes:
- Wait, what?
- Sports equipment:
- With neither the card games nor the sports gears, you're likely to be pretty bored
- Silicone used for plastic surgery:
- There's a 'mailing a part of yourself' and a 'pound of flesh' joke here; give us a moment, we'll find it
- Viagra & Vitamins
- No comment
France Post Box Size
Undeliverable Mail
Mail in France is undeliverable for the same reasons it's undeliverable most places: bad addresses. The most obvious example is a wrong address. If you address a letter to '5 Pivot Drive' but you intended the letter to go to '4 Pivot Drive,' the mail may be undeliverable. A quick-thinking postman might recognize the error and work off of the recipients names, but if the difference between addressed mail and intended destination is more severe you may be out of luck.
Mail might also be returned to sender because the intended recipients are no longer the current residents. If they have moved on and left no forwarding address, then the mail can't be delivered to them. The same goes for invalid addresses: if the address has not been registered with the postal service, or there is no recipient at the address, or there is no address (i.e., there's no building there to deliver to), then the mail won't be delivered there.
In short, it might be helpful to double-check your address and validate before you try to ship. It's as quick as a button click, but it may save you the price of returned postage, and weeks to months of waiting.
Conclusion
France is a cool place: they have the city of love, the Eiffel Tower, and world-class fine dining. Their postal system is easily as impressive, and they're happy to take your letter to your penpal living on the banks of the Seine, or ship your souvenir (that's the French word for 'souvenir') home if you're visiting.
France Postal
If you're looking for some additional information on them, we can help you find what you need. We can also help you verify an address like we mentioned above, so feel free to do that, too. Above all, when mailing to France, remember to keep it to six (or seven) lines, and use that CAPS LOCK responsibly.