Shipping comparison: FedEx vs. UPS vs. U.S. Postal Service

There’s little doubt that Santa Claus operates the world’s most efficient package delivery system—his sleigh travels at rates of up to 1,800 miles per second as he delivers toys to good little girls and boys.

Unfortunately, though, he’s booked solid for the holidays. So if you have gifts destined for far-flung places, you’ll have to use one of his helpers—a package delivery service—to handle the task of transporting them for you.

We put FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service to the test to see which can get your packages to their destinations most economically and quickly. Get details on our review, below, and find out whether expedited shipping is worth the splurge.

For Santa to deliver all those packages, he has to zip around the earth a minimum of 187 times, according to Michael Trick, a senior associate dean at Carnegie Mellon University. Package shippers require more people, bigger fleets, and more-advanced logistics to deliver your packages.

All three services deliver to the 193 million residential addresses in the U.S. and most of the 262 countries, territories, possessions, and dependencies recognized by the U.S.

Mailing your packages early increases the chances they’ll arrive on time. The three big shippers accept packages on as many as 307 days. During the holiday season—Nov. 1 to Dec. 31—they’ll take your packages on about 50 days. For deliveries, the USPS will deliver Priority Mail Express every day, including Sundays and holidays, for a surcharge. FedEx delivers on Saturdays for an extra charge; it also has same-day delivery service 365 days per year, but we did not include that in our comparison because we considered it a novelty that’s overpriced for cost-conscious consumers.

For the 2013 holiday season, the countless packages didn’t arrive on time because of poor weather conditions; this situation was made worse by a crush of shoppers sending gifts late. Still, given the steep prices for overnight and second-day service, on-time delivery is critical. UPS and FedEx wouldn't tell us about their track record, which hurt their score. The USPS says 87.5 percent of package deliveries were made on time in 2013. If FedEx and UPS did better, wouldn’t they want to crow about it?

We set up a crisscross pattern of deliveries between 25 pairs of cities from coast to coast and to Honolulu and Anchorage, Alaska, and researched the least expensive prices for each. We did that for next-day standard, second-day, third-day, and ground delivery. (An assumption was that if your package were 5 pounds or less, you’d choose next- or second-day service, and if it were 20 pounds, you’d opt for more economical three-day or ground delivery.) The USPS was cheapest 92 percent of the time for next-day and second-day delivery. For third-day and ground delivery, FedEx was cheapest. In no case was UPS the least expensive.

In the 1947 movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” the postal service came to Kris Kringle’s rescue by delivering proof that he really was Santa. When it comes to picking the best way to send your holiday gifts, we find that the USPS should be your choice. (Kudos to the USPS for disclosing its on-time performance statistics.) Otherwise, compare FedEx and USPS prices.

This review is based on an evaluation by the Consumer Reports Money team, using a 1-to-5 scale, where 1 is the lowest possible score and 5 is the highest. Individual scores are averaged within category, and the category scores are averaged to produce the overall score. The scores here are not Ratings. This article also appeared published in the December 2014 issue of Consumer Reports Money Adviser.

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