When Does the USPS Stamp Price Go Up? (Plus All USPS Rate Changes)
Rates current as of April 26, 2026. This page reads live from our pricing database and updates the moment we record a USPS change.
The short answer
USPS typically raises prices twice a year, in January and July. That cadence has held since the United States Postal Service shifted to a regular price-adjustment schedule in 2022 under the Delivering for America plan. USPS has also added off-cycle adjustments — the most recent was April 26, 2026, which left the Forever stamp at $0.78 but revised Priority Mail and Ground Advantage prices.
Current USPS rates
Below are the current USPS first-class prices we have on file. Effective date and source link are shown so you can verify against USPS Notice 123.
| Mail class | Price |
|---|---|
| Forever stamp (1 oz letter, retail) | $0.78 |
| Metered letter (1 oz) | $0.74 |
| Each additional ounce (letter) | $0.29 |
| Postcard | $0.61 |
| Large Envelope / Flat (1 oz) | $1.63 |
| Each additional ounce (large envelope) | $0.27 |
Source: USPS Notice 123 (the official, authoritative price sheet — published by USPS Pricing & Classification).
How often do USPS rates change?
Roughly two to three times per year in recent practice:
- January — the traditional New Year rate adjustment, almost always present.
- July — added as a second annual round in 2022. Forever stamp increases tend to land in this round.
- Off-cycle — USPS occasionally files a mid-year adjustment with the Postal Regulatory Commission outside the Jan/Jul rounds. The April 26, 2026 change is the most recent example.
Recent USPS price-change history
| Effective date | Forever stamp | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| January 22, 2023 | 60¢ → 63¢ | January round |
| July 9, 2023 | 63¢ → 66¢ | July round |
| January 21, 2024 | 66¢ → 68¢ | January round |
| July 14, 2024 | 68¢ → 73¢ | July round — large 5¢ jump |
| July 13, 2025 | 73¢ → 78¢ | Forever stamp +5¢ |
| January 18, 2026 | No change to Forever stamp | Other classes adjusted |
| April 26, 2026 | Forever stamp held at 78¢ | Off-cycle update — Priority/Ground rates revised |
Where to check for the next price change
Three authoritative places, in order of how directly they reflect what you'll actually pay at the post office:
- USPS Notice 123 (Postal Explorer) — the official price list. Updated by USPS the moment new prices take effect. This is the page our pricing database reads from. If you want one bookmark, this is it.
- USPS Newsroom — rate-change announcements typically appear here roughly 90 days before they take effect. USPS files the change with the Postal Regulatory Commission first, then posts a press release.
- Postal Regulatory Commission daily docket — the formal regulatory filings. Earliest signal of upcoming rate changes, but denser to read. Search for "market-dominant" filings for letter/flat changes.
Why USPS keeps raising prices — the real reasons
The headline you'll see in most coverage — "USPS hasn't turned a profit since 2006" — is technically true and almost completely misleading. It assumes USPS should turn a profit, which is a policy choice, not an economic law. Royal Mail, Canada Post, and Deutsche Post have all received various forms of government support over the years. The United States is the outlier in demanding that its post fund itself while imposing a universal-service obligation. The rate increases you keep seeing are largely the consequence of that mismatch.
USPS is also constitutionally authorized as a service (Article I, Section 8) — not chartered as a business. Treating it like one is what produces the never-ending headlines about losses. Three concrete forces actually drive the hikes:
- A pre-funding mandate unique to USPS. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required USPS to pre-fund 75 years of retiree health benefits within a single decade — roughly $5.5 billion a year. No other federal agency, no private company, and no other country's postal service has ever faced this requirement. It accounted for the bulk of the reported losses for more than fifteen years. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 finally repealed the mandate, but the "USPS loses money every year" narrative it manufactured stuck.
- Mail volume collapsed; the network didn't. First-class mail peaked at 103 billion pieces in 2006 and sits at roughly 46 billion today. Email and online billing took the volume. The trucks, routes, post offices, and six-day-a-week delivery to every U.S. address are still there. Fixed costs don't scale down in proportion, so the cost per remaining piece keeps climbing. This is real economic pressure, not an accounting artifact.
- Universal service is the strength; the funding model is the trap. Universal service isn't a constraint to work around — it's arguably the most valuable piece of public infrastructure in the country. Every U.S. address gets six-day-a-week delivery for the same 78¢, whether you're in Manhattan or remote Alaska. That universal reach is what gives Americans the freedom to live anywhere without geography becoming a barrier — to run a business, vote by mail, receive prescriptions, apply for a passport. FedEx and UPS don't do this; they cherry-pick the profitable routes and pay USPS to handle their rural last-mile deliveries (FedEx SmartPost, UPS SurePost). UPS and FedEx are businesses that pick their customers. USPS is infrastructure that serves everyone — and that's the feature, not the bug. The trap is the funding model laid on top of it: USPS is required to provide universal service, forbidden from closing unprofitable post offices without congressional review, capped on how fast it can raise rates, and denied taxpayer funding for operations — and then graded against private-sector profit metrics. When a private business loses money it cuts service. USPS, by design, cannot. Rate increases are essentially the only lever left, so the lever keeps getting pulled.
The Postal Regulatory Commission expanded USPS's rate-setting authority in 2020, allowing increases beyond inflation to recover for density loss and retirement obligations. That's the immediate reason the twice-yearly cadence began in 2022. The deeper reason, though, is structural: a public service held to private-business accounting. Until that contradiction is resolved at the policy level, the rate increases will keep coming.
How accurate is this page?
The current rates above are loaded server-side from our pricing database every time you load this page. When USPS announces a price change, we update a single row in our database and this page reflects the new price immediately — no article rewrite required. The historical change list is updated manually after each round; we date-stamp it at the top so you can tell how fresh it is.
Spotted a price that looks wrong? Cross-check against USPS Notice 123 and let us know.