Does UPS Deliver on Saturdays?

Whether you’re running a business or just sending something to a friend, sometimes you need a package delivered on a Saturday. For those of you shipping with UPS, we’ve got some good and bad news: UPS does deliver on Saturdays, but they charge extra for this particular service.

UPS Delivers on Saturdays for an Extra Fee

UPS delivers packages on Saturdays, but they don’t do it for free. When you select your UPS service, you can choose “Saturday Delivery” as an add-on to your postage. Saturday Delivery costs $16 as of the time of publishing this article, and is one of the more common surcharges you’ll see when shipping with UPS.

Saturday Delivery applies to a good amount of domestic and international UPS services. We’ve listed the UPS services (and sub-services) for which you can choose Saturday Delivery as an add-on below:

• UPS Ground*
• UPS Next Day Air
  • UPS Next Day Air Early
• UPS 2nd Day Air
• UPS 3 Day Select
• UPS Worldwide Express & UPS Worldwide Express Plus
• UPS Worldwide Express Freight

*Note: UPS provides Saturday Delivery for free with UPS Ground as part of the Digital Access Program

Watch Out for Other Surcharges When Shipping with UPS

Saturday Delivery isn’t the only extra charge you’ll incur with UPS. In fact, UPS imposes a boatload of surcharges on individuals and small businesses. To be honest, UPS surcharges are where a lot of shippers find themselves in a tough spot. They might choose to ship with UPS for higher reliability (and even a lower cost in a lot of cases). However, it’s not uncommon for them to get hit with a bunch of surcharges they never expected to see.

For instance, UPS charges surcharges for fuel costs, and even for sending a package to a residential address. There’s also a surcharge for delivering a package to areas that UPS considered “remote,” and fairly high surcharges for sending a package to Alaska or Hawaii. Basically, UPS hits shippers with surcharges all the time, for all sorts of reasons.

USPS Delivers Mail and Parcels on Saturdays Without Any Extra Surcharges

Due to these surcharges, UPS may not be not the best shipping carrier to choose if you’re trying to keep your shipping costs as low as possible. The US Postal Service, on the other hand, doesn’t impose any surcharges after you ship packages…and as long as you drop off your package at the Post Office on time, USPS also delivers packages on Saturdays for no extra cost.