As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly find the best courier rate for your business.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current rate pages or account portals for the couriers you are considering and save their price tables, service terms, surcharge lists and quote emails.
   2. Gather your recent shipment data, including collection and delivery areas, parcel dimensions, weights, shipment volumes, delivery deadlines, returns and insurance requirements.
   3. Paste the business requirements and the saved courier quotes into the prompt, keeping each source link beside the figures it supports.
   4. Ask the model to produce the comparison table, identify missing charges and rank the options against your stated priorities.
   5. Open the shortlisted courier's current quote or account portal and compare every base rate, surcharge, VAT treatment, service condition and compensation limit against the model's table.
   6. Send the courier a written list of unresolved questions, obtain the final terms and choose the option whose verified total cost and service conditions meet your requirements.

   Prompt

   Act as a procurement analyst helping a UK business compare courier rates. Do not invent prices, services, delivery times, surcharges or contract terms. If information is missing, label it as missing.
   
   Business requirements:
   - Collection postcode or area: [INSERT]
   - Delivery areas or postcodes: [INSERT]
   - Parcel types and contents: [INSERT]
   - Typical parcel dimensions in centimetres: [INSERT]
   - Typical parcel weights in kilograms: [INSERT]
   - Shipments per week or month: [INSERT]
   - Domestic, Northern Ireland or international destinations: [INSERT]
   - Required delivery services and time windows: [INSERT]
   - Collection days and cut-off times: [INSERT]
   - Insurance or compensation requirements: [INSERT]
   - Whether prices must include VAT: [INSERT]
   - Any existing contract, account discount or minimum volume commitment: [INSERT]
   - What matters most, in order: [INSERT, for example total cost, delivery speed, tracking, collection reliability]
   
   Courier quotes and source links:
   [PASTE THE CURRENT QUOTES, PRICE TABLES, CONTRACT TERMS AND SOURCE LINKS HERE]
   
   Extract the comparable information into a table. Separate base price, VAT, fuel or remote-area surcharges, collection fees, insurance, returns, minimum charges and any other fees. Calculate no figures unless the supplied data supports the calculation, and show the calculation. Rank the options against my stated priorities rather than assuming the cheapest is best. Identify missing information, conditions that could change the ranking, and questions I should ask each courier. Give a provisional recommendation only, then state exactly what I must verify in the courier's current account portal or written quote before accepting it.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.