Selling POD Outside the US: Shipping to CA, UK, EU, AU

The standard advice for selling print on demand outside the United States is that it costs too much and takes too long. Our shipping data says something more specific: it costs too much and takes too long when the order is printed in the wrong country, which is the default on most listings.

Here is the same sweatshirt, a Gildan 18000, shipped to Australia:

Gildan 18000 → Australia	First item	Each extra	Est. delivery
Printify’s preselected default	$22.79	$9.99	10–30 days
Prima Printing (ships cheapest to AU)	$7.29	$2.89	3–6 days

$15.50 cheaper and roughly four times faster, on an identical garment. Nothing about Australia is expensive. Shipping a sweatshirt from North America to Australia is expensive.

What each market costs

Cheapest available Printify provider per destination, for two common blanks, verified 18 September 2026. CustomCat, the other supplier we can price, quotes one flat international rate and gets its own section below:

Destination	Bella Canvas 3001	Gildan 18000	Est. delivery
United Kingdom	$3.59	$4.69	2–3 days
Germany	$3.89	$7.79	1–10 days
Australia	$6.69	$7.29	3–6 days
Canada	$8.59	$8.99	2–5 days
United States	$4.95	$8.79	2–5 days
Anywhere else	$10.39	$15.09	10–30 days

Two things stand out. The UK and Germany are the cheapest markets in the dataset, not the most expensive. And Canada, which sellers usually treat as an easy extension of the US, is the priciest of the four majors on a tee.

Which provider serves which market

Providers do not advertise where they print, but their rates give it away: the destination a provider reaches for the least money is where it prints. From our data:

Ships cheapest to	Providers
United Kingdom	Shirt Monkey, T Shirt and Sons, Print Clever
Germany / EU	Textildruck Europa, OPT OnDemand, Atelier Katanga
Australia	The Print Bar, Prima Printing
Canada	Print Geek
United States	SwiftPOD, Dimona Tee, Monster Digital, Marco Fine Arts

Use it as a shortlist. If a meaningful share of your orders goes to one of these markets, a listing routed to the matching provider is cheaper and faster on every one of those orders, permanently.

The reverse is also worth knowing. A UK printer will happily accept a US order — T Shirt and Sons charges $46.79 to ship a sweatshirt inside the US, against $8.79 from a US provider on the same blank.

Canada is not the US

Bella Canvas 3001 → Canada	First item	Each extra
Duplium	$8.59	$1.99
Printify’s default	$9.69	$4.39

The gap on the first item is small. The gap on the second is not: $1.99 against $4.39. On two-item orders, which are common in gifting, the cheaper provider is $3.50 ahead by the second garment.

The provider penalty is steep on heavier garments too: a Gildan 18000 to Canada is $8.99 from the cheapest provider and $23.29 from the dearest.

Europe is the cheapest market we can see

A tee to Germany costs $3.89 from a German provider, with an estimated 1–2 days to arrive. That is cheaper and faster than the same tee inside the United States.

This reframes the usual advice. Europe is not a hard market to serve on shipping cost; it is a hard market to serve from North America. Route it locally and EU orders are the best margin in your shop.

The catch is coverage. Our data prices 20 blanks to Germany and France but only 11 to the UK, because European providers do not carry the full US blank range. Check that the specific model you sell is available locally before you build a European line around it — the product pages list every supplier and provider we can price.

Australia: local or don’t bother

Blank → Australia	Cheapest local	Default	Gap
Bella Canvas 3001	$6.69	$12.99	$6.30
Comfort Colors 1717	$6.69	$12.99	$6.30
Gildan 18000	$7.29	$22.79	$15.50

The pattern is consistent: roughly half price, and estimated delivery drops from 10–30 days to 3–6. Routing an Australian order to a North American printer costs $6.30 on a tee and $15.50 on a sweatshirt, every single time it happens.

The other supplier we can price

CustomCat publishes its shipping rates too, and they are competitive — but it quotes a single international bucket, not per-country rates. Everything outside the US is one price:

CustomCat economy, anywhere outside the US	First item	Each extra
Any lightweight garment	$9.25	$3.00
Any heavyweight garment	$16.25	$8.00
11oz mug	$11.00	$6.00

Set against Printify’s catch-all zone, that is the better deal: $9.25 versus $10.39 on a tee, $3.00 versus $4.00 on each extra one. Against a local provider it depends where the buyer is:

Tee to…	Local Printify provider	CustomCat flat rate
United Kingdom	$3.59	$9.25
Germany	$3.89	$9.25
Australia	$6.69	$9.25
Canada	$8.59	$9.25
Anywhere else	$10.39	$9.25

Printify’s column is a Bella Canvas 3001 from the cheapest provider serving that country; CustomCat’s is its class rate, the same for any lightweight garment it prints.

So the rule stays the same, with one addition. If your international orders are scattered across countries where nobody prints locally, CustomCat’s flat $9.25 is a decent floor and beats Printify’s catch-all. If they concentrate in the UK or the EU, a local provider is less than half the price. In Australia and Canada the local provider still wins, by $2.56 and $0.66 on a tee, but the margin is thin enough that the simpler flat rate may be worth it.

CustomCat publishes no delivery estimate, so every delivery figure in this post is Printify’s own estimate.

The practical setup

1. Look at where your orders actually go. Analytics first, not assumptions. If 90% is domestic, none of this is urgent.
2. Duplicate the listing per region, or use automatic routing. Printify documents how it fulfils eligible products locally in the US, Canada, UK, EU and Australia in its guide to selling internationally.
3. Order a sample from each provider you add. Different factory, different print, different garment dye lot. Colour consistency across regions is a real problem, and it is your brand that wears it.
4. Re-price per market. A $3.89 EU shipping cost and a $12.99 Australian one should not sit behind the same flat rate.

Run your own numbers in the profit calculator, and see the full destination tables on the shipping costs page.

What this covers

The per-market figures are standard shipping from Printify’s API, verified 18 September 2026 — the only supplier in our directory publishing per-country shipping in a readable API. CustomCat’s rates come from the tables it publishes on its own site, but only as one US price and one international price, which is why it appears in a section of its own rather than in the market tables. Two suppliers is still not the market: Printful runs its own facilities in several regions and publishes flat rates by region on its shipping page; if it is your main supplier, check there too. The lesson transfers even where the dollars don’t: print near the buyer.

“Ships cheapest to” is our inference from each provider’s own rates, not a company address.

Bottom line

Selling outside the US is not expensive. Shipping across an ocean is. A tee costs $3.59 to the UK and $3.89 to Germany when a local provider prints it, and two to three times that when one doesn’t — with a three-week wait attached.

Check which provider each of your international listings uses before you raise a single price.

Cheapest standard tier in USD — Printify’s standard from its API, CustomCat’s economy from its published tables — verified 18 September 2026. See how we source prices.