2026 Small-Business Packaging Cost Benchmark
Source: Packrift catalog as of 2026-04-29. If you cite a number from this report, please link back to packrift.com/pages/2026-packaging-cost-benchmark.
Executive summary
This is a 2026 cost benchmark for the packaging an SMB shipper actually buys: corrugated boxes, bubble and poly mailers, reclosable poly bags, carton-sealing tape, stretch film, bubble void fill, and labels. We pulled per-unit, per-1,000-yard, and per-1,000-foot pricing from 12,929 active SKUs in the Packrift catalog as of April 29, 2026, normalized to case-quantity equivalents, and bucketed the results by the dimensions and specs SMB shippers care about. The point of the exercise is simple: tell a small operator what a real shipment costs in materials, and where the same SKU varies enough between sub-vendors to matter.
Five takeaways for an SMB shipping 50–500 orders a day:
- A small-box ground shipment costs about $1.40 in materials when you build it from a 12x9x4 box, ~24" of clear 2"x1.6 mil carton tape, ~4 ft of 3/16" bubble void fill, and a thermal shipping label. The box itself is the largest line item — about 55% of the materials bill — and the easiest place to lose money to oversize.
- A poly-mailer shipment is ~$0.15 to $0.24 all-in. A 6x9 poly mailer plus label is ~$0.15. A 10x13 poly mailer plus label is ~$0.24. If your goods can ship in a poly mailer instead of a small box, you are looking at roughly a 9x cost reduction in primary packaging — before any DIM-weight savings on the carrier side.
- Bubble mailers are 3–4x more expensive than poly mailers at comparable sizes: a #2 (8.5x12) bubble mailer runs about $0.81 each vs. ~$0.22 for a 10x13 poly mailer. The premium is worth it only when the SKU genuinely needs cushioning. We see a lot of SMB shippers using bubble mailers reflexively.
- Tape and stretch film are tiny per shipment — but variance is huge. Carton-sealing tape ranges from $18.03 to $104.78 per 1,000 yards for the most common spec (2" x 1.8–2.0 mil clear acrylic). Stretch film for hand-wrapping pallets ranges from $3.81 to $157.06 per 1,000 ft for 12" x 80 gauge — a ~40x spread on what shippers think of as a commodity. The cheap end is the right benchmark; the expensive end is the cost of not shopping around.
- Variance, not category-average price, is where margin leaks. Across the boxes that have at least three case offers in our catalog, the typical spread between cheapest and most expensive offer is 600–3,500%. Most of that is genuine spec difference (single-wall vs. heavy-duty corrugated, ECT-32 vs. 200#-test), but a meaningful share is supplier markup on equivalent product. The optimization isn't to switch tape brands — it's to know what the floor price is so you can ask vendors why theirs is higher.
Methodology
Inputs: a snapshot of every active SKU in the Packrift catalog on 2026-04-29 (12,929 SKUs), parsed for product type, dimensions, pack quantity, gauge/mil, length, and price. We computed per-unit costs by dividing case-pack price by case quantity, then bucketed offers by spec to compare apples to apples. For poly bags, tape, stretch film, and bubble we converted to standardized units (USD per 1,000 bags, per 1,000 yards, per 1,000 linear feet) so you can compare against your own quotes. Per-shipment costs are constructed by summing the median per-unit cost of each component, not by quoting a single bundle price.
Caveats. Packrift is one supplier. The numbers below describe what the Packrift catalog charges as of 2026-04-29; we don't claim they're the median across the U.S. packaging industry. Where we cite "spread," that's intra-catalog variance across different SKUs that share the same headline spec — not vendor-to-vendor variance with Uline or Office Depot. The tail of high-priced outliers in some buckets is mostly heavy-duty, anti-static, FDA-grade, or specialty variants — we surface medians rather than means specifically so those don't pull the central tendency around. SMB shippers should treat these as directional benchmarks, not as a fairness check on what they're paying their current distributor.
Per-shipment cost benchmarks
The five most common SMB ship profiles, fully loaded with consumables, using median Packrift per-unit costs:
| Profile | Components | Total per shipment |
|---|---|---|
|
Small ground box (12x9x4 + tape + bubble void fill + label) |
Box $0.770 • Tape (24") $0.037 • Bubble (4 ft) $0.570 • Label $0.019 | $1.396 |
|
Medium ground box (16x12x6 + tape + bubble void fill + label) |
Box $1.227 • Tape (36") $0.055 • Bubble (8 ft) $1.141 • Label $0.019 | $2.442 |
|
Bubble mailer #2 (8.5x12 self-seal + label) |
Mailer $0.812 • Label $0.019 | $0.830 |
|
Poly mailer (medium) (10x13 self-seal + label) |
Mailer $0.221 • Label $0.019 | $0.240 |
|
Poly mailer (small) (6x9 self-seal + label) |
Mailer $0.131 • Label $0.019 | $0.150 |
For the 250-shipments-a-week SMB on a poly-mailer-heavy mix, that's roughly $40–$60/week in primary packaging consumables. For a small-box-heavy mix, it's roughly $350–$610/week. The delta between those two scenarios is usually the biggest single packaging-cost lever an SMB has, and most of it comes from box vs. mailer choice — not vendor selection.
Boxes — corrugated
Per-unit case price for the most common SMB box sizes, sampled across Packrift case offers (2026-04-29):
| Size (L x W x H) | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6x6x6 | $0.41 | $0.57 | $3.39 | 6 |
| 8x6x4 | $0.39 | $0.60 | $9.01 | 5 |
| 10x8x6 | $0.62 | $1.01 | $1.71 | 5 |
| 10x10x10 | $0.71 | $1.22 | $4.79 | 7 |
| 12x9x4 | $0.71 | $0.77 | $0.83 | 2 |
| 12x9x6 | $0.73 | $0.88 | $2.04 | 3 |
| 12x12x12 | $1.00 | $1.79 | $25.66 | 11 |
| 14x14x14 | $1.57 | $2.41 | $18.53 | 8 |
| 16x12x6 | $1.10 | $1.23 | $3.13 | 3 |
| 18x12x8 | $1.30 | $1.95 | $2.52 | 4 |
| 20x16x12 | $2.26 | $4.12 | $5.98 | 2 |
| 24x18x18 | $3.20 | $4.59 | $16.38 | 7 |
What to read into this. The cheap end of every size is the right benchmark for a generic ECT-32 single-wall corrugated box (the standard for SMB ecommerce). The high end is heavy-duty double-wall, edge-protected, or specialty variants like FOL (full-overlap), HSC (half-slotted), or FDA-grade boxes. If your distributor is quoting you anything above the median for a stock SKU, ask whether it's actually a heavier wall.
Mailers — bubble and poly
Per-each median cost from case packs:
| Mailer | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bubble #000 (4x8) | $0.151 | $0.214 | $0.277 | 2 |
| Bubble #0 (6x10) | $0.236 | $0.371 | $0.484 | 6 |
| Bubble #2 (8.5x12) | $0.308 | $0.812 | $0.891 | 4 |
| Bubble #5 (10.5x16) | $0.427 | $0.532 | $1.297 | 8 |
| Poly mailer 6x9 | $0.044 | $0.131 | $0.158 | 3 |
| Poly mailer 10x13 | $0.097 | $0.221 | $0.221 | 10 |
| Poly mailer 12x15.5 | $0.132 | $0.300 | $0.300 | 11 |
| Poly mailer 14.5x19 | $0.215 | $0.442 | $0.513 | 6 |
The poly-vs-bubble math is the single highest-leverage SMB packaging decision. A 10x13 poly mailer is ~$0.22; a 10.5x16 bubble mailer is ~$0.53; an 8.5x12 bubble mailer is ~$0.81. If the SKU survives a 4-foot drop in a poly mailer, the poly mailer wins on cost, on DIM weight, and on customer-perceived sustainability. We'd estimate 15–35% of bubble-mailer shipments could move to poly with no measurable damage uplift. Run a 200-shipment A/B before you commit.
Reclosable poly bags — by mil and size
Cost per 1,000 bags, bucketed by mil thickness and bag size (square-inch area):
| Spec | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 mil, small (under 20 sq-in) | $2.22 | $3.48 | $4.28 | 6 |
| 1.0 mil, medium (20–80 sq-in) | $4.72 | $10.67 | $18.17 | 30 |
| 1.0 mil, large (80–200 sq-in) | $17.61 | $31.29 | $198.96 | 48 |
| 2.0 mil, small (under 20 sq-in) | $1.09 | $9.76 | $43.00 | 83 |
| 2.0 mil, medium (20–80 sq-in) | $8.80 | $29.80 | $92.03 | 171 |
| 2.0 mil, large (80–200 sq-in) | $31.44 | $76.58 | $243.50 | 188 |
| 3.0 mil, large (80–200 sq-in) | $46.71 | $107.61 | $779.20 | 64 |
Reclosable (zip-top) poly bags are where most SMB shippers materially overpay. The pattern: jumping from 2 mil to 3 mil doubles the per-bag cost on a like-for-like size, and most ecommerce uses don't need 3 mil. The legitimate reasons to go heavier are sharp-edged hardware, long-term archival, or food contact (which has its own FDA spec independent of mil thickness). If your bagged SKU is a t-shirt, a small electronic, jewelry, or printed material, 2 mil is overkill — try 1.5 mil and audit damage rate at 30 days.
Carton-sealing tape — per 1,000 yards
The most relevant specs for SMB ground shipping (2" wide, clear or tan, 1.6–2.5 mil), normalized to USD per 1,000 yards:
| Spec | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2" x 1.6 mil clear | $23.70 | $55.27 | $952.00 | 17 |
| 2" x 1.6 mil tan | $26.49 | $53.61 | $488.52 | 7 |
| 2" x 1.8–2.0 mil clear | $18.03 | $31.32 | $104.78 | 30 |
| 2" x 1.8–2.0 mil tan | $18.57 | $42.76 | $62.52 | 15 |
| 2" x 2.5 mil clear | $21.80 | $48.71 | $240.03 | 35 |
| 2" x 2.5 mil tan | $32.93 | $50.17 | $386.42 | 14 |
| 2" x 3.0+ mil clear | $29.12 | $69.52 | $356.19 | 13 |
| 3" x 1.6 mil clear | $26.66 | $42.85 | $84.16 | 8 |
The cleanest spec for SMB ground shipping is 2" x 1.8–2.0 mil clear acrylic: median $31.32 per 1,000 yards, floor $18.03. Going to 2.5 mil for a typical small box is a marketing upsell, not a structural need. The wide spread inside a single spec (the worst $952 outlier in the 2" x 1.6 clear bucket) is mostly hot-melt or specialty water-activated variants — but the gap between the median and the floor inside the same generic spec is the real money: $31.32 down to $18.03 is a 42% saving on what is supposed to be a commodity.
Per shipment, tape is a rounding error: 24 inches of 2" tape closes a small box, which is two-thirds of a yard, which is roughly $0.04 in tape cost. Don't optimize tape per shipment. Do optimize the case price you're paying for it once a year.
Stretch film — per 1,000 linear feet
For SMB shippers wrapping pallets by hand:
| Width / Gauge | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12" / 60 ga | $9.24 | $9.49 | $9.75 | 2 |
| 12" / 80 ga | $3.81 | $10.44 | $157.06 | 38 |
| 12" / 100 ga | $7.19 | $12.10 | $13.69 | 7 |
| 12" / 115+ ga | $8.55 | $15.44 | $109.85 | 10 |
| 15–18" / 60 ga | $10.06 | $10.78 | $28.74 | 6 |
| 15–18" / 80 ga | $13.00 | $15.41 | $66.71 | 20 |
| 15–18" / 100 ga | $14.37 | $16.34 | $21.45 | 5 |
| 20"+ / 80 ga | $12.26 | $21.99 | $110.95 | 32 |
| 20"+ / 100 ga | $18.48 | $23.11 | $38.95 | 4 |
Hand stretch film is the cheapest pallet-securing option per linear foot, and the spread inside even the most popular spec (12" x 80 gauge) is striking: $3.81 floor, $10.44 median. If you're a 1–4 pallet/day shipper, you're probably running at the median. Buy by the pallet (40 cases), not the case.
The 80-gauge / 100-gauge / 115-gauge progression is about load weight. Under 1,500 lb pallet, 60–80 gauge is enough. Over 2,000 lb, move up. Most SMB shippers buy heavier than they need because heavier feels safer; the data on broken-down loads doesn't bear that out.
Bubble void fill — per 1,000 linear feet
| Spec (bubble size / roll width) | Median | Offers |
|---|---|---|
| 3/16" bubble, 12" wide | $142.60 | 6 |
| 3/16" bubble, 24" wide | $288.75 | 6 |
| 3/16" bubble, 48" wide | $256.87 | 2 |
| 5/16" bubble, 12" wide | $228.60 | 2 |
| 5/16" bubble, 24" wide | $347.10 | 3 |
| 1/2" bubble, 12" wide | $316.16 | 4 |
| 1/2" bubble, 24" wide | $449.60 | 3 |
3/16" bubble is the SMB workhorse. It's enough cushioning for almost any ecommerce SKU short of fragile glass or electronics with exposed circuitry. 5/16" and 1/2" are two-and-three times the price for cushioning most products do not need. Per shipment, 4 ft of 3/16" 12"-wide bubble in a small box runs about $0.57 — the second-largest line item in the small-box materials bill after the box itself.
Air pillows, which we don't break out here, generally come in cheaper per cubic foot of fill than rolled bubble — but they require an inflator and only make sense at higher volume. Loose-fill (peanuts) is cheaper still per cubic foot, but creates a customer-experience problem most SMB ecom brands now actively avoid.
Labels — per 1,000
| Size class | Min | Median | Max | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small (under 6 sq-in, e.g. 1x2, 2x3) | $2.93 | $18.63 | $62.94 | 58 |
| Medium (6–20 sq-in, e.g. 4x6) | $1.26 | $41.86 | $220.30 | 511 |
| Large (over 20 sq-in) | $9.39 | $83.26 | $881.20 | 153 |
Most SMB shippers use 4x6 thermal direct labels, which fall in the medium class. Median there is ~$42 per 1,000 ($0.04 each); cheap end is ~$1.26 per 1,000 (probably plain blank-stock, not pre-printed); most-expensive end is specialty colored, fluorescent, or high-temp variants. For ground shipping, plain 4x6 thermal is the right benchmark — and at $0.02–$0.04 per label, it's not where you should be optimizing.
Mailing tubes, cable ties, and edge protectors
The "long tail" of SMB shipping consumables — the items most operators don't track but cumulatively eat 5–10% of the materials bill:
| Item | Min | Median | Max | Offers | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailing tubes (any size) | $0.118 | $1.783 | $20.85 | 219 | per tube |
| Cable ties (per 1,000) | $7.80 | $73.77 | $1,617.00 | 204 | per 1,000 |
| Edge protectors | $0.054 | $1.125 | $5.06 | 77 | per unit |
Mailing tubes vary wildly because length and wall thickness drive the cost: a 2"-diameter, 12"-long, 0.080"-wall tube sits near the floor; a 4"-diameter, 36"-long, 0.250"-wall tube with end caps sits up at the high end. The takeaway for SMB shippers selling posters, prints, calendars, or rolled fabric is to settle on two standard sizes and order them by the case rather than letting the warehouse pick from whatever's closest to hand.
Cable ties are dominated by length and tensile strength. The cheap end of the bucket is generic 4" 18-lb nylon ties; the expensive end is heavy-duty 36"+ stainless-steel-mounted UV-stable variants. For SMB shipping (bundling cords, securing cardboard for parcel transit, light pallet binding), the floor of the cheap end is almost always the right product.
Edge protectors at the cheap end are short ~12" V-board profile; the expensive end is full-pallet 96" L-profile with reinforced corners. For SMB shippers, edge protectors are mostly a freight-carrier requirement on LTL pallets — figure out which freight carriers actually require them on your inbound lanes before you over-order.
Where margin leaks: cross-supplier price variance
This is the most useful section if you already buy packaging in volume. The spread between the cheapest and the most expensive offer for the same headline spec, across box sizes with at least three case offers in our catalog:
| Box size | Cheapest case (per unit) | Most expensive case (per unit) | Spread | Offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24x15x10 | $2.21 | $80.39 | 3,545% | 7 |
| 24x12x10 | $1.75 | $57.84 | 3,211% | 7 |
| 12x12x12 | $1.00 | $25.66 | 2,461% | 11 |
| 8x6x4 | $0.39 | $9.01 | 2,203% | 5 |
| 16x16x16 | $1.96 | $30.97 | 1,481% | 8 |
| 18x18x18 | $2.40 | $30.66 | 1,179% | 9 |
| 14x14x14 | $1.57 | $18.53 | 1,084% | 8 |
| 14x14x8 | $1.26 | $10.55 | 737% | 4 |
| 6x6x6 | $0.41 | $3.39 | 725% | 6 |
| 10x10x10 | $0.71 | $4.79 | 576% | 7 |
Honest read on this. A 1,000–3,500% spread inside a single nominal box size is not mostly distributor markup — it's spec creep. The expensive end of 12x12x12 is double-wall corrugated rated for 65 lb, with edge protection or full-overlap construction; the cheap end is single-wall ECT-32 rated for ~30 lb and plain RSC (regular slotted container). Those are functionally different products and they should price differently.
What's still useful here: when your distributor quotes a 12x12x12 box, ask which spec they're quoting. If it's standard ECT-32 single-wall RSC, anything above ~$1.50–$2.00 per unit at case quantity is worth a second look. Standard-spec corrugated is the most commoditized SKU in packaging, and the floor price has been within 10–15% of itself across distributors for a decade.
The variance pattern is similar but tighter for tape (40–60% inside a single spec at the cheap-to-median end), poly bags (~3x cheap-to-median for a single mil/size combo), and stretch film (3–4x cheap-to-median for 12"/80ga). On all of those, the cheap end of the in-spec offer is almost always a coreless, no-frills, generic-brand variant from a regional manufacturer — and for SMB shippers, that's almost always the right product.
Practical optimization tips for SMB shippers
- Default to poly mailers; use boxes only when geometry or fragility forces it. A poly-mailer shipment is ~$0.15–$0.24 in materials. A small-box shipment is ~$1.40. If 30% of your box shipments could be poly mailers without damage, you save ~$0.50–$1.00 on each one — and you typically save more on DIM-weight chargeable freight than you save on materials.
- Audit your bubble mailer use. Bubble mailers are 3–4x the cost of plain poly mailers at the same dimension. The right use case is small, mid-fragility goods (paperback books, small electronics in retail packaging, jewelry boxes). Most other SMB use is reflexive. Run a 200-shipment A/B with poly + 1 layer of internal bubble for non-fragile SKUs.
- Right-size before re-quoting. A 12x9x4 box is ~$0.77 at median; a 14x14x14 box is ~$2.41. Most SMB shippers run two or three box sizes when they should run six. Adding the right intermediate sizes (10x8x6, 12x9x4, 14x10x6) for your DIM mix will save more than any vendor renegotiation.
- Don't over-spec mil thickness on poly bags. 1.5 mil is enough for almost any soft goods, apparel, and printed material; 2.0 mil is right for sharp edges and rigid items; 3.0 mil is right for hardware, automotive parts, and long-term storage. Going one mil thicker than needed is a ~50–80% cost increase on a per-bag basis.
- Buy carton tape by the pallet, not the case. Carton-sealing tape has a ~3x spread between the cheap end and the median in our data, and the cheap end is reliably generic-brand 2"x1000-yard 1.8 mil clear acrylic. At 36 cases per pallet, the cheap end is real money over a year.
- Stop buying heavy stretch film. 80-gauge hand film handles every pallet under 2,000 lb; 100-gauge and 115-gauge are upsells for SMB shippers who don't have machine-stretch or palletizing equipment. Switching from 100ga to 80ga on the same width is roughly a 15–20% cost reduction per linear foot.
- Price tape and labels per 1,000 units, not per case. Most distributor quotes are per case. Convert everything to per 1,000 yards (tape) or per 1,000 labels before comparing. The case-size differences hide more than the price differences.
- Don't optimize what doesn't matter. Tape per shipment is ~$0.04. Label per shipment is ~$0.02. Even a 50% savings on either is rounding-error money. The big levers — by an order of magnitude — are box vs. mailer choice, mailer type (poly vs. bubble), and right-sized box selection.
What to ask a packaging distributor — six questions that surface margin
If you take this report into a quoting conversation, the questions below will get you a meaningful answer in roughly five minutes. They're written to be answerable by a sales rep without escalation, so you can run them on a first call.
- "What ECT spec is this corrugated quoted at?" An ECT-32 single-wall RSC is the SMB ground-shipping standard. ECT-44, ECT-48, double-wall, FOL, HSC, and 200#-test variants are all legitimate but cost 1.5–4x more. If the rep can't tell you the ECT rating off the top of their head, the quote is probably abstracted from a catalog and not negotiated.
- "What's the case price at 1, 5, and 20 cases?" Most distributors have a price-break ladder that they won't volunteer unless asked. SMB shippers rarely buy at the 20-case break, but knowing where it sits tells you (a) how big the gap to the at-quantity price is, and (b) whether your forward-12-month volume warrants pre-buying.
- "Is this stock SKU or a manufactured-to-order SKU?" Stock SKUs ship in 24–48 hours and have stable pricing. M-to-O SKUs (custom-printed, custom-die-cut, custom-mil) have 2–6 week lead times and 15–30% higher per-unit pricing because of changeovers. If you're being quoted M-to-O when stock would do, the rep is probably matching what your previous distributor sold you, not what you actually need.
- "What's freight to my zip on a single pallet?" Packaging is heavy and bulky relative to its dollar value. A pallet of 48 cases of corrugated boxes might cost $200 to ship from a Midwest warehouse to a coastal SMB — which can flip the unit-economics of a quote that looked competitive on materials alone. Ask up-front.
- "Can I get a sample case before I commit to the pallet?" Most distributors will send a sample case, especially for first-time accounts and especially on box quotes. A 50-piece test run will catch the differences (wall thickness, flute direction, glue-tab quality) that the spec sheet won't.
- "What's your damage-credit policy on transit failures?" Almost no SMB shipper asks this, and almost every distributor has a real policy. The differences matter in real money: net-30 credit on a documented broken-pallet claim vs. "submit photos and we'll review" with no SLA is a meaningful operational risk.
The cost-per-shipment math, rolled up by volume tier
Working back from per-shipment numbers above, here's what materials cost per month for representative SMB volumes. Numbers assume the median per-unit prices documented above; multiply by your actual mix.
| Volume / mix | Per shipment | 250/wk (~1,083/mo) | 1,000/wk (~4,333/mo) | 5,000/wk (~21,667/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% poly mailer (10x13) | $0.24 | $260 | $1,040 | $5,200 |
| 100% bubble mailer (8.5x12) | $0.83 | $899 | $3,597 | $17,984 |
| 100% small box (12x9x4 + tape + bubble + label) | $1.40 | $1,517 | $6,067 | $30,333 |
| 100% medium box (16x12x6 + tape + bubble + label) | $2.44 | $2,644 | $10,575 | $52,876 |
| 50/50 poly mailer + small box | $0.82 | $888 | $3,553 | $17,765 |
For an SMB shipping 1,000 orders a week, the gap between an all-bubble-mailer mix and an all-poly-mailer mix is roughly $2,500/month — a difference that, on its own, can cover the salary of a part-time fulfillment coordinator. The same shipper switching half their bubble-mailer volume to poly saves about $1,250/month with no measurable damage uplift on the SKUs we'd typically recommend swapping.
Methodology appendix — data freshness, caveats, and how to cite
Data sources. All prices are from the Packrift active SKU catalog, snapshotted on 2026-04-29. Pack quantities, dimensions, and gauge/mil are parsed from product titles using regex extraction; we manually spot-checked ~50 SKUs across each category to confirm parser correctness. Where a SKU's spec couldn't be reliably parsed (no listed mil, no listed pack quantity, ambiguous dimensions), we excluded it from the relevant bucket rather than guess. The "active priced SKUs" count reflects what made it into the analysis: 12,929 SKUs.
Bucket sizes. Some buckets have only 2–3 offers (e.g., 12x9x4 boxes, 4x8 bubble mailers, 12"/60ga stretch film). We surface those anyway because they're common SMB sizes, but we cite the offer count next to each median so the reader can weight accordingly.
Outliers. The high end of every bucket is dominated by anti-static, FDA-grade, hot-melt, water-activated, branded, or specialty-format variants. We use medians, not means, throughout to avoid pulling central tendency around. Where the high-end outlier is more than 10x the median, that's almost always a different product class with different specs — not an apples-to-apples markup.
What this report is not. It's not a vendor-vs-vendor comparison (we benchmark Packrift against Packrift). It's not a national-average price index (we sample one supplier). It's not a damage-rate study. It's a directional benchmark for SMB shippers trying to figure out whether they're paying roughly the right shape of price for their consumables.
Citation request. If you cite a number from this report — in a blog post, a newsletter, a podcast, a deck — please link back to packrift.com/pages/2026-packaging-cost-benchmark. We update the underlying numbers quarterly as the catalog refreshes, and a back-link helps us tell you when the numbers move.
Republish license. This report is shared under CC BY 4.0 — you may quote, screenshot, or adapt anything in it as long as you credit Packrift and link back.
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Source: Packrift catalog as of 2026-04-29. Methodology and per-bucket sample counts disclosed throughout. Questions or data requests: marketing@packrift.com.