How to ship a suitcase: courier prices, weight and packing

The short answer

To ship a suitcase you weigh it, wrap it in film, book a courier online and have it collected from home. Within Italy a suitcase up to 20 kg costs €12.30 with Poste Delivery Web or €20.95 with BRT door to door; for Europe, Poste Delivery Europe starts at €28 (rates read on 25 September 2026).

The figures come from the public price lists of Poste Italiane and BRT, VAT included. They cover the transport only: home collection and large sizes can add a bit, and further down you'll find how much.

Smoves was born in Milan in 2026, picks up at home from Varese to the Lodi area and has 4.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot. Every June we watch suitcases, boxes and students in exam season go by, and we've picked up a few tricks for spending less.

Before you open a single shipping website, though, weigh the suitcase. The official method of every student living away from home is the bathroom scale: step on holding the suitcase, then without it, and subtract. It's the only sum of the semester that comes out right first time.

How much it costs to ship a suitcase: the courier prices

Here's what the services that publish a price list charge for a student-sized suitcase, meaning between 15 and 30 kg. Comparison sites and other platforms work out the price on the spot, from origin, destination and size: for those you need a simulation on their site.

How much it costs to ship a 20 kg suitcase, and why 20.1 kg costs more

A 20 kg suitcase within Italy costs between €12.30 and €20.95 for the transport alone, depending on the courier and on who takes it to the starting point. The number that matters, though, is 20: almost every price list changes band right there.

With Poste Delivery Web you go from €12.30 to €14.80 as soon as you pass 20 kg, with BRT from €20.95 to €25.98. So two hundred grams of hoodies cost between €2.50 and €5 in shipping, which is more than the hoodie is worth.

Then there are the dimensions. Poste treats a parcel as oversized when one side is over 100 cm or the three sides add up to more than 150 cm, and adds €9 (Poste Delivery Web price list). A large 80 × 50 × 30 cm suitcase adds up to 160 cm: with home collection and delivery to the door the bill becomes 12.30 + 1 + 1 + 9, so €23.30.

So the bathroom scale does two jobs: it tells you the weight and, if you're honest, how many hoodies stay in storage. And if the bill looks high for a suitcase that only has to wait for September, maybe it shouldn't travel at all: there's summer storage for students, and I'll get to it further down.

How to ship a suitcase by courier, step by step

The process is the same with every courier that sells to private customers online, and it takes less time than finding the parcel tape in a student apartment.

1. Weigh and measure the suitcase already closed, with everything inside: weight and the sum of the three sides decide the price band.

2. Choose the service and where it leaves from: your home, or a post office or courier point if you want to save a few euros and feel like dragging it there.

3. Pay online and print the label. No printer? Check first whether the drop-off point prints it for you.

4. Pack the suitcase (how, below) and stick the label on the widest side, away from zips and handles.

5. Put a copy of the label inside, or a sheet with your name, address and phone number: if the outside one comes off, it's the only way the suitcase knows where it's going.

6. Keep the tracking number and follow the shipment until it arrives.

How to pack a suitcase that travels without you

A shipped suitcase rides belts and rollers and travels under other parcels, and nobody asks how it's doing. Protect it like a box, even if it has wheels and the look of something that can take care of itself.

Wrap it completely in clear film, two or three turns, and seal it with tape. It keeps zips and pockets shut and stops the handles snagging; BRT's online shipping terms exclude unpacked parcels, so it isn't just fussiness.

Inside, fill the gaps with rolled-up clothes so nothing rattles around. Laptop, documents and anything fragile stay in the backpack you carry: couriers are good at moving parcels, not at looking after your thesis.

And think about a box. A suitcase weighs something even when empty, and with banded price lists every kilo is paid for: a properly sealed box makes the same trip, and the suitcase stays free for the train.

Shipping a suitcase within Italy: courier or train?

It depends on how much you want to spend and how you're getting home. With a courier you spend less and pick the day; with Trenitalia's Bagaglio Facile you spend a few euros more, but the suitcase arrives in 24-48 hours and you travel with just a backpack.

Trenitalia's service (Bagaglio Facile) collects from home Monday to Friday between 9am and 6pm, takes bags up to 25 kg and 210 cm for the sum of the sides, and the discounted price applies with a Frecce or Intercity ticket. Trenitalia suggests booking at least 24 hours ahead: on departure day you're usually busy looking for your charger.

The real advantage is physical. The train south on the first of July with two suitcases, a backpack and your flatmate's cactus is a story worth telling, but only once.

Shipping a suitcase abroad: the price goes up, and the rules change

Abroad, a suitcase costs at least twice as much as within Italy, and before the price comes one phrase: "personal effects". Some online services don't accept them across the border, and a suitcase of clothes is exactly that.

BRT's online shipping terms, for example, exclude personal effects going abroad, and the BRT price list for private customers doesn't accept them to Switzerland and Great Britain. Poste Italiane has two services for abroad: Poste Delivery Europe starts at €28 up to 30 kg, with the sides adding up to no more than 225 cm; outside Europe Poste Delivery Globe starts at €33.50, again up to 30 kg. Before you pay, read in the service's terms what it accepts to your country.

Outside the European Union there's customs too, which wants to know what's inside and what it's worth. You fill in the declaration yourself, and "used clothes" is a more useful description than it sounds: it's also the most honest one.

If more than a suitcase is leaving the country (the desk, the first-year textbooks, the bike you never rode) it's worth looking at international moving from Milan: we pick up at your home and ship on a quote, and whatever doesn't leave straight away can wait in storage.

When the suitcase doesn't need to go anywhere: leave it in Milan

If you're coming back to Milan in September, shipping your things home in June and back again in September means paying the courier twice. For what you don't need over the summer, storage makes more sense.

Here's how it works: we come and pick up at your place, keep your things in the warehouse and bring them back in September, even to a new room. You pay a fixed monthly rate for the size, starting from 1 m², plus the pickup once; you book the redelivery with at least 48 hours' notice and pay for it then. The full calendar is on the summer storage for students page.

In the suitcase you put only what you need for the summer, which usually fits in one and a half carry-ons. The rest never meets a bathroom scale, or a banded price list.

And if your things really do need to reach home, in Italy or abroad, we ship them on a quote, even if you have nothing in storage with us: that goes for boxes as much as for furniture and bulky items. You don't hunt for a courier, and you don't tape up a parcel at 2am before your oral exam.

What we see in June

In June 2026 we picked up more than 200 items from students, mostly around Bocconi. The scene is almost always the same: last exam at the end of the month, lease ending on the 30th, train on 2 July, and a room that has somehow produced more stuff than went into it in September. It's a law of physics nobody has named yet.

I went through it as a student living away from home, and the heaviest part isn't the boxes: it's having to think about them in exam week. The service exists to take that problem off your hands, so you can think about your exams. Boxes up to 20 kg we carry down ourselves, and at the pickup it can be a flatmate you've delegated.

If you're shipping just one suitcase, with everything else sorted, the courier is the right call: it's cheap and it works. Storage makes sense when the suitcases would become four, and the fourth would be a desk.