Chargeable Weight Calculator: Air, Express & Sea Freight (2026)

Quote a light, bulky air shipment off its actual weight and you lose money on every kilo. The carrier bills the volumetric weight, which can be four times the number on the scale. Chargeable weight is the figure that actually prices the shipment, and it is not always the one you expect.

Enter the cargo and see the chargeable weight for every mode at once.

Why carriers bill chargeable weight

A plane and a container both run out of space before they run out of weight capacity when the cargo is light. Fill a hold with pillows and the carrier earns nothing on the empty tonnage, so freight is priced on whichever is larger, the actual weight or the volume converted into a weight. That converted figure is the volumetric weight, and the larger of the two is the chargeable weight.

Volumetric weight (air)     = L × W × H (cm) ÷ 6,000
Volumetric weight (courier) = L × W × H (cm) ÷ 5,000
Volumetric weight (sea/LCL) = CBM × 1,000
Chargeable weight = the higher of actual weight and volumetric weight

The calculator runs all three because the same box lands in a different place depending on how it ships.

Air, courier and sea use different divisors

Air freight uses a volumetric divisor of 6,000, which means 6,000 cubic centimeters count as one kilogram. Express couriers use 5,000, a denser assumption, which is why the identical parcel costs more by DHL or FedEx than by airline cargo. Sea and LCL do not use a divisor at all; they use the weight or measure rule where one cubic meter counts as 1,000 kilograms, so volume-heavy ocean cargo bills in revenue tons.

Break-even density, the number worth knowing

Every mode has a density where chargeable weight flips from actual to volumetric. For air at a 6,000 divisor, that break-even is about 167 kg per cubic meter. Below that density the shipment bills on volume, above it on actual weight. For courier at 5,000 the break-even is 200 kg per cubic meter, and for sea it is 1,000 kg per cubic meter.

Knowing where your cargo sits tells you how to quote. A pallet of foam sits far below break-even and bills on volume, so shaving the box size saves real money. A pallet of tiles sits above it and bills on weight, so tighter packing does nothing for the freight cost. The calculator shows actual and volumetric together so you can see which side of the line you are on.

Worked example

Ten cartons, each 120 by 100 by 100 cm, 50 kg apiece: 12 CBM and 500 kg actual.

The shipment is well below every break-even density, so it bills on volume in all three modes, and the actual 500 kg never enters the price. For the cubic meters and container fill behind these figures, use the CBM calculator. More tools are in the freight forwarding calculators section.