DDP vs DAP calculator
Compare Delivered Duty Paid against Delivered at Place: see what each Incoterm costs you, what your customer gets billed, and which produces a better checkout price.
This is the amount the Incoterm decides who pays.
Nothing to pay on delivery. The price at checkout is the final price.
Courier invoices your customer $177.76 before releasing the parcel.
Buyer clears customs and pays duty, tax and destination charges.
Buyer arranges and pays for freight as well as duty and tax.
Who pays what, under Incoterms 2020
| Term | Export clearance | Main carriage | Insurance | Import clearance | Duty & tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EXWEx Works | buyer | buyer | buyer | buyer | buyer |
| FOBFree on Board | seller | buyer | buyer | buyer | buyer |
| CIFCost, Insurance and Freight | seller | seller | seller | buyer | buyer |
| DAPDelivered at Place | seller | seller | optional | buyer | buyer |
| DDPDelivered Duty Paid | seller | seller | optional | seller | seller |
EXW — The buyer collects from the seller's door and carries every cost and risk from there. Cheapest headline price, most work.
FOB — The seller delivers on board the vessel at the origin port. The standard term for container imports and the one most freight quotes assume.
CIF — The seller pays freight and insurance to the destination port. Import clearance, duty and destination charges remain yours — and destination charges on a CIF shipment are a classic hidden cost.
DAP — The seller delivers to your address but you owe duty and tax. This is why a customer receives a courier invoice after the parcel arrives.
DDP — The seller pays everything including duty and import tax. The only term that gives a consumer a genuinely final price at checkout, and the reason cross-border DDP pricing needs a landed-cost calculation.
The same delivery, two different bills
DAP and DDP are Incoterms describing who carries the import charges. Under Delivered at Place the seller gets the goods to the buyer's address, but the buyer is the importer of record and owes duty and import tax — collected by the courier, usually by text message, before it will release the parcel. Under Delivered Duty Paid the seller pays all of it and the parcel simply arrives.
Economically the total is nearly the same. What differs is who is surprised. DAP moves the charge off your checkout page and onto your customer three days later, at the point where they have already paid, already waited, and have no way to price it in. For consumer sales that is one of the most reliable generators of a refund request, a chargeback and a one-star review that mentions "hidden fees". The saving is real and the cost of it is usually larger.
Where DAP is the right answer
Business-to-business, most of the time. A registered business buyer can reclaim import VAT, often has a broker relationship with better rates than yours, and would rather control its own entry than have a foreign seller file on its behalf. Selling DAP into that customer is not passing the buck; it is the cheaper structure for both sides.
Selling DDP at consumer scale has a compliance tail worth understanding before you commit to it. Into the EU and UK it usually means IOSS, an OSS registration, or an importer-of-record arrangement, and it can create a registration obligation you did not have. That question is much cheaper to answer before you scale than after.
Questions people ask about this
Answers written from the published rules, not from other people's summaries of them. Every figure quoted below is listed with its source at the foot of this page.
Every formula on this siteWhat is the difference between DDP and DAP?
Under DAP the seller delivers to the buyer's address but the buyer owes duty and import tax, usually collected by the courier before release. Under DDP the seller pays everything. DAP looks cheaper at checkout and generates the angry email three days later when the courier invoices your customer.
Should I sell DDP or DAP?
For consumer sales, DDP almost always, because an unexpected customs bill is one of the most reliable ways to generate a refund request and a bad review. For business-to-business, DAP is common and often preferred, since the buyer can reclaim import VAT and may have better broker rates than you.
Does DDP mean I need to register for VAT abroad?
Not necessarily, but it can. Selling DDP into the EU or UK at scale usually means dealing with IOSS, an OSS registration, or an importer of record arrangement. Get advice before you scale it — the compliance question is more expensive to fix later than to answer early.
Can I quote DDP without registering for VAT in the destination country?
Often yes, through an importer-of-record service or a courier's own DDP product, but it depends on the market and the volume. For low-value consignments into the EU, IOSS lets you collect VAT at checkout and remit it through a single registration. Above the IOSS ceiling, or where you hold stock locally, a local registration is usually unavoidable. The courier can act as importer for you in some lanes and refuses to in others, so confirm it lane by lane rather than assuming it scales.
Which Incoterm should I put on the commercial invoice?
The one you actually sold on, and it should match your terms of sale, your carrier booking and your checkout copy. Mismatches between them are a common cause of parcels stopping at the border: an invoice marked DDP against a booking made DAP leaves the courier with nobody nominated to pay, and the parcel waits. Incoterms 2020 is the current edition; naming the edition alongside the term removes any ambiguity about which rulebook applies.
Is DDP always more expensive for me than DAP?
In direct cost yes, since you are paying charges the buyer would otherwise carry. In total cost frequently not. Model it against your actual refund rate, your support cost per contact and the conversion difference between an all-inclusive price and one with charges to come. On consumer sales the failed deliveries, refused parcels and return freight from DAP shipments routinely cost more than the duty would have, and the parcel that is refused at the door costs you the outbound freight as well.
Further reading
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Where these numbers come from
Rates and rules change, and a calculator running on stale data is worse than no calculator. Every figure below carries the date we last checked it and a confidence level, so you can judge how much weight to put on it.
| Source | Publisher | Effective | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incoterms 2020 rules The ICC publishes and owns the Incoterms rules. Who bears cost and risk at each stage under DDP, DAP, CIF and FOB is taken from the 2020 edition. The full text is a paid publication, so the link is to the ICC's own rules page rather than to the clause text. Incoterms allocate cost and risk between buyer and seller; they do not change what duty or tax is owed, only who pays it. | International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) | 2020-01-01Checked 2026-08-25 | Primary source |
Page updated . Spotted something out of date? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.
More on the working: every formula on this site, the full source register, what the terms mean, and how we decide what to publish. What an estimate here can and cannot support is set out in the accuracy notes.