Volumetric and Chargeable Weight Calculator

A volumetric weight calculator tells you what a carrier will count your parcel as. Carriers sell space as well as lift, so a big light carton can be billed as if it were heavier than it is. Your chargeable weight is the higher of the actual weight and the volumetric weight, and that is the number your freight bill is worked out on.

Most calculators give you one box under one divisor. A real shipment has several box sizes, and the same boxes can bill differently by courier, air, road or sea. Enter every size above and you will see all of them side by side, with the carrier's own page linked beside its figure.

Volumetric, dimensional and chargeable weight

These names describe the same idea in different places. Volumetric weight (or volume weight) is the usual term in India, the UK, the UAE and most of Asia and Europe. In the United States and Canada carriers call it dimensional weight, or DIM weight. Chargeable weight is the figure the bill is worked out on: the higher of the actual weight and the volumetric weight. The calculator takes sizes in centimetres or inches and weights in kilograms or pounds, so it works for any of them; check the divisor on your own carrier's rate card, because it is the divisor that changes from carrier to carrier, not the formula.

The volumetric weight formula

Measure the longest point of the packed box, not the product inside it. Then:

Volumetric weight (kg) = length × width × height in cm ÷ the divisor

Take a carton of 60 × 40 × 40 cm weighing 8 kg. Under a courier divisor of 5000, 60 × 40 × 40 is 96,000 cubic cm, and 96,000 ÷ 5000 is 19.2 kg. It weighs 8 kg, but it bills on the higher figure, which is why it is called the chargeable weight. Couriers then usually round up in steps, so at the next 0.5 kg it bills 19.5 kg. Under the air cargo ratio of 6000, the same carton comes to 16 kg. Measuring in inches? Most carriers' India documents give centimetres, so the calculator converts at 2.54 cm to the inch and uses the same divisor. The exception is air cargo, where IATA and SpiceXpress publish 366 for inches.

Which divisor do carriers use in India?

There is no single figure for all couriers, whatever you may read. These are the figures we read on 6 November 2026, most of them on the carrier's own page, and the table shows where. The common rule, Shiprocket's default and the 6 kg road figure are not one carrier's own rule. Check them all against your own rate card, because contracts differ.

We could not find a published divisor for Xpressbees, Ekart, Shadowfax, Flipkart, Meesho, Air India Cargo or IndiGo CarGo, so the calculator offers no preset under their names. Third-party tables do print figures for them, but they disagree with one another and cite nothing. Choose Common courier rule or My own figure and check the number on your rate card. India Post's regulations bill the higher of gross and volumetric weight, but we could not confirm its current divisor: ask at the counter.

Box by box or the whole shipment?

This choice can change the bill, and most calculators never mention it. Express carriers such as DHL Express and UPS compare each box on its own, round it, then add the boxes. IATA's air cargo method adds all the volumes first, divides once and rounds once. In a worked example from ASEAN's air freight course, which quotes the airline rules, two pieces come to 415 kg worked as a whole and 415.5 kg if each piece is rounded separately, and the second is marked incorrect for air cargo. The calculator uses the method a carrier publishes, and most don't publish one, so the rule's card tells you where we had to assume it. You can change it under Adjust the working.

CBM to kg: how many kg is 1 CBM?

A cubic metre has no fixed weight, because volume and weight measure different things. A CBM of foam and a CBM of steel weigh very different amounts. What people searching for this usually want is the freight conversion, which is a billing rule:

So cargo lighter than 200 kg per CBM bills on volume under a 5000 divisor, and cargo lighter than about 167 kg per CBM does under 6000. Use the Total volume tab above if you only have a CBM figure. To work out the CBM itself, and the containers it fills, use the CBM & Container Load Calculator.

Sea LCL: weight or measure

Sea freight for a part container is priced per W/M, short for weight or measure, also called a revenue ton. You pay on the larger of the volume in CBM and the weight in metric tons. DHL's example is 10 CBM weighing 1 metric ton, which bills as 10 W/M. Forwarders often apply a minimum of about 1 W/M, but it differs: Kuehne+Nagel lists 1 in Austria and 2 in Norway, and we found no Indian tariff that states one, so the calculator shows it as an editable assumption. The figure assumes stackable cargo. Local charges at the container freight station can carry their own minimums, and its measurement decides the invoice.

Road part load: kg per CFT

Road transporters in India often count a cubic foot as a set number of kilos, and there is no national standard. Allcargo Gati's tariff page and V-Xpress's calculator use 10 kg per CFT, and Countrywide Logistics uses 8. Reseller sheets also show 6. Several carriers print the sum as length × breadth × height in cm ÷ 27,000, which treats a foot as 30 cm, and reads about 4.9% above a true cubic foot of 28,317 cubic cm. The calculator uses their 27,000 for sizes in cm, so that it matches their cards, and a true cubic foot for sizes in feet or inches and CFT totals. Ask your transporter for the factor in writing, along with any minimum weight per docket.

How to bring your chargeable weight down

• Cut the height first. Enter one box size with its weight and the calculator tells you the height at which it stops costing extra.
• Measure the packed box. A carrier measures the longest point, so bulges, loose flaps and poor taping count.
• Combine small orders. With a box-by-box rule, each box is rounded up separately, so many small boxes can add up to more than one larger one.
• Keep a rate-card figure on file. Enter your contract's divisor under My own figure and keep the link. It opens the same shipment later.

If you ship orders every day, packing is only part of the sum. Farbe Enterprise runs 3PL warehousing with storage, pick and pack and dispatch for businesses across India. To see how much floor your stock will take, try the Warehouse Space Calculator.

Frequently asked questions