How Many Post Offices Are in the US? 26,147 in FY2025

The US counted 26,147 Post Offices at the end of FY2025, within 32,907 retail locations

The Postal Service reports its counters as 3 nested totals. Its FY2025 Annual Report to Congress lists 26,147 Post Offices on September 30, 2025, plus 4,825 stations, branches and carrier annexes, for 30,972 retail units that USPS staffs itself. Contractors run another 1,935 counters, mostly Contract Postal Units (1,356), plus 243 Village Post Offices and 336 Community Post Offices. All in, the network had 32,907 locations.

The middle total is the one on the agency’s Postal Facts site, labeled total retail offices. The USPS Office of Inspector General uses the widest count, calls every location a post office, and describes the result, over 33,000 locations, as the largest brick-and-mortar retail network in the country.

How USPS, its inspector general and its filings count post offices

In USPS’s own documents the words “post office” cover 3 different sets of buildings. The annual report and the Historian’s series use Post Office for a main office only. Stations and branches are administratively subordinate to a main office, in the inspector general’s words, and get a line of their own. Contract units are counters inside another company’s store, run by its own staff under a USPS contract. The inspector general folds all 3 into a single count.

Source	Term it uses	What it includes	Latest figure	Period
USPS Annual Report, Post Offices line	Post Offices	Main offices only	26,147	FY2025
USPS Historian series	Number of Post Offices	Main offices, the same line back to 1789	26,147	FY2025
USPS Annual Report and Postal Facts	Total Postal Service-managed; total retail offices	Main offices plus their stations, branches and annexes	30,972	FY2025
USPS Annual Report, every counter	Total offices, stations, and branches	Adds Contract Postal Units, Village and Community Post Offices	32,907	FY2025
USPS Form 10-K	USPS-managed counters and contract units	Rounded to 31,000 and 2,700	About 33,700 together	FY2025
USPS Office of Inspector General	Post offices	USPS-managed and third-party locations	33,313	FY2024
USPS facility list released under FOIA	Post offices	Offices, stations and branches staffed by USPS, carrier-only sites removed	30,438	October 2021

The inspector general’s 33,313 is the annual report’s total for fiscal 2024, so the 2 sources agree once the year matches. The gap between the narrowest and widest fiscal 2025 counts is 6,760 locations, all of them stations, branches and contract units.

Post offices by type: main offices, stations and contract units

Type	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	Change in FY2025
Post Offices	26,257	26,207	26,147	-0.2%
Stations, branches and carrier annexes	4,856	4,841	4,825	-0.3%
Run by USPS, total	31,113	31,048	30,972	-0.2%
Contract Postal Units	1,650	1,600	1,356	-15.3%
Community Post Offices	375	359	336	-6.4%
Village Post Offices	350	306	243	-20.6%
Run by contractors, total	2,375	2,265	1,935	-14.6%
All retail locations	33,488	33,313	32,907	-1.2%

Main offices make up 79.5% of the network and units staffed by USPS 94.1%. The contracted layer is where the losses are concentrated: it shed 330 counters in fiscal 2025, while the units USPS runs itself fell by 76. The inspector general traces a longer slide, with third-party post offices falling from 4,382 in fiscal 2000 to 2,265 in fiscal 2024, from 12% of all locations to 7%. USPS-managed locations fell by 2,630, or 8%, over the same years.

The totals also hold offices that are shut but not closed. USPS can suspend an office after a natural disaster, the end of a lease or a lack of qualified staff, and it stays in the count until it is formally closed. The inspector general counted 444 suspended post offices at the end of fiscal 2024.

US post office count by year, 1789 to 2025

The network grew with the country for more than a century. The Historian’s series starts at 75 offices in 1789 and tops out at 76,945 in 1901, then reverses: 59,580 by 1910, 22.6% fewer. The inspector general ties that fall to rural free delivery reaching more and more households.

US Post Offices, selected years

• 185018,417
• 188042,989
• 190176,945
• 191059,580
• 193049,063
• 195041,464
• 197131,947
• 199028,959
• 201027,077
• 202526,147

Source: USPS Historian, Pieces of Mail Handled, Number of Post Offices, Income, and Expenses Since 1789

Year	Post Offices	Pieces of mail handled	Pieces per Post Office
1901	76,945	7.4 billion	96,490
1910	59,580	14.9 billion	249,246
1930	49,063	27.9 billion	568,408
1950	41,464	45.1 billion	1,086,816
1971	31,947	87.0 billion	2,722,728
1990	28,959	166.3 billion	5,742,628
2000	27,876	207.9 billion	7,457,390
2006	27,318	213.1 billion	7,802,098
2010	27,077	170.9 billion	6,310,116
2020	26,362	129.2 billion	4,899,894
2025	26,147	108.7 billion	4,157,073

USPS took over from the Post Office Department on July 1, 1971, and the 1971 count of 31,947 has fallen 18.2% since, by 5,800. The last 25 years moved it least. There were 27,876 Post Offices in 2000 and 26,147 in 2025, 6.2% fewer, while mail volume fell 47.7%, from 207.9 billion pieces to 108.7 billion. The figure sat at 26,362 in each of 2019, 2020 and 2021, and each office now handles about 4.2 million pieces a year against 7.8 million at the 2006 high.

Post offices by state

USPS publishes no state totals. The newest breakdown comes from a USPS facility list released under the Freedom of Information Act in October 2021, which postal historian Evan Kalish tabulated on Postlandia. After removing 548 carrier-only sites he counted 30,438 offices, stations and branches staffed by USPS; contract units are not in it.

Rank	State	Post offices, October 2021	Share of the 30,438
1	New York	1,820	6.0%
2	Pennsylvania	1,782	5.9%
3	Texas	1,650	5.4%
4	California	1,621	5.3%
5	Illinois	1,300	4.3%
6	Ohio	1,115	3.7%
7 (tie)	Michigan	890	2.9%
7 (tie)	Missouri	890	2.9%
9	Virginia	880	2.9%
10	Iowa	827	2.7%

The smallest counts belong to Delaware (62), Rhode Island (79) and Hawaii (105), with 50 in the District of Columbia and 116 in Puerto Rico.

Offices have not followed people. The US population grew by about 58 million after 2000, the inspector general reports, and 6 states, Utah, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Florida and Nevada, grew by around 50% or more. Its county analysis puts the average office at about 11,000 people nationally, about 3,000 in Vermont and South Dakota, and about 25,000 in Arizona and Florida.

State	Post offices, October 2021	What the inspector general reports
Texas	1,650	Population up around 50% or more since 2000
Florida	749	Population up around 50% or more; about 25,000 people per office
Arizona	266	Population up around 50% or more; about 25,000 people per office
Idaho	234	Population up around 50% or more
Utah	196	Population up around 50% or more
Nevada	130	Population up around 50% or more
South Dakota	312	About 3,000 people per office
Vermont	264	About 3,000 people per office

Arizona’s 266 offices and Vermont’s 264 are almost the same number, yet the average Arizona office serves about 8 times as many people. Nevada, with 130, had about a fifth of West Virginia’s 653.

Rural post offices, delivery points and routes

The counters are the visible part of a larger delivery network. In fiscal 2025 USPS served 170,389,351 delivery points on 236,347 routes, about 6,517 addresses and 9 routes for each Post Office, and it added 1,810,633 delivery points during the year.

Delivery point type, FY2025	Residential	Business	Total	Share
City	87,646,135	7,943,488	95,589,623	56.1%
Rural	50,740,854	1,919,367	52,660,221	30.9%
PO Box	16,130,673	2,652,905	18,783,578	11.0%
Highway contract	3,270,987	84,942	3,355,929	2.0%
All delivery points	157,788,649	12,600,702	170,389,351	100%

Rural routes are the part still growing. They rose from 81,726 in fiscal 2023 to 85,396 in fiscal 2025, up 4.5%, while city routes fell 1.1% to 141,365 and contract delivery routes held near 9,600. Rural offices make up 57% of all locations, by an earlier inspector general review the 2025 paper cites, and they are the ones that most often fail to cover their costs. More than 60% of the post offices USPS runs also serve as delivery units, where carriers load mail for their routes.

Post office visits, revenue and closures

Use has fallen much faster than the count. The inspector general’s figures:

Measure	Earlier year	FY2024	Change
Post office visits a year	1.36 billion (FY2001)	655 million	-51.8%
Post office revenue	$14.8 billion (FY2001)	$9.3 billion	-37%
Post office retail costs	$5.3 billion (FY2019)	$6.3 billion	+19%
Walk-in stamp sales	Over $9 billion (2004)	$3.3 billion	-64%
First-Class Mail pieces	104 billion (FY2000)	44 billion	-58%

Post office revenue made up just 12% of USPS revenue in fiscal 2024. The network still clears its retail costs as a whole, with revenue about 1.5 times costs against nearly 2 times in fiscal 2019, but USPS estimated that 58% of individual offices did not.

Closing an office is hard by law. A small post office cannot be closed only because it is unprofitable, and the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill the House committee approved on September 3, 2025 bars using its funds to consolidate or close small or rural post offices, the USPS 10-K reports. Earlier attempts stalled: a 2009 plan to consolidate more than 3,000 urban and suburban locations closed 131, and a 2011 review of 3,650 low-workload offices closed none. USPS cut hours instead, at about 12,400 offices, 39% of those it ran, under its 2012 POStPlan. The inspector general found only 8 new locations listed since 2000.

The current change happens behind the counter. USPS is moving carrier routes out of local offices into Sorting and Delivery Centers: 95 were open by March 2025, delivery at 214 post offices had moved into one entirely, and the plan covers 1,384 delivery units. The retail counter stays at the old office, so these moves leave the post office count where it was.

USPS retail network against The UPS Store and national chains

USPS’s counter count is far ahead of the largest shipping franchise. The UPS Store, the largest US franchisor of retail shipping and postal centers by its own description, had 5,603 US locations in September 2026, by its media kit, so USPS’s 32,907 is 5.9 times that. The inspector general compares the network with the biggest store chains: Dollar General at 20,586 US stores, McDonald’s at 13,557 and Starbucks at 10,158.

US retail locations by network

• USPS, all retail locations32,907
• USPS, staffed by USPS30,972
• Dollar General20,586
• McDonald's13,557
• Starbucks10,158
• The UPS Store5,603
• USPS Approved Shippers3,933

Source: USPS FY2025 Annual Report; USPS OIG, September 2025 (chains, and Approved Shippers for FY2023); The UPS Store media kit, September 2026

USPS also sells through outlets that are not in the 32,907. The inspector general lists 3,933 Approved Shippers in fiscal 2023, licensed USPS counters inside third-party stores, many of which also sell competing shipping services, The UPS Store among them. It counts 2,744 self-service kiosks at 2,337 sites, nearly all inside postal buildings, and stamps for sale at over 60,000 grocery stores and other businesses through Stamps to Go.

What the post office network means for a brand that ships product

Packages are a small share of what moves through this network and a large share of its money. USPS handled 6.84 billion shipping and package pieces in fiscal 2025, 6.3% of its 108.7 billion pieces and 40.5% of its $80.5 billion operating revenue. Its 10-K names FedEx Corporation, United Parcel Service and Amazon as the primary competitors for that business, and lists the breadth of its network, convenience and reliability among the grounds it competes on.

USPS package product, FY2025	Pieces (millions)	Revenue (millions)	Average revenue per piece	Average weight per piece	Pieces vs FY2024
USPS Ground Advantage	2,930	$16,251	$5.55	1.15 lb	+26.5%
Parcel Select and Marketing Mail Parcels	2,931	$8,919	$3.04	2.57 lb	-21.5%
Priority Mail	527	$5,776	$10.96	2.46 lb	-24.5%
Package Services (Media Mail, Library Mail, Bound Printed Matter)	400	$922	$2.31	2.14 lb	-6.1%
Parcel Return Service	30	$105	$3.50	2.30 lb	-48.3%
Priority Mail Express	19	$607	$31.95	1.05 lb	-9.5%
All shipping and packages	6,837	$32,580	$4.77	1.92 lb	-5.7%

USPS average revenue per package piece, FY2025

• Priority Mail Express$31.95
• Priority Mail$10.96
• Ground Advantage$5.55
• Parcel Return Service$3.5
• Parcel Select$3.04
• Package Services$2.31

Source: USPS Annual Report to Congress for FY2025, revenue divided by pieces (our arithmetic)

These are averages across every retail and commercial customer, not a rate card, but they show the price ladder a 3PL buys from. Parcel Select is USPS’s lowest-priced service in the category, a ground product for packages entered in bulk, including at destination facilities, so parcels a consolidator trucks to the right delivery unit go straight onto a carrier’s route. Ground Advantage, launched in July 2023, takes up to 70 pounds in 2 to 5 days across the continental US with $100 of insurance included, and it grew 26.5% in fiscal 2025 while Parcel Select fell 21.5%. Ask a 3PL which of the 2 its light parcels go out on, and at what pickup time.

PO Box orders need a USPS service unless the buyer wrote a Street Addressing address. USPS counts 18.8 million PO Box delivery points, 11.0% of the total, and its PO Box page offers Street Addressing, where available, so a box holder can receive packages from Amazon, FedEx and UPS at the post office’s street address plus the box number. An order that arrives with only a box number has no street for a private carrier, so a rate shop that picks the cheapest carrier without checking address line 1 will print labels the carrier has nowhere to deliver.

Rural buyers sit on the part of the network that is still expanding. Rural and highway contract delivery points add up to 56.0 million, 32.9% of the total, and the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act requires delivery at least 6 days a week except in holiday weeks, emergencies and places with fewer days already. Keep a USPS service in the rate shop for light parcels to rural ZIP codes, where its routes already run every delivery day.

Returns gain from the counter count. A prepaid USPS return label lets a buyer drop the parcel at any of the 30,972 counters USPS staffs, against 5,603 locations for The UPS Store, and Ground Advantage includes free pickup from the buyer’s home or office on the carrier’s normal route.