A free shipping threshold, also called a free delivery threshold, is the minimum order value a customer must reach before delivery becomes free. Retailers set it above their typical order value, so small baskets still pay their own delivery and shoppers just below the line have a reason to add items.
A free shipping threshold is the condition attached to a free delivery offer. Spend £50 and delivery costs nothing; spend £49 and it doesn't. The condition separates a threshold from blanket free shipping, and it is the reason most retailers can afford the offer at all. Unconditional free delivery subsidises every order, including the small baskets where the carrier cost consumes the whole margin.
Most e-commerce platforms treat free delivery as a shipping setting: one minimum value, applied across the store, changed by whoever has access to the shipping configuration. Treated as a promotion rule instead, the same threshold can vary by delivery method, region, customer segment or campaign period.
The threshold sits between the basket and the delivery charge. When the order subtotal reaches the qualifying value, the delivery fee is removed or reduced. Below it, the standard rate applies.
There are three ways to activate the offer, and the choice decides who can use it.
Most brands layer further conditions on top of the spend requirement. Common restrictions include standard delivery only, so express and next-day are excluded; specific delivery zones; first-time customers only; and exclusion of bulky or heavy items where the carrier cost is disproportionate to the order value.
A threshold does not have to be a single value. Retailers running more than one delivery option often structure them in tiers by service level, offering free standard delivery at one qualifying value and free express at a higher one.
Delivery charges do disproportionate damage because of where they appear. A shopper who has chosen a product, entered their details and reached the payment step has already committed, so a fee introduced at that point reads as a cost added to a decision already made.
That timing is why extra costs remain the leading cause of checkout abandonment. Baymard Institute's research puts the figure at 39% of users abandoning checkout because of charges such as shipping, taxes and fees, and notes that shoppers hesitate when they cannot see the full total upfront.
A free shipping threshold moves three numbers at once.
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The mechanic has two limits. On high-value orders the delivery fee is a trivial share of the total, so removing it changes very little and gives away margin for no behavioural gain. On low-margin orders the carrier cost can exceed the profit on the basket entirely. Both are fixed by setting the threshold from your own margin and order data. Thresholds also work best combined with the other onsite levers that reduce cart abandonment.
You need three numbers to set a free shipping threshold.
Worked through with round numbers: all-in shipping cost of £5, gross margin of 40%, median order value of £60. Every extra £1 of spend produces 40p of gross profit, so covering £5 of shipping requires £12.50 of additional basket. That puts the threshold at £72.50, rounded to £75 for legibility.
The threshold holds cash gross profit flat while the margin percentage falls. A £72.50 order with £5 of shipping absorbed returns the same £24 of gross profit as a £60 order that paid its own delivery, at a lower margin rate, and that lower rate is the cost of the promotion.
Use the median, not the mean, where your price range is wide. Average order value is distorted by outliers at either end of the catalogue, so a handful of high-value SKUs can pull it well above what most customers actually spend. The median describes typical buying behaviour, and a threshold calibrated to it asks a typical shopper to stretch.
Set it far enough above the baseline to change behaviour. On a £60 median order value, a £250 threshold is ignored because nobody treats it as reachable. A £45 threshold is worse, because most orders already qualify and the offer changes nobody's behaviour while costing you the shipping on all of them.
Keep the gap reachable. UK research suggests shoppers will stretch, within limits. Parcelhero's mid-2025 research found 80% of UK shoppers now prepared to spend more to meet a minimum free delivery threshold, with the majority naming around £40 as an acceptable qualifying value.
Break-even is also a conservative starting point, because the basket uplift is not the only return. Removing the delivery fee lifts conversion as well, so in practice most retailers can carry some shipping cost per qualifying order and still come out ahead. How much depends on how your own conversion rate responds, so treat the number as a starting point to test.
Free shipping, percentage discounts and fixed-amount discounts cost money in different ways, so an offer with the same headline value can cost very different amounts depending on basket size.
A percentage discount scales with the order, so a 10% offer costs £20 on a £200 basket. A free shipping discount on the same basket costs the carrier rate, typically £3 to £6, because the value given away is the delivery fee. That makes thresholds most effective on small to mid baskets where delivery is a meaningful share of the total, percentage offers best suited to categories with margin to absorb them and fixed-amount discounts useful for hitting a specific price point.
Better-run programmes combine them with conditional logic: a delivery threshold below a certain basket value, a tiered percentage above it and stacking rules preventing customers from combining the two in ways finance never signed off. That level of conditionality is where a promotion engine becomes necessary, because native platform tools often handle only one condition per offer.
A threshold is also the easiest of the three to forecast. You know its cost per redemption before launch, which is an easier conversation with finance than a percentage offer whose total depends on what shoppers put in their baskets.
A single sitewide minimum applied to every order, region and delivery speed leaks margin through its exceptions.
The unplanned spend usually comes from three exceptions. Express delivery qualifies when it was never meant to, remote-area surcharges are absorbed without anyone noticing and heavy or bulky items ship free on baskets that barely cover the carrier rate.
Controlling that means treating the threshold as a set of conditions rather than a single number. Uniqodo's Promotion Engine treats a free shipping discount as a promotion rule, with qualification built from order subtotal, delivery method, delivery location and customer segment together. Standard delivery can qualify at £75 while express stays chargeable, mainland orders can carry a different threshold to offshore ones and the offer can be limited to first-time customers for the length of a campaign. Once the integration is in place, commercial teams configure and change those conditions themselves.
A generic free delivery code issued to one partner tends to reach coupon aggregators quickly, where it is redeemed by customers who would have paid the delivery charge regardless.
That costs the brand twice: the promotion pays for orders it did nothing to influence, and the channel it was issued to looks better than it is. Unique single-use codes tied to the issuing channel fix both problems.
For a standing threshold, the better answer is no code at all. Uniqodo's automatic promotions apply the reward the moment the basket meets the qualifying conditions, with nothing for the customer to find or enter.
That removes a failure most retailers never measure: the shopper who qualified for free delivery, never saw a code and either paid the fee anyway or left to look for one.
There is no universal figure, because the right threshold depends on your delivery costs and gross margin rather than on what competitors charge. Divide your all-in shipping cost by your gross margin, add the result to your median order value and adjust once you can see how basket sizes respond.
They can, provided the qualifying value sits above what customers typically spend and the gap is visible while they are still shopping. A threshold set at or below the typical basket does nothing for order value, because most orders already qualify.
A threshold is the condition that has to be met, usually a minimum order value, while a code is one way of delivering the offer alongside automatic application. The two are often combined, with a code unlocking a lower threshold for a specific channel or customer segment.
Usually not, unless express is priced to absorb it, because restricting the offer to standard delivery keeps the cost predictable. Customers who want next-day delivery are generally willing to pay for the upgrade, so most retailers let express stay chargeable at every basket value.
Yes, the two terms describe the same thing. UK retailers more commonly say free delivery, while platform settings and US retailers usually say free shipping.
No, the terms mean different things. Threshold delivery is a courier service level where large items are left at the front door of the property, while a free delivery threshold is the minimum spend that makes delivery free.
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