Think of Parcel Monitor as your smart buddy for online orders. Wherever your package is in the world, we've got it — from giant carriers like DHL and FedEx to the smaller regional couriers you might never have heard of. Just drop in your tracking number and we'll pull live updates straight from the carrier handling your parcel. No more bouncing between five different websites trying to figure out where your stuff is. You can use us on the web or grab the app on iOS and Android. It's all free, always. Over 1,100 carriers, one place to watch them. That's it.

It's simple. Grab the tracking number from your order confirmation email — usually a string of letters and digits — and paste it into the search bar on parcelmonitor.com or in the app. We'll figure out which carrier is handling your parcel and start pulling live updates right away. You'll see every step from the moment your package leaves the warehouse to the second it lands on your doorstep. Want it even easier? Connect your Gmail and we'll fish out tracking numbers from your order emails on our own. No copy-pasting, no juggling links — your international parcels just show up, already tracked.

Eight steps, roughly. The seller hands your order over. It gets scanned into the origin network. It moves to an export sorting facility. It clears export and leaves the country. Then it travels, by air, road, rail or sea. It arrives, gets scanned in, goes through import clearance, and the destination network delivers it. Every one of those steps makes data, except the travelling. That's where the gaps come from. Nothing scans mid-flight, and nothing scans while a bag or container is sealed. The second gap sits between arrival and the destination network's first scan, because two companies' systems don't talk in real time. We show both halves as one trail, so the quiet stretches are visible rather than mysterious.

Yes, and honestly that's where Parcel Monitor really shines. Your dashboard pulls every parcel you're waiting on into one tidy view — your AliExpress haul, your Amazon order, your gift from a friend overseas. Add them one by one if you like, or connect your Gmail and we'll bring in every shipping email automatically. Each parcel gets its own live status, so you'll always know what's moving and what's not. There's no cap on how many orders you can follow at once, and everything refreshes in real time. No more juggling tabs or hunting through emails — just open the app and there's your whole haul, waiting for you.

More than 1,100, give or take a few. That covers the names you'll recognise instantly — DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS, Royal Mail, China Post — and a long tail of regional carriers most people couldn't name if they tried. Ninja Van in Southeast Asia, J&T Express, Aramex across the Middle East, Correios in Brazil, all of it. You don't need to know which one's handling your parcel. Paste your tracking number and we'll figure it out for you. If your package gets handed off mid-journey (which happens a lot with cross-border orders), we keep following it through every leg. One number, every carrier, no homework required.

No worries — happens all the time, especially with stuff from AliExpress, Temu, or Shein, where your parcel might pass through three or four different couriers before it actually lands. Just drop in the tracking number and we'll read the format and figure out the carrier on our own. You don't have to guess between China Post or Yun Express or whoever else might be involved. If the carrier changes mid-route (and it often does on long international journeys), we'll switch with it and keep updating you. So even if the whole thing's a mystery to you, your parcel is never a mystery to us.

Take a breath — this is almost always normal. There are stretches between scans where your package is moving but nobody's logging it yet, especially when it's crossing borders or sitting in a sorting facility over the weekend. Customs can hold things up too, sometimes for a day or two without any visible status change. Most of the time, things start moving again within 24 to 48 hours. If your tracking has been stuck for longer than four or five days with no movement at all, that's when it's worth reaching out to the sender to double-check the number. Until then, hang tight — your parcel is probably closer than you think.

Honestly, it depends. Express services like DHL Express or FedEx International Priority can get you a package in three to seven days from almost anywhere. Standard international shipping — what most online stores offer — usually lands somewhere between ten and twenty-five days. The cheap economy options, especially from Asia, can stretch out to thirty or even forty-five days. Customs is the wild card; a parcel can fly halfway across the world in two days and then sit at the border for a week. The good news is you don't have to keep refreshing your inbox. Once your tracking number's in Parcel Monitor, we'll watch the whole journey for you and ping you when something moves.

Because there's genuinely nothing to report. Once your order leaves the origin country it's usually inside a sealed bag, pallet or container. That whole unit gets scanned as one thing, so a thousand parcels share a single event and yours isn't visible on its own until someone breaks the bag down at the other end. Air freight can wait for space on the next flight. Sea freight is simply slow, measured in weeks. Neither shows up as movement. This is the number one reason people assume an order is lost when it isn't. Our rule of thumb: silence after a confirmed departure scan is normal. Silence before one is worth asking the seller about. We'll keep watching either way.

You can, actually — and it's our favourite trick. Sign up with your Google account and let us connect to your Gmail. We'll scan your shipping confirmations for you, pull the tracking number out, identify the carrier, and start watching your parcel — all without you doing a thing. The next time you order something online, it just appears in your Parcel Monitor dashboard, already being tracked. You'll never have to dig through your inbox for that one confirmation email again. Your shopping data stays yours, and you can disconnect anytime. It's the closest thing to having a personal assistant for your online orders. Just way more chill, and free.

Yes — fully, properly, no-strings-attached free. There's no premium plan, no paywall, no "upgrade to track more parcels" trap. Whether you're following one international order or a hundred, the cost is exactly the same: nothing. You can connect your Gmail for free, use the app for free, and track every single carrier we support for free. We make money in the background through ads and aggregated logistics data, which means you never have to. So go ahead and track that one mystery parcel from overseas, or every order you've placed this year. Either way, it's on the house.

Your tracking number is usually waiting for you in the shipping confirmation email — the one that arrives a day or two after you place the order, with a subject line like "Your order has shipped." Look for a string of numbers and letters, often somewhere between ten and twenty-two characters. If you can't find the email, check your account on the store's website — most retailers list it under "My Orders" or "Order History." Still nothing? Search your inbox for the carrier name. And here's the shortcut: if you've connected your Gmail to Parcel Monitor, we'll find the tracking number for you and start tracking it before you even open the email.

Don't panic — there's usually a simple fix. Start by checking for typos; a single wrong digit can throw the whole thing off. Then give it a bit of time. Carriers sometimes take twelve to twenty-four hours to actually register a new shipment in their system, so a brand-new tracking number might just not exist on their end yet. Check your inbox too — the sender might have emailed you an updated number after the first one was changed. If it's still not working after a day or two, reach out to whoever sent the package. They can confirm the number on their side, or generate a new one if something went wrong on the way out.

Take a breath, this one's usually fixable. An order number identifies your purchase in the shop's system. A tracking number identifies the physical parcel in a carrier's system, and it only exists once someone prints the label. So if you have the first and not the second, your order probably hasn't left yet. Check the account page on the seller's site rather than your inbox, because numbers often show up there first. Then look for a second email a day or two after the confirmation. Marketplace sellers sometimes never send one at all. If you're days past the promised send date, message the seller and ask for two things: the carrier name and the tracking number.

That's the whole idea, and it works wherever you shop. Link your Gmail and we'll read the order and shipping emails you're already getting. Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shein, Temu, Shopee, Zalando, Walmart, the tiny independent shop you found once. We pull out every tracking number and follow them all in one list. No copying. No wondering which code belonged to which order. Nothing forgotten under a pile of newsletters. You get plain-English updates on the web and in the app, so where is it becomes a glance instead of a search. It's free — always! And manual entry is still there whenever you want it.

Download the Parcel Monitor app on iOS or Android and switch on push notifications. From then on, your phone will buzz at the moments that actually matter — when your parcel is picked up, when it lands in your country, when it goes out for delivery, and the second it shows up at your door. You're in control of how chatty we get; if you only want to hear about delivery day, just turn the rest off in settings. Prefer email? You can get updates that way too. Either way, you won't have to keep refreshing tracking pages or checking your front step. We'll tell you when it's time.

You may also want to explore tracking for these other regions:

• Track parcels going to or from Europe

• Where's your Asia parcel?

• Follow your shipment in North America

• Tracking made easy for South America

• See deliveries to and from Africa

• Got a parcel from Oceania? Track it here