It depends. The speed of mail delivery is based on a couple of things — how far the item must travel and what type of mail it is, often called the mail “class.”

The Postal Service has goals for how long each class of mail should take to be delivered. And in general, the farther the mail must travel, the longer it takes to be delivered. So, a letter mailed from Washington, D.C., to San Diego is going take longer to be delivered than a letter from Washington, D.C., to Harrisburg, PA. Here are some of the most common types of mail and the Postal Service’s target number of days to deliver them within the contiguous United States.

Want to learn more about how the Postal Service determines, measures, and revises how long it expects mail to be delivered? Check out our report, A Primer on Service Standards.