TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit)

What Is a TEU?

A TEU, or Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is a standard unit of measurement based on the volume of a 20-foot shipping container. It's used across the ocean freight industry to measure vessel capacity, port throughput, and cargo volumes in a consistent way, regardless of the actual mix of container sizes involved.

How Is TEU Used?

A 20-foot container counts as 1 TEU. A 40-foot container, the most common size in global trade, counts as 2 TEU (also referred to as one FEU, or Forty-foot Equivalent Unit). Ports report annual throughput in TEUs, ocean carriers advertise vessel capacity in TEUs, and freight volumes are often quoted in TEUs, even when the actual containers being moved are a mix of 20-foot and 40-foot boxes.

TEU vs. FEU

TEU and FEU are two ways of expressing the same underlying unit: a 20-foot box is 1 TEU / 0.5 FEU, and a 40-foot box is 2 TEU / 1 FEU. Most global trade today moves in 40-foot containers, so TEU counts are typically about double the actual number of physical containers being handled.

Why TEU Matters

TEU is the common currency of the ocean shipping industry, it's how vessel capacity, port congestion, and trade volumes are benchmarked and compared globally. Understanding TEU helps make sense of industry data, like port congestion reports or carrier capacity announcements, that are almost always expressed in these terms.