Y‐junctions are often adopted to design diplexers since their characteristics can conveniently satisfy the constraints for optimum performance of diplexer design. In order to decrease the size of the Y‐junction diplexer, the two branches of the junction can be bent to yield parallel outputs. However, this parallel configuration can degrade the characteristic of the Y‐junction. In this letter, two improved novel configurations of Y‐junction diplexers are introduced, analyzed with an efficient mode‐matching based approach and optimized for best performance. For illustration, the method is applied to two diplexers in substrate‐integrated waveguide technology realized using band‐pass post filters. For each diplexer, the fractional bandwidths of operation for the up and down channels are 2.70% and 2.44% at 7.4 GHz and 8.2 GHz respectively. The viability of the design approach is validated by full‐wave finite‐element simulations using Ansys HFSS and measurements on the two fabricated diplexers. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:1384–1388, 2016