# atoship vs EasyPost

> EasyPost scores 57.4 (C) to atoship's 43 (E) for shipping rates. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-easypost
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-easypost.md (~4,900 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

EasyPost scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against atoship's 43 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. atoship leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do shipping rates.

- atoship: grade E, 43/100, rank #1247 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/atoship.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/atoship.json
- EasyPost: grade C, 57.4/100, rank #790 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/easypost.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/easypost.json
- Best shipping and fulfilment APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/shipping/index.md
- All 66 shipping comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipping/index.md

## Which one, for what

### atoship (E)

Good for: US sellers who want cheap USPS, UPS and FedEx labels bought by an agent from a capped wallet.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 55 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 22

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No status page; status.atoship.com serves the home page

### EasyPost (C)

Good for: An agent that quotes rates across carriers, buys a label, verifies an address, follows tracking by webhook and requests a refund from one merchant account, mainly on US carriers.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 68 against 30
- Agent ergonomics, 63 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 10
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 45

Watch for: No OpenAPI spec was found in the docs or in the EasyPost GitHub organisation. The reference is prose and tables, with a Postman workspace


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: EasyPost +75

- atoship (10): No changelog or release notes found. The newest dated release is @atoship/mcp 1.0.2 on 18 February 2026, more than 180 days ago (0). No dated releases in the 90 days from 8 August (0). Support by email, with no public tracker; the repository named on npm is not public (5 of 15). The MCP package is official, and only the Go SDK of eight listed is installable (5 of 15). No public CI (0). 0 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 10.
- EasyPost (85): The releases page has an entry dated 29 October 2026, six days before this check, and the Node, Go, Java and C# libraries were tagged the same day (30). Eight dated release notes fall in the 90 days from 6 August (8, 15, 22 and 29 August, 25 and 28 September, 8 and 29 October), and every library had a release on 27 or 29 October (20). A closed service with public release notes, support@easypost.com, a help centre, ai@easypost.com for the MCP server and a published four-hour response target on the Base support tier. We didn't read GitHub issues or test response times (11 of 15). Seven official SDKs, each with a release on 27 or 29 October 2026: Node 9.1.0, Python 10.8.0, Go 5.12.0, Java 8.10.0, C# 7.12.0, PHP 8.9.0 and Ruby 7.8.0 (15). The Python library's CI lints and runs tests, per the 7 October check, and Node 9.0.0 moved to TypeScript and fetch (9 of 10, partly met). 30 + 20 + 11 + 15 + 9 = 85.

### Reliability: EasyPost +38

- atoship (30): Graded as a hosted service on the MCP server at atoship.com/api/mcp and REST API v1. status.atoship.com serves the marketing home page and the docs' API Status page rendered no status content, so no status page is counted (0). No readable incident history (5). 429 and a `RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED` code are documented, without numbers (5 of 15). A 429 carries `error.retryAfter` and Retry-After; no idempotency key for label purchases was found (10 of 15). No SLA (0). Not labelled beta (10). 0 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 30.
- EasyPost (68): Read with the hosted lines and scored on the REST API at api.easypost.com/v2, the surface an agent would use to rate, buy and track. www.easypoststatus.com on Statuspage lists 44 components on its page, re-read 4 November 2026 (20). Its history feed covers the whole 90 days from 6 August. Five incidents fall in that window, each partial. On 27 August the Core APIs degraded briefly during a deployment, resolved 14 minutes after it was identified. On 20 September USPS Ship requests failed most of the time for about five and a half hours (09:55 to 15:19 PDT) on a USPS-side fault, on 23 September a subset of USPS Ship buys failed, on 5 October UPS Mail Innovations returned elevated errors, and on 8 October some rating and tracking requests timed out for about 73 minutes at the hosting provider. Announced maintenance windows (14, 21 and 28 August, and the USPS windows in October and November) are maintenance, not incidents. Minor incidents only (20). The rate-limiting guide gives five requests a second on index endpoints and a 60-account cap on rating, but the load-based limiter on buying and rating has no published number (8 of 15, partly met). The guide asks for retry with growing backoff on 429 and gives a code sample that retries only GET and DELETE. No Retry-After header, no idempotency keys and no stated safe-retry rule for writes on the REST API (10). The Master Customer Agreement supplies the service as is and as available, and the support addendum sets response targets only (0). The v2 API is generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 8 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 68.

### Transparency & trust: EasyPost +26

- atoship (45): Closed service under terms naming atoship LLC of California (15 of 30). The privacy policy (7 May 2026) keeps data as long as necessary with no periods and names no processors (10 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0). No subprocessor list or data locations found (0). 15 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 25.
- EasyPost (71): The service is closed, under a Master Customer Agreement (version 6.1, effective 25 August 2026) and seven addenda in a legal centre that keeps every past version. The SDKs are MIT or ISC (15). The privacy policy (18 August 2025) gives no retention period. The agreement points to a Data Retention Policy in the help centre, which refused our reader, and it grants EasyPost a licence to use customer data to improve its services and develop new products during and after the term. A data processing addendum with EU and UK standard clauses is public (15 of 30). The agreement says EasyPost will use reasonable efforts to notify customers before API changes that aren't backwards compatible, with no notice period, and allows termination with a refund within 15 days if functionality is materially reduced. No deprecation policy with dates was found (6 of 20). Annex D of the addendum lists 12 subprocessors with purpose and country, all in the USA, and customers have 10 days to object to a new one (17 of 20). The legal centre was re-read on 4 November; the MCA is still version 6.1. 15 + 15 + 6 + 17 = 53.

### Payments & pricing: atoship +18

- atoship (40): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit fees are published without a login ($0.08 a BYOCA label, $0.03 a tracking number or address check), and wallet postage is priced live in a public calculator (20). Free account with no card, and test keys (20). A person signs up in a browser and funds the wallet (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.
- EasyPost (22): Read with the hosted rubric. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The API Addendum (version 4.3, effective 30 October 2026) publishes unit fees without a login ($0.02 for each extra tracker, US address verification or rating call, $0.06 for an international verification, $0.03 a SmartRate call), and the pricing page lists tracking at $0.01 to $0.03 a shipment and insurance at 1 per cent. The per-label fee after 3,000 free labels isn't stated, and Forge, GlobalShip and Luma are priced by sales (12 of 20). Up to 3,000 labels carry no EasyPost fee and test keys cost nothing, but postage is always paid, and the docs say a wallet must be set up before keys are issued. Whether that needs a card wasn't established (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser. Keys can be created by API only with an existing production key (0). The MCP apps in ChatGPT and Claude still need a person to sign in to an EasyPost account. 0 + 12 + 10 + 0 = 22.

### Agent ergonomics: EasyPost +10

- atoship (53): 12 MCP tools (15, for 11 to 30). List tools for orders and labels, with paging not documented in the pages read (8 of 20). Machine-readable error codes with a retry delay (18 of 20). The npm package's tools carry no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint, and no idempotency key was found; `void_label` undoes a mistaken purchase (5 of 20). Only the Go SDK installs, the hosted server is one URL, and test keys give a safe default (7 of 15). 15 + 8 + 18 + 5 + 7 = 53.
- EasyPost (63): List calls take `page_size` up to 100 with a default of 20 on most endpoints. No field selection was found, and a shipment response nests addresses, parcel, rates and tracker (12 of 25). Cursor pagination by `before_id` and `after_id`, date ranges and a `has_more` flag, with support that varies by endpoint (16 of 20). Errors carry a machine-readable `code`, a message and per-field entries with an occasional suggestion. The `errors` array arrives as objects or as strings, so a client has to handle both (15 of 20). The REST API has no idempotency keys. Trackers are deduplicated by tracking code and carrier for three months, but `reference` on a shipment isn't unique and nothing guards a repeated buy. Since 29 October 2026 the MCP server's `buy_shipment` returns the label already bought when a timed-out buy is retried, and the guide says three write tools are marked destructive; the tool definitions weren't read (5 of 20, partly met, held). One-call buy creates and purchases in one request, addresses and parcels can be nested or reused by id, and official SDKs cover seven languages (15). 12 + 16 + 15 + 5 + 15 = 63.

### Security & auth: atoship +8

- atoship (55): Live and test API keys sent as Bearer tokens, with the docs advising separate keys with limited scopes and rotation, and OAuth with PKCE for the hosted MCP server (25 of 30). Test keys create no real labels, the consent screen names label buying and voiding, and the docs say the agent can spend only funds already in the wallet, with no per-call confirmation (12 of 20). Responses carry addresses and carrier tracking data rather than free text from strangers (10). No audit log found (0). security.txt valid to December 2027 with a security contact; no certification, bounty or disclosure policy beyond the terms (8 of 20). 25 + 12 + 10 + 0 + 8 = 55.
- EasyPost (47): API keys go in the HTTP Basic username over TLS 1.2. Keys can be created, disabled, enabled and deleted through the API or the dashboard, and the docs say a key allows full account access. Plain revocable keys, with no secret in a query string. The MCP server also takes a sign-in with an EasyPost account from the ChatGPT and Claude apps (20 of 30). Test keys buy no postage and child users hold separate keys. The REST API has no read-only or scoped key and no confirmation step before a purchase. Since 29 October 2026 the MCP server buys labels too (20 tools, 7 of them writes); `buy_shipment` refuses a price that differs from the one the user approved, and the guide asks users to keep client approval on for the three paid or destructive writes (8 of 20, held). Responses carry addresses and carrier tracking text. The MCP guide advises connecting only to trusted clients and servers, and no injection guidance was found (4 of 15). Events and their payloads can be retrieved and each shipment lists its fees, but no audit log of API calls or key use was found in the reviewed documentation (5 of 15). A Responsible Disclosure Policy with a safe-harbour commitment and the contact security-abuse@easypost.com, with no acknowledgement time, HMAC-signed webhooks, and a SOC 2 Type 2 report referred to in the data processing addendum. No security.txt (per the 7 October check) and no bug bounty were found, and OSV lists no advisory for EasyPost packages (10 of 20). 20 + 8 + 4 + 5 + 10 = 47.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | atoship | EasyPost | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 68 | EasyPost +38 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 55 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 63 | EasyPost +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 47 | atoship +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 22 | atoship +18 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 10 | 85 | EasyPost +75 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 71 | EasyPost +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **43 · E** | **57.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | atoship | EasyPost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | atoship LLC | Simpler Postage, Inc. (d/b/a EasyPost) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://atoship.com/api/mcp` | `https://api.easypost.com/v2` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under the EasyPost Master Customer Agreement. The official client libraries on GitHub are MIT, with the Go library under ISC |
| Tools exposed | 12 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-02-18 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-20 | 2026-08-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-07 | 2026-08-25 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | none | 149 stars, 100k npm/wk |

## How the scores have moved

### atoship

No score change since it was listed.

### EasyPost

- +3.0 on 4 November 2026: time
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**atoship.** atoship gives agents twelve MCP tools and a REST API for US labels with published per-unit fees, free sign-up, test keys and a wallet the agent cannot overspend. No status page, rate-limit figures, OpenAPI spec or changelog was found, and the npm MCP package has not changed since February 2026.

**EasyPost.** Docs written for agents (llms.txt, a Markdown copy of each page, a JSON page index), seven official SDKs updated in late October 2026 and free test keys make the REST API easy to start on. No OpenAPI spec or REST idempotency keys were found, and every key has full account access. The MCP server now buys labels, with retry-safe buys.

## Before you call either

### atoship

1. Use an `ak_test_` key until the user confirms live labels; test mode creates no real labels
2. Ask the user before `purchase_label`, since it spends the wallet balance
3. Call `void_label` promptly for a mistaken label, and check the carrier's refund rules
4. Branch on `error.code`, and on 429 wait `error.retryAfter` seconds
5. Validate the address with `validate_address` before buying; the standalone endpoint costs $0.03 a call

### EasyPost

1. Use a test API key while building. It buys no postage and contacts no carrier, and test tracking codes simulate each tracking status
2. Don't blind-retry `POST /shipments/:id/buy` after a timeout. Retrieve the shipment first and check for `postage_label`, since the REST API has no idempotency key
3. Send the API key as the HTTP Basic username with an empty password on the REST API, and as a Bearer production key on the MCP server
4. On the MCP server, pass the approved price to `buy_shipment` and keep client approval on for buy, insure and refund; it runs in production mode only
5. Pass a scoped `carrier_accounts` list when rating. Only the first 60 accounts are rated and the call doesn't fail when more are enabled

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, atoship or EasyPost?

EasyPost scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against atoship's 43 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. atoship leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Do atoship and EasyPost need an API key?

atoship takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. EasyPost needs an API key.

### Can an agent call atoship and EasyPost without installing anything?

Yes. atoship has a hosted endpoint at https://atoship.com/api/mcp and EasyPost at https://api.easypost.com/v2.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-easypost.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-easypost.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "atoship", "b": "easypost"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare atoship easypost`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/atoship.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/easypost.json

## Other comparisons with atoship or EasyPost

- [atoship vs Easyship](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-easyship.md)
- [atoship vs Envia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-envia.md)
- [atoship vs Karrio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-karrio.md)
- [atoship vs Sendcloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-sendcloud.md)
- [atoship vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shipbob.md)
- [atoship vs Shippo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shippo.md)
- [atoship vs ShippyPro](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shippypro.md)
- [atoship vs ShipStation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shipstation.md)
- [EasyPost vs Easyship](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship.md)
- [EasyPost vs Envia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-envia.md)
- [EasyPost vs Karrio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-karrio.md)
- [EasyPost vs Sendcloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-sendcloud.md)
- [EasyPost vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shipbob.md)
- [EasyPost vs Shippo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shippo.md)
- [EasyPost vs ShippyPro](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shippypro.md)
- [EasyPost vs ShipStation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shipstation.md)
- [atoship vs Ship24](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-ship24.md)
- [atoship vs TrackingMore](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-trackingmore.md)
- [EasyPost vs Ship24](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-ship24.md)
- [EasyPost vs TrackingMore](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-trackingmore.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp