# atoship vs Sendcloud

> Sendcloud scores 64.5 (B) 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-sendcloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-sendcloud.md (~3,850 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

Sendcloud scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against atoship's 43 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. 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
- Sendcloud: grade B, 64.5/100, rank #461 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sendcloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sendcloud.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.

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
- No incidents deducted, where Sendcloud loses 3 points for them

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

### Sendcloud (B)

Good for: An agent shipping parcels for a European shop that wants many carriers behind one account, including its own carrier contracts on paid plans.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 73 against 30
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 67 against 10
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 45

Watch for: API key pairs get one scope, `api`, with full account access. Read and write scopes apply only to the MCP sign-in


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Sendcloud +57

- 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.
- Sendcloud (67): Latest API v3 changelog entry 30 October 2026 (30). 52 dated entries from 4 August to 30 October (20). Closed service with a dated changelog and a help centre with email and chat support. No developer forum or public issue tracker found (9). The MCP server isn't in the official MCP registry, and no official SDK was found. A public Postman workspace exists (3). No packages to assess. The specs change with the changelog (5).

### Reliability: Sendcloud +43

- 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.
- Sendcloud (73): Graded on API v3 and the hosted MCP server, with the hosted lines. The status page at status.sendcloud.com, now on incident.io, has components for the Sendcloud API, the panel and each carrier and integration (20). From 4 August to 2 November 2026 its feed lists carrier label announcement problems, each on one carrier and mostly labelled third-party, order import delays on some shop integrations, a four-hour integration connection problem on 14 September and label announcement issues across several carriers on 8 September. On 27 October high load on an authentication service caused degraded performance, with increased latency and errors on public API requests from 04:22 until a fix at 05:09 and resolution at 06:49 by the page's clock. The Sendcloud API component shows 100 per cent uptime for the period. Every incident hit part of the service, so minor only (20 of 30). Limits published, 1,000 safe and 100 unsafe requests a minute with a burst of 15 a second (15). 429 is documented without Retry-After or backoff guidance. A repeated `external_reference_id` returns the existing shipment (8). The home page claims 99.99 per cent uptime, and no SLA document was found (0). API v3 is the current version and the MCP page carries no beta label (10).

### Schema & documentation: Sendcloud +34

- atoship (55): No OpenAPI found (/openapi.json is 404); a Postman collection v2.1 of 15 endpoints is the only machine-readable contract, and the hosted MCP tools' schemas were not read because /api/ is disallowed (15 of 25). llms.txt (10). The MCP page gives each tool a one-line description and an example prompt (8 of 20). Input typing could not be checked beyond the docs' object pages (5 of 15). The errors page documents status codes, `error.code` values and `retryAfter`, with examples (12 of 15). v1 API, no changelog found (5 of 15). 15 + 10 + 8 + 5 + 12 + 5 = 55.
- Sendcloud (89): 29 OpenAPI 3.1 specs for API v3, 104 operations, linked from llms.txt (25). llms.txt and a Markdown copy of every docs page (10). Every operation has a description. Some state limits, such as when a cancellation is rejected, and many are one sentence. MCP tools take their text from the same specs (13). 243 enums, required fields and maxima such as `page_size` up to 100 (13). 216 example blocks and JSON:API error objects with `status`, `code` and `detail`. 429 responses appear only in the Support API spec (13). Versioned v2 and v3 with a dated v3 changelog of 174 entries back to 25 May 2023 (15).

### Transparency & trust: Sendcloud +27

- 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.
- Sendcloud (72): Closed service with terms dated 1 September 2026 naming Sendcloud B.V. and four country entities (15). The privacy policy keeps server logs for at most 7 days and contact forms for 6 years. The DPA deletes customers' order data within 365 days of shipment completion and gives 30 days' notice of new sub-processors. Neither page showed a version date we could read (22). API v2 maintenance mode announced for April 2026, and one endpoint deprecated with a date (9 June 2026). Other deprecated fields are to go "in a future version", and no notice-period policy was found (10). Trust centre names five sub-processors, and the security page names AWS EU Central and EU North (15).

### Agent ergonomics: Sendcloud +18

- 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.
- Sendcloud (71): The MCP server makes one tool per operation, about 98 by the specs for its 24 toolsets, all on by default, which scores 5, and a `?toolsets=` filter enforced on calls adds 10. The API has `page_size` and no field selection (15). Cursor pagination through Link headers and filters by status, tracking number, reference and dates on shipments (18). JSON:API errors, though a carrier failure on a synchronous announce arrives in an `errors` array inside a success response (15). `external_reference_id` deduplicates shipment creation, and the docs say tools carry read-only, idempotent and destructive hints by HTTP method, which we couldn't confirm without an account (16). Shipping rules and defaults cut required fields. No official SDK was found (7).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | atoship | Sendcloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 73 | Sendcloud +43 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 89 | Sendcloud +34 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 71 | Sendcloud +18 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 58 | Sendcloud +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 37 | atoship +3 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 10 | 67 | Sendcloud +57 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 72 | Sendcloud +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **43 · E** | **64.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | atoship | Sendcloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | atoship LLC | Sendcloud B.V. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://atoship.com/api/mcp` | `https://mcp.sendcloud.com/mcp` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under Sendcloud's terms and conditions |
| Tools exposed | 12 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-02-18 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-20 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-07 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

## How the scores have moved

### atoship

No score change since it was listed.

### Sendcloud

- +2.5 on 2 November 2026: product, correction

## 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.

**Sendcloud.** API v3 has 29 public OpenAPI 3.1 specs, an llms.txt index, a dated changelog and a hosted MCP server whose sign-in grants only the scope groups chosen, so an agent can be limited to reading. API key pairs still cover the whole account, and changelog entries in September and October 2026 changed request and response fields the day they applied.

## 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

### Sendcloud

1. Use API v3 at https://panel.sendcloud.sc/api/v3. The v2 create-parcel endpoint is closed to accounts created from April 2026
2. Test with `shipping_option_code` `sendcloud:letter` (returns use `sendcloud:letterreturn`). Any other label is billed unless cancelled within the carrier's deadline
3. Set `external_reference_id` on every shipment so a retry returns the existing shipment (409) instead of a second label
4. Read the `errors` array on synchronous announce responses. A carrier failure can arrive inside a success status
5. Connect MCP with `?toolsets=shipments,shipping-options,parcel-tracking,returns` to keep the tool list short. Create and cancel tools act on the live account
6. At MCP sign-in, grant only the permission groups the task needs. A tool outside the granted scopes fails with a permission error

## Questions

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

Sendcloud scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against atoship's 43 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

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

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

Yes. atoship has a hosted endpoint at https://atoship.com/api/mcp and Sendcloud at https://mcp.sendcloud.com/mcp.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with atoship or Sendcloud

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