# atoship vs ShipBob (slim)

> ShipBob scores 61.3 (C) to atoship's 43 (E) for shipping rates. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shipbob.md (~3,900 tokens) · this version ~2,280 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shipbob.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atoship-vs-shipbob
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

ShipBob scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against atoship's 43 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. atoship leads on payments & pricing. Both do shipping rates.

- atoship: E 43, rank #1247 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/atoship.min.md
- ShipBob: C 61.3, rank #617 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shipbob.min.md
- atoship, good for US sellers who want cheap USPS, UPS and FedEx labels bought by an agent from a capped wallet. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 40 against 20. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.
- ShipBob, good for An agent working for a merchant that already stores stock with ShipBob, to create and track orders, check inventory, book inbound stock and handle returns. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 30; Schema & documentation, 85 against 55; Maintenance & community, 51 against 10; Transparency & trust, 78 against 45.

| Category | atoship | ShipBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 30 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 53 | 56 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 55 | 55 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 10 | 51 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 45 | 78 |

| Fact (where they differ) | atoship | ShipBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | atoship LLC | ShipBob, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://atoship.com/api/mcp` | `https://api.shipbob.com` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Paid |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under ShipBob's Terms of Service. The MCP tutorials repository on GitHub has no licence file |
| Tools exposed | 12 | 89 |
| Last release | 2026-02-18 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-20 | 2026-05-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-07 | 2024-03-29 |
| Terms restrict automated access | 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 | 3.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, ShipBob +45: 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.); ShipBob 75 (Read with the hosted lines and scored on the REST API at api.shipbob.com. Statuspage at status.shipbob.com with three components and 90-day uptime bars (20). history.atom, read on 3 November, holds only two scheduled maintenance notices (1 September 2025, and 18 October 2026 from 03:00 to 04:00 CDT on the dashboard and both warehouse systems, posted on 8 October) and no incident. The page says it reports major outages of the website or dashboard, has no API component and has never posted an incident, which this run scores 20 (20). 150 requests a minute, sliding window, per user and application (15). A 429 carries `x-retry-after` and the errors page recommends exponential backoff. A duplicate `reference_id` returns 422, but the docs give no idempotency key and don't say a retried write is safe, so this is backoff guidance alone (10 of 15, was 12). The terms publish fulfilment turnaround SLAs with 14 exclusions. No uptime SLA for the API was found (0). The dated API versions are generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 75.)
- Maintenance & community, ShipBob +41: 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.); ShipBob 51 (The MCP tools page was updated on 27 October 2026 (its own `dateModified`, 'Last updated'), and now lists 89 tools across eleven domains where the 8 October check found 73, a dated change to the MCP server inside 30 days. The newest API release is 2026-07 on 31 July 2026, 95 days before the check (30 of 30, was 20). The release notes have no entry after July 2026, and July's PKCE entry has no day. Inside the 90 days from 5 August there are the MCP tools update and four tutorials repository commits from 17 to 20 August, so half for this line, as on 8 October (10 of 20). Closed service with dated release notes and a support address that promises a first reply within one business day (9 of 15). The MCP server isn't in the official registry (no result for shipbob on 3 November), and no official SDK was found (0 of 15). OpenAPI specs are kept for each version. Nothing else to judge package health on (2 of 10). 30 + 10 + 9 + 0 + 2 = 51.)
- Transparency & trust, ShipBob +33: 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.); ShipBob 78 (Closed service. The Terms of Service, updated 22 May 2026, name ShipBob, Inc. and Illinois law. The tutorials repository has no licence file (15 of 30). A privacy policy dated 29 March 2024, which says it doesn't apply where a commercial contract governs, and a DPA dated April 2026 under which ShipBob deletes or returns personal data at the end of the service if the merchant asks. No retention period is stated in days, and the terms grant ShipBob a perpetual right to use merchant content for product improvement (17 of 30). A written version policy with 24 months of support for each version, end dates in a table, and the phased shutdown of 1.0 published with dates (20 of 20). A public list of about 30 subprocessors with purpose and location, all in the United States, with no date on the page (17 of 20).)
- Schema & documentation, ShipBob +30: 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.); ShipBob 85 (OpenAPI 3.0 spec for each version at marketplaceapi.shipbob.com, 89 operations in 2026-07. The `openapi.json` link in the docs index returns an HTML page, not the spec (25). llms.txt per version and a Markdown copy of each page (10). 88 of 89 operations have a description, and some say when to use them, such as the inventory level call for current stock questions. Few say when not to (14 of 20). All 199 parameters have a schema, with 46 enums and required fields marked. Sort order and shipping method are free strings, and many filters are comma-separated lists (10 of 15). 504 examples. 401 and 403 are documented on 64 operations, 400 on 58 and 422 on 18, 429 on none, and error bodies differ by domain, with RFC 7807 problem details in some and an `errors` array in others (11 of 15). Date-based versions, an upgrade guide per version and dated release notes (15).)
- Payments & pricing, atoship +20: 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.); ShipBob 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The pricing page lists the fee types (implementation, receiving, storage, pick, pack and ship) with no figures and a quote form (0). An account is free until physical inventory arrives, per the developer docs, and the sandbox is free and takes a test card number. We didn't open an account to confirm (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates the token or approves OAuth. Dynamic client registration on the MCP server still ends in a browser sign-in (0).)