# EasyPost vs Easyship

> Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against EasyPost's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. EasyPost leads on maintenance & community. Both do shipping rates. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship.md (~2,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against EasyPost's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. EasyPost leads on maintenance & community. Both do shipping rates.

- EasyPost: grade C, 54.3/100, rank #468 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/easypost.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/easypost.json
- Easyship: grade B, 68.8/100, rank #163 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/easyship.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/easyship.json

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 56

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

### Easyship (B)

Good for: An agent that ships parcels for a small or mid-sized merchant, mostly cross-border, and wants rates, labels, duties and pickups from one account without carrier contracts.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 53
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 63
- Security & auth, 61 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 22

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: No idempotency keys in the 132-operation spec, and no Retry-After or backoff guidance for 429


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | EasyPost | Easyship | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 53 | 80 | Easyship +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 87 | Easyship +32 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 73 | Easyship +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 47 | 61 | Easyship +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 22 | 40 | Easyship +18 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 56 | EasyPost +29 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 71 | Easyship +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.3 · C** | **68.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | EasyPost | Easyship |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Simpler Postage, Inc. (d/b/a EasyPost) | Easyship Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.easypost.com/v2` | `https://public-api.easyship.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for shipping rates | not published | $0.01 per call |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the EasyPost Master Customer Agreement. The official client libraries on GitHub are MIT, with the Go library under ISC | Proprietary service under Easyship's terms of service. The easyship-mcp server on PyPI and the plugin repository are MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 25 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `com.easyship/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-08-21 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-25 | 2026-07-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-25 | 2026-07-28 |
| 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 | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 149 stars, 100k npm/wk, 42k PyPI/wk | 0 stars, 79 PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**EasyPost.** Docs written for agents (llms.txt, a Markdown copy of each page, a JSON page index), seven official SDKs and free test keys make the REST API easy to start on. No OpenAPI spec or idempotency keys were found, every key has full account access, and the status page shows a connectivity outage on 23 July 2026 that affected all operations.

**Easyship.** Per-resource read and write scopes, separate sandbox tokens, a 132-operation OpenAPI contract and a 25-tool hosted MCP server with read-only and destructive annotations on every tool. No idempotency keys or Retry-After were found, the MCP server has no test mode, and the API changelog's last entry is dated 30 October 2025.

## Before you call either

### 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 no idempotency key exists
3. Send the API key as the HTTP Basic username with an empty password on the REST API, and as a Bearer token on the MCP server
4. Handle `errors` as either an array of objects or an array of strings. The docs say both shapes occur
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

### Easyship

1. Use a sand_ token against https://public-api-sandbox.easyship.com for API tests. Production rejects sandbox tokens, and sandbox allows 6 requests a minute
2. The MCP server calls production only. Create the shipment without buy_label first, then call create_label once the user confirms the courier and price
3. Don't retry a timed-out label purchase blindly. There's no idempotency key, so read the shipment's label_state first
4. Give every item a category or an hs_code. The API rejects shipments and rates requests that have neither
5. Stay under 60 requests a minute and 10 a second, and wait for the next window on 429

## Questions

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

Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against EasyPost's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. EasyPost leads on maintenance & community.

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

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

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

Yes. EasyPost has a hosted endpoint at https://api.easypost.com/v2 and Easyship at https://public-api.easyship.com.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with EasyPost or Easyship

- [EasyPost vs Sendcloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-sendcloud.md)
- [EasyPost vs Shippo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shippo.md)
- [EasyPost vs ShipStation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shipstation.md)
- [Easyship vs Sendcloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud.md)
- [Easyship vs Shippo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shippo.md)
- [Easyship vs ShipStation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shipstation.md)