Head to head · Shipping rates · October 2026 research run
Easyship vs Karrio
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Karrio's 48.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do shipping rates.
Which one, for what
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
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 57
- Security & auth, 61 against 44
- Maintenance & community, 56 against 29
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 56
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Karrio loses 7 points for them
Watch for
No idempotency keys in the 132-operation spec, and no Retry-After or backoff guidance for 429
Karrio D
Good for A team that wants to host its own multi-carrier API with its own carrier contracts and can maintain a Django and PostgreSQL stack.
Also in its favour
- Open source
Watch for
No release since 2026.1.32 on 23 June 2026, 107 days before this check, and fix pull requests opened in September 2026 were still open
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Easyship | Karrio | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 76 | Easyship +4 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 87 | 68 | Easyship +19 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 73 | 57 | Easyship +16 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 61 | 44 | Easyship +17 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 56 | 29 | Easyship +27 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 71 | 56 | Easyship +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -7 | |
| Total | 68.8 · B | 48.7 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Easyship | Karrio |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Easyship Inc. | Karrio, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://public-api.easyship.com | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for shipping rates | $0.01 per call | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Easyship's terms of service. The easyship-mcp server on PyPI and the plugin repository are MIT | LGPL-3.0 for the server, SDK and modules. Code under ee/ is under the Karrio Enterprise licence and needs a subscription for production use. The MCP package in packages/mcp is Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 25 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | com.easyship/mcp | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-06-23 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-28 | 2025-04-08 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-28 | 2025-04-08 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 0 stars, 79 PyPI/wk | 799 stars, 338 PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
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.
Karrio
A current OpenAPI 3.0.3 contract with 65 paths, a free LGPL-3.0 server and 30 carrier connectors suit a team that hosts it. The last release was 23 June 2026, the @karrio/mcp package the docs install is absent from npm, and api.karrio.io didn't resolve on 8 October 2026.
Before you call either
Easyship
- 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
- 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
- Don't retry a timed-out label purchase blindly. There's no idempotency key, so read the shipment's label_state first
- Give every item a category or an hs_code. The API rejects shipments and rates requests that have neither
- Stay under 60 requests a minute and 10 a second, and wait for the next window on 429
Karrio
- Run your own instance with Docker Compose and call it at
http://localhost:5002. Don't rely onapi.karrio.io, which didn't resolve on 8 October 2026 - Don't run
npx karrio-mcpornpx -y @karrio/mcp. Neither name is published on npm, so build the server frompackages/mcpin the repository - Change the default
admin@example.comanddemologin before the instance is reachable, and upgrade to 2026.1.32 or later so passwords aren't stored as MD5 - Don't blind-retry
POST /v1/shipmentswith aserviceset orPOST /v1/shipments/{id}/purchase. Fetch the shipment and check its status first, since no idempotency key exists - Use a test-mode API key while building. Send it as the HTTP Basic username or as
Authorization: Token key_...
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Easyship or Karrio?
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Karrio's 48.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do Easyship and Karrio need an API key?
Easyship takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Karrio needs an API key.
Can an agent call Easyship and Karrio without installing anything?
Easyship has a hosted endpoint at https://public-api.easyship.com. No hosted endpoint is listed for Karrio.
Are Easyship and Karrio open source?
No open-source release is listed for Easyship. Karrio is open source (LGPL-3.0 for the server, SDK and modules. Code under `ee/` is under the Karrio Enterprise licence and needs a subscription for production use. The MCP package in `packages/mcp` is Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with Easyship or Karrio
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/easyship-vs-karrio.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/easyship.json·/api/v1/tools/karrio.json - From a terminal
anchor compare easyship karrio(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "easyship", "b": "karrio"}at/mcp, no key