Head to head · Shipping rates · October 2026 research run
Easyship vs Sendcloud
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Sendcloud's 62 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Sendcloud leads on maintenance & community. 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
- Reliability, 80 against 68
- Security & auth, 61 against 49
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Sendcloud loses 3 points for them
Watch for
No idempotency keys in the 132-operation spec, and no Retry-After or backoff guidance for 429
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
- Maintenance & community, 67 against 56
Watch for
One OAuth scope, api, and key pairs with full account access. No read-only credential was found in the reviewed documentation
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Easyship | Sendcloud | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 68 | Easyship +12 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 87 | 89 | Sendcloud +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 73 | 71 | Easyship +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 61 | 49 | Easyship +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 37 | Easyship +3 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 56 | 67 | Sendcloud +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 71 | 72 | Sendcloud +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | 68.8 · B | 62 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Easyship | Sendcloud |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Easyship Inc. | Sendcloud B.V. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://public-api.easyship.com | https://mcp.sendcloud.com/mcp |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or 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 | Proprietary service under Sendcloud's terms and conditions |
| Tools exposed | 25 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | com.easyship/mcp | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-28 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-28 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 0 stars, 79 PyPI/wk | none |
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.
Sendcloud
API v3 has 29 public OpenAPI 3.1 specs, an llms.txt index, a dated changelog and a hosted MCP server with toolset filtering. OAuth has one scope, api, so a credential can't be limited to reading. The changelog records response fields removed from tracking events on 25 September 2026 with no earlier deprecation entry.
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
Sendcloud
- Use API v3 at https://panel.sendcloud.sc/api/v3. The v2 create-parcel endpoint is closed to accounts created from April 2026
- Test with
shipping_option_codesendcloud:letter(returns usesendcloud:letterreturn). Any other label is billed unless cancelled within the carrier's deadline - Set
external_reference_idon every shipment so a retry returns the existing shipment (409) instead of a second label - Read the
errorsarray on synchronous announce responses. A carrier failure can arrive inside a success status - Connect MCP with
?toolsets=shipments,shipping-options,parcel-tracking,returnsto keep the tool list short. Create and cancel tools act on the live account
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Easyship or Sendcloud?
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Sendcloud's 62 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Sendcloud leads on maintenance & community.
Do Easyship and Sendcloud need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Easyship and Sendcloud without installing anything?
Yes. Easyship has a hosted endpoint at https://public-api.easyship.com and Sendcloud at https://mcp.sendcloud.com/mcp.
Other comparisons with Easyship or Sendcloud
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/easyship.json·/api/v1/tools/sendcloud.json - From a terminal
anchor compare easyship sendcloud(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "easyship", "b": "sendcloud"}at/mcp, no key