# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-sendcloud.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 Sendcloud's 62 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Sendcloud leads on maintenance & community. Both do shipping rates.

- 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
- Sendcloud: grade B, 62/100, rank #314 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sendcloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sendcloud.json

## 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

### 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:
- 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 | Easyship | Sendcloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 68 | Easyship +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 89 | Sendcloud +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 71 | Easyship +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 49 | Easyship +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 37 | Easyship +3 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 67 | Sendcloud +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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

### 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

## 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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Easyship or Sendcloud

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