# Easyship vs ShipBob

> Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against ShipBob's 60.8 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ShipBob leads on transparency & trust. Both do shipping rates. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shipbob
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shipbob.md (~2,100 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shipbob.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shipbob.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 ShipBob's 60.8 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ShipBob leads on transparency & trust. Both do shipping rates.

- Easyship: grade B, 68.8/100, rank #173 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/easyship.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/easyship.json
- ShipBob: grade C, 60.8/100, rank #387 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shipbob.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/shipbob.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:
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 56
- Security & auth, 61 against 55
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 56 against 41

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

### ShipBob (C)

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:
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 71

Watch for: No public price. Receiving, storage and pick, pack and ship fees come only in a quote from sales


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Easyship | ShipBob | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 77 | Easyship +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 85 | Easyship +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 56 | Easyship +17 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 55 | Easyship +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Easyship +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 41 | Easyship +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 77 | ShipBob +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.8 · B** | **60.8 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Easyship | ShipBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Easyship Inc. | ShipBob, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://public-api.easyship.com` | `https://api.shipbob.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| 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 ShipBob's Terms of Service. The MCP tutorials repository on GitHub has no licence file |
| Tools exposed | 25 | 73 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.easyship/mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-28 | 2026-05-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-28 | 2024-03-29 |
| 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 | not found in the text |
| 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.

**ShipBob.** OAuth with PKCE and read and write scopes per domain, a free sandbox, a public OpenAPI spec per version and a 24-month support window for each API version are documented. Fulfilment prices are by quote only, the status page has no API component, no official SDK was found, and Personal Access Tokens never expire and carry full account access.

## 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

### ShipBob

1. Call `GET /2026-07/channel` first and send the ID of the channel with `_write` scopes in the `shipbob_channel_id` header on every write
2. Build against `https://sandbox-api.shipbob.com` with a sandbox account. Sandbox and production accounts, tokens and data are separate
3. Set a stable `reference_id` on each order, product and return. A duplicate returns 422, which is the only guard against a double create
4. Stay under 150 requests a minute per user and application, and wait the seconds given in `x-retry-after` after a 429
5. Over MCP, writes work only on records in the channel created at consent. A 403 or 404 on a cancel usually means the record belongs to another channel

## Questions

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

Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against ShipBob's 60.8 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ShipBob leads on transparency & trust.

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

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

Yes. Easyship has a hosted endpoint at https://public-api.easyship.com and ShipBob at https://api.shipbob.com.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Easyship or ShipBob

- [EasyPost vs Easyship](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-easyship.md)
- [EasyPost vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easypost-vs-shipbob.md)
- [Easyship vs Karrio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-karrio.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)
- [Karrio vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/karrio-vs-shipbob.md)
- [Sendcloud vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sendcloud-vs-shipbob.md)
- [ShipBob vs Shippo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipbob-vs-shippo.md)
- [ShipBob vs ShipStation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipbob-vs-shipstation.md)
- [Easyship vs Ship24](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-ship24.md)
- [Ship24 vs ShipBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ship24-vs-shipbob.md)