Head to head · Shipping rates · October 2026 research run
Easyship vs Shippo
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Shippo's 61.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Shippo 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 59
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 64
- Security & auth, 61 against 52
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 61
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
Shippo C
Good for An agent that quotes and buys parcel labels across USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL Express for a small or mid-size shipper, with a free test mode and public unit prices.
Ahead on
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 56
Watch for
No idempotency key on label purchase or other writes. Only the Reporting API accepts one
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Easyship | Shippo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 59 | Easyship +21 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 87 | 83 | Easyship +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 73 | 64 | Easyship +9 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 61 | 52 | Easyship +9 |
| 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 | 77 | Shippo +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 71 | 61 | Easyship +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 68.8 · B | 61.9 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Easyship | Shippo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Easyship Inc. | Shippo |
| Hosted endpoint | https://public-api.easyship.com | https://api.goshippo.com |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for shipping rates | $0.01 per call | $0.01 per call |
| 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 Shippo's terms of use. The SDKs and the goshippo/ai repository (skills and MCP bridge) are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 25 | 4 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | com.easyship/mcp | com.shippo/shippo-mcp |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-28 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-28 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 0 stars, 79 PyPI/wk | 3 stars, 73k npm/wk, 20k 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.
Shippo
Per-label and per-call prices are public, test keys are self-serve, and the OpenAPI spec, llms.txt and Markdown docs are open to a fetch. Label purchase has no idempotency key, API keys carry no scopes, and the status page logged carrier-side incidents on most days between July and 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
Shippo
- Build and test with a shippo_test_ key. Test and live object IDs are separate, and the hosted MCP server has no test mode
- Send
Authorization: ShippoToken <key>, not Bearer, and pinShippo-API-Version: 2018-02-08 - Before retrying a failed POST /transactions, list recent transactions. There is no idempotency key, and a second purchase is a second charge
- Pass
async: falseon shipments and transactions, or poll the object until its status leaves QUEUED - Set
resultson list calls (under 200). Defaults vary by resource, and list calls are limited to 50 a minute on live keys
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Easyship or Shippo?
Easyship scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Shippo's 61.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Shippo leads on maintenance & community.
Which is cheaper for shipping rates, Easyship or Shippo?
They cost about the same, $0.01 per call for Easyship and $0.01 per call for Shippo. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.
Do Easyship and Shippo need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Easyship and Shippo without installing anything?
Yes. Easyship has a hosted endpoint at https://public-api.easyship.com and Shippo at https://api.goshippo.com.
Other comparisons with Easyship or Shippo
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/easyship-vs-shippo.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/easyship.json·/api/v1/tools/shippo.json - From a terminal
anchor compare easyship shippo(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "easyship", "b": "shippo"}at/mcp, no key