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

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shippo
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shippo.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shippo.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/easyship-vs-shippo.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 Shippo's 61.9 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Shippo 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
- Shippo: grade C, 61.9/100, rank #317 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shippo.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/shippo.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 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 | Easyship | Shippo | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 59 | Easyship +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 83 | Easyship +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 64 | Easyship +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 52 | Easyship +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 77 | Shippo +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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

### Shippo

1. Build and test with a shippo_test_ key. Test and live object IDs are separate, and the hosted MCP server has no test mode
2. Send `Authorization: ShippoToken <key>`, not Bearer, and pin `Shippo-API-Version: 2018-02-08`
3. Before retrying a failed POST /transactions, list recent transactions. There is no idempotency key, and a second purchase is a second charge
4. Pass `async: false` on shipments and transactions, or poll the object until its status leaves QUEUED
5. Set `results` on 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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Easyship or Shippo

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