# Karrio vs ShipBob (slim)

> ShipBob scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against Karrio's 48.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Karrio leads on payments & pricing. Both do shipping rates. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/karrio-vs-shipbob.md (~2,200 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/karrio-vs-shipbob.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/karrio-vs-shipbob
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

ShipBob scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against Karrio's 48.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Karrio leads on payments & pricing. Both do shipping rates.

- Karrio: D 48.7, rank #617 of 722 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/karrio.min.md
- ShipBob: C 60.8, rank #387 of 722 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shipbob.min.md
- Karrio, good for A team that wants to host its own multi-carrier API with its own carrier contracts and can maintain a Django and PostgreSQL stack. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 40 against 20. Also Open source.
- ShipBob, 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 Schema & documentation, 85 against 68; Security & auth, 55 against 44; Maintenance & community, 41 against 29; Transparency & trust, 77 against 56. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; No incidents deducted, where Karrio loses 7 points for them.

| Category | Karrio | ShipBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 76 | 77 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 68 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 57 | 56 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 44 | 55 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 29 | 41 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 56 | 77 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Karrio | ShipBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Karrio, Inc. | ShipBob, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.shipbob.com` |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| Licence | LGPL-3.0 for the server, SDK and modules. Code under `ee/` is under the Karrio Enterprise licence and needs a subscription for production use. The MCP package in `packages/mcp` is Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under ShipBob's Terms of Service. The MCP tutorials repository on GitHub has no licence file |
| Tools exposed | none | 73 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-06-23 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-04-08 | 2026-05-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-04-08 | 2024-03-29 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 799 stars, 338 PyPI/wk | none |