# ShipBob vs TrackingMore

> ShipBob scores 61.3 (C) to TrackingMore's 41.8 (E) for shipment tracking. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipbob-vs-trackingmore
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipbob-vs-trackingmore.md (~4,500 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-04

ShipBob scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against TrackingMore's 41.8 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do shipment tracking.

- ShipBob: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #558 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shipbob.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/shipbob.json
- TrackingMore: grade E, 41.8/100, rank #1187 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/trackingmore.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/trackingmore.json
- Best shipping and fulfilment APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/shipping/index.md
- All 45 shipping comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/shipping/index.md

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Reliability, 75 against 65
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 31
- Security & auth, 55 against 31
- Maintenance & community, 51 against 19
- Transparency & trust, 78 against 57

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

### TrackingMore (E)

Good for: An agent that reports where a parcel is across many carriers from a tracking number, with a cheap per-tracking price.

Watch for: The API reference renders by script and no OpenAPI file, llms.txt or Markdown docs were found


## Why the edge

### Schema & documentation: ShipBob +54

- ShipBob (85): OpenAPI 3.0 spec for each version at marketplaceapi.shipbob.com, 89 operations in 2026-07. The `openapi.json` link in the docs index returns an HTML page, not the spec (25). llms.txt per version and a Markdown copy of each page (10). 88 of 89 operations have a description, and some say when to use them, such as the inventory level call for current stock questions. Few say when not to (14 of 20). All 199 parameters have a schema, with 46 enums and required fields marked. Sort order and shipping method are free strings, and many filters are comma-separated lists (10 of 15). 504 examples. 401 and 403 are documented on 64 operations, 400 on 58 and 422 on 18, 429 on none, and error bodies differ by domain, with RFC 7807 problem details in some and an `errors` array in others (11 of 15). Date-based versions, an upgrade guide per version and dated release notes (15).
- TrackingMore (31): No OpenAPI or similar file was found in the docs, the SDK repositories or a search, and the reference at trackingmore.com/docs renders by script so its schemas were not read (0 of 25). No llms.txt or Markdown docs (0). The official SDK READMEs give one line per call, and the support centre explains when to pair create with get or a webhook and that the create response carries the result (8 of 20). Field names and the required tracking_number and courier_code appear in the SDK examples, with no types, enums or constraints readable (5 of 15). Examples in seven SDK languages and a table of HTTP and meta codes with messages (12 of 15). v4 in the path with v2 and v3 still served, and the support centre says there is no changelog for switching versions. No dated API changelog was found (6 of 15). 0 + 0 + 8 + 5 + 12 + 6 = 31.

### Maintenance & community: ShipBob +32

- ShipBob (51): The MCP tools page was updated on 27 October 2026 (its own `dateModified`, 'Last updated'), and now lists 89 tools across eleven domains where the 8 October check found 73, a dated change to the MCP server inside 30 days. The newest API release is 2026-07 on 31 July 2026, 95 days before the check (30 of 30, was 20). The release notes have no entry after July 2026, and July's PKCE entry has no day. Inside the 90 days from 5 August there are the MCP tools update and four tutorials repository commits from 17 to 20 August, so half for this line, as on 8 October (10 of 20). Closed service with dated release notes and a support address that promises a first reply within one business day (9 of 15). The MCP server isn't in the official registry (no result for shipbob on 3 November), and no official SDK was found (0 of 15). OpenAPI specs are kept for each version. Nothing else to judge package health on (2 of 10). 30 + 10 + 9 + 0 + 2 = 51.
- TrackingMore (19): Read as a closed service. No dated API change was found. The SDKs were last pushed between February and December 2024, the support articles are dated 2023 and 2024, and the reference is undated (0 of 30). No releases or dated entries in the last 90 days were found (0). Support by email and chat with a help centre; GitHub issues were not read (6 of 15). Seven official SDKs exist but none has changed since December 2024 (10 of 15). The Node SDK has tests and no CI workflow (3 of 10). 0 + 0 + 6 + 10 + 3 = 19.

### Security & auth: ShipBob +24

- ShipBob (55): OAuth 2.0 authorisation code grant with PKCE, read and write scopes per domain, one-hour access tokens, 30-day refresh tokens rotated on use, and a revocation endpoint. The MCP server adds dynamic client registration. Personal Access Tokens have every scope and no expiry, and can be revoked (27 of 30). An OAuth app can ask for read scopes only, MCP writes are limited to the channel created at consent, and inventory is read-only over MCP. A token has no read-only option, and no confirmation step for cancels was found (12 of 20). Orders, addresses, gift messages and return notes are written by third parties. The MCP security page covers token handling and consent, with nothing on injected text (3 of 15). No log of API calls for the operator was found. Shipment logs record warehouse events (2 of 15). The trust page says SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits are complete and lists penetration testing. No security.txt, disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (11 of 20).
- TrackingMore (31): One API key in the Tracking-Api-Key header, shown once, at most four per account, deleted in the web app. No scopes or expiry (20 of 30). No read-only key or least-privilege mode, and delete is one call (4 of 20). Tracking checkpoints are carrier text returned to the model, and no guidance was found (3 of 15). A webhook notification log exists in the web app; no log of API calls or key use was found (4 of 15). No security.txt (404), no security page on trackingmore.com, no certification, bug bounty or disclosure policy found. The CWILL privacy policy points to a trust site that was not read (0 of 20). 20 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 0 = 31.

### Transparency & trust: ShipBob +21

- ShipBob (78): Closed service. The Terms of Service, updated 22 May 2026, name ShipBob, Inc. and Illinois law. The tutorials repository has no licence file (15 of 30). A privacy policy dated 29 March 2024, which says it doesn't apply where a commercial contract governs, and a DPA dated April 2026 under which ShipBob deletes or returns personal data at the end of the service if the merchant asks. No retention period is stated in days, and the terms grant ShipBob a perpetual right to use merchant content for product improvement (17 of 30). A written version policy with 24 months of support for each version, end dates in a table, and the phased shutdown of 1.0 published with dates (20 of 20). A public list of about 30 subprocessors with purpose and location, all in the United States, with no date on the page (17 of 20).
- TrackingMore (57): Closed service. The terms are the CWILL group's (effective 9 January 2026), which say the contracting entity depends on the product, and the privacy policy names CHANNELWILL CO., LIMITED for TrackingMore. The SDKs are MIT (15 of 30). The privacy policy (8 August 2026) distinguishes controller and processor roles and links a DPA and a sub-processor list, neither read; no retention periods were read (12 of 30). v2 and v3 are still served with no notice policy or dates (4 of 20). A sub-processor list exists at trust.cwill.com and was not read; no data location is stated on the pages read (8 of 20). 15 + 12 + 4 + 8 = 39.

### Reliability: ShipBob +10

- ShipBob (75): Read with the hosted lines and scored on the REST API at api.shipbob.com. Statuspage at status.shipbob.com with three components and 90-day uptime bars (20). history.atom, read on 3 November, holds only two scheduled maintenance notices (1 September 2025, and 18 October 2026 from 03:00 to 04:00 CDT on the dashboard and both warehouse systems, posted on 8 October) and no incident. The page says it reports major outages of the website or dashboard, has no API component and has never posted an incident, which this run scores 20 (20). 150 requests a minute, sliding window, per user and application (15). A 429 carries `x-retry-after` and the errors page recommends exponential backoff. A duplicate `reference_id` returns 422, but the docs give no idempotency key and don't say a retried write is safe, so this is backoff guidance alone (10 of 15, was 12). The terms publish fulfilment turnaround SLAs with 14 exclusions. No uptime SLA for the API was found (0). The dated API versions are generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 75.
- TrackingMore (65): Read with the hosted lines and scored on the REST API v4 at api.trackingmore.com. status.trackingmore.com is a hosted status page with uptime and a status update history (20). Its figures and history render by script, so the 90 days could not be read; the static text says there were no updates in the last 7 days (5). Rate limits are published per endpoint, 3 requests a second on trackings/create and 10 a second elsewhere, per account (15). The support centre says a 429 means the application should stop and wait 120 seconds, and a repeated create answers meta code 4101 rather than creating a duplicate. No Retry-After and no idempotency key (10 of 15). No SLA document was found. The Enterprise plan lists 99.99 per cent API uptime as a feature and the API page claims 99.9 per cent uptime, which is marketing rather than a published SLA (5 of 10). v4 is the current version and not marked beta (10). 20 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 65.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ShipBob | TrackingMore | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 65 | ShipBob +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 31 | ShipBob +54 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 54 | ShipBob +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 31 | ShipBob +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 23 | TrackingMore +3 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 19 | ShipBob +32 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 57 | ShipBob +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.3 · C** | **41.8 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ShipBob | TrackingMore |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | ShipBob, Inc. | CHANNELWILL CO., LIMITED |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.shipbob.com` | `https://api.trackingmore.com/v4` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| Price for shipment tracking | not published | $0.03 per transaction |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under ShipBob's Terms of Service. The MCP tutorials repository on GitHub has no licence file | Proprietary hosted service under the CWILL Terms of Service. The seven official SDKs on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 89 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-07-31 | 2024-12-25 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-22 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-03-29 | 2026-08-08 |
| 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 | none | 6 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### ShipBob

- +0.4 on 3 November 2026: product, correction
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

### TrackingMore

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**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.

**TrackingMore.** A small tracking API with published per-endpoint rate limits, meta error codes, a free courier detection call and SDKs in seven languages. The reference docs render by script with no OpenAPI file, plan prices weren't readable, one key has full access, the SDKs date from 2024 and the legal documents belong to the CWILL group.

## Before you call either

### 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

### TrackingMore

1. Send the key as `Tracking-Api-Key` to https://api.trackingmore.com/v4; the v2 header name `Trackingmore-Api-Key` and the v3 path are the older versions
2. Call `POST /v4/couriers/detect` first when the carrier is unknown (free on v4), then `POST /v4/trackings/create` with `tracking_number` and `courier_code`; the create response already carries the tracking result
3. Create up to 40 shipments at once with `POST /v4/trackings/batch` and read them with `GET /v4/trackings/get`, which filters by tracking numbers, courier and created date
4. Treat meta code 4101 as an existing tracking rather than a failure, and 4190 as a plan quota to raise with the person; after a 429 wait 120 seconds
5. Stay under 3 creates a second and 10 requests a second on other calls per account, and prefer a webhook (same version as the API) to polling

## Questions

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

ShipBob scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against TrackingMore's 41.8 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

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

ShipBob takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. TrackingMore needs an API key.

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

Yes. ShipBob has a hosted endpoint at https://api.shipbob.com and TrackingMore at https://api.trackingmore.com/v4.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with ShipBob or TrackingMore

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

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp