Can I ship via API without my own carrier accounts?

Yes. GoatLabels comes with discounted USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rates built into the account, so your first API call returns real negotiated pricing without you applying for a carrier account, supplying an account number, or negotiating anything. Nothing is gated behind a bring-your-own-account step.

Why do some platforms want my carrier accounts?

Because their model is to be the integration layer rather than the rate source: you hold the contracts, they move the requests. That is genuinely better at high volume, where your own negotiated rates beat any shared panel. Below that volume it means the platform's best pricing is pricing you have to go and get yourself.

Are the built-in rates actually competitive?

They are negotiated rates rather than retail counter prices, and every parcel is quoted against four carriers at once so the cheapest service that hits the date is always visible. If you are already getting better pricing somewhere, bring the invoice — on Pro we will work with you on the label rates you pay today.

Is the quoted price final?

Yes. Each quote is a single all-in number and that exact amount is debited from your prepaid wallet balance when you buy. There is no carrier invoice arriving days later with an adjustment on it, and voiding a label credits the wallet.

What if I already have carrier contracts?

Then the honest answer is that a bring-your-own-account platform may serve you better, and that is written into this page on purpose. Strong contracts at real volume are hard to beat with a shared panel — the built-in model is aimed at everyone who does not have them yet.

Do I need to connect a store or write code first?

Neither. Print from the dashboard, let Billy draft the label from a pasted order or a screenshot, or call the free REST API — all three quote the same four carriers from the same built-in rates and spend the same prepaid balance.

How do I fund labels without a carrier account?

A prepaid wallet topped up with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer, or crypto. Every funding method buys identical rates, carriers, and features, and there is no monthly minimum to print.

No carrier accounts. No negotiation.

An EasyPost alternative with carrier rates built in

Discounted from the first label.

GoatLabels ships with discounted USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL rates out of the box, so you skip the carrier-account setup and negotiation EasyPost pushes onto you for best pricing.

Create your account Log in

Four carriers, none of them yours to set up

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted at discounted all-in rates — no account numbers required.

all quoted

Built-in rates From label one.

No contracts Nothing to negotiate.

Same via API Dashboard or endpoint.

One prepaid wallet, not four carrier bills

Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto — and no invoices to reconcile afterwards.

One balance Four carriers behind it.

No minimum A quiet month costs nothing.

Voids credited Back to the balance.

Who brings the rates

Built-in rates versus bringing your own to EasyPost.

Both platforms will print a label across several carriers. The question underneath is who did the negotiating — and whether you have the volume to have done it well.

	GoatLabels	EasyPost
What you need before your first quote	An account and a funded wallet. No carrier signup, no account numbers.	Best pricing is generally tied to bringing your own carrier accounts.
Where the discount comes from	Rates negotiated on the platform's own panel, applied to your account from label one.	The contracts you hold — so your rate is whatever you managed to negotiate.
New seller with no shipping history	Same discounted rates as everyone else. Volume history is not a prerequisite.	Hard to negotiate a good contract with no volume to negotiate on.
Who owns the carrier relationship	We do. That means one bill, one support path, and nothing to renegotiate annually.	You do. Real leverage at scale, real overhead below it.
What arrives after the label	Nothing. The quote is the debit from your prepaid wallet, with no carrier invoice behind it.	Your own carrier invoices, on your carriers' billing cycles.
Carriers rate-shopped	USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, all quoted all-in on one screen or one API response.	Broader network — the reason to bring your own accounts in the first place.

EasyPost is a trademark of its owner and is not affiliated with GoatLabels. Their plans, carrier options, and account requirements change — check their current documentation before you decide.

Three costs of bringing your own carrier accounts.

You can't negotiate from zero

Carrier discounts are priced on volume you have already shipped, which is the wrong way round for anyone growing. Built-in rates hand you the negotiated price on the first label instead of asking you to earn it first.

Carrier accounts are ongoing work

Applications, account numbers, credentials to rotate, four invoices to reconcile, and a renegotiation every year. That is a real job, and it is a strange one to give a shop that just wants a cheaper parcel.

One number, not a number and an invoice

When the carrier bills you directly, the quote is an estimate and the truth arrives later as an adjustment. Here every quote is a single all-in figure and that exact amount leaves the prepaid wallet — a void credits it straight back.

And when EasyPost is the right choice

You already hold strong negotiated carrier contracts — at real volume, your own rates will beat any platform's panel and you should keep them.
You need a carrier or service outside USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, which is exactly what a bring-your-own-account platform is good at.
Your finance team requires carrier invoices in your own name for accounting or customs reasons.

No setup step

Account, wallet, label. No carrier onboarding in between.

The usual first week of a shipping project is carrier applications: an account number here, a credential there, a discount tier you cannot qualify for yet. None of that exists here. Create an account, fund a prepaid wallet with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, and the first quote you request already returns discounted USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL pricing. Orders arrive from a connector, the API, a pasted message, or a screenshot, Billy drafts the parcel and the service, and the number you accept is the number debited — with no carrier invoice following it a week later.

Any order shape in

Store sync, API, DM, or screenshot

maya_boutique

Hey! 2x hoodies (M) 1x tee (L) 😅 Ship to: Maya R. Austin, TX 78701

Shopify

Synced into To Ship

TikTok Shop

Synced into To Ship

DM screenshot

Order: #1847
Customer: Jordan Lee
Items: 1x Hoodie (L)
Address: Brooklyn, NY

Drop the screenshot or paste the DM

No carrier credentials to collect at any intake path — the rates are already on the account.

2 Billy AI

Straight to the rate, skipping the paperwork.

Reads a pasted order, a screenshot, a voice note, or a synced record
Fills the addresses and the package details
Rate-shops USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL at discounted all-in prices
Hands the drafted label back for you to confirm

Drafted. Checked. Yours to confirm.

Clean label out

Bought from the wallet

Paid from your prepaid balance

Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto

$12.47

Label purchased

USPS Priority Mail — all-in rate

$12.47

One debit, four carriers behind it, and no carrier statement to reconcile at month end.

Where your orders actually come from.

Connectors for the storefronts, rates already attached.

Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into To Ship and get tracking pushed back when you print, and every order in that queue is quoted at the built-in discounted rates. There is no per-store carrier setup and no account linking behind any of it.

Via AI tiles: an order that never became a record still becomes a label.

maya_boutique

Hey! 2x hoodies (M) 1x tee (L) 😅 Ship to: Maya R. Austin, TX 78701

Label ready

$12.47

13 connected today 2 via AI 8 coming soon

Connect a store Or use the API

Connected today 13 storefronts sync to To Ship

Shopify

Etsy

WooCommerce

TikTok Shop

Amazon

eBay

Squarespace

Wix

Walmart

Square

BigCommerce

Magento

Temu

Via AI

Instagram AI

Facebook AI

DM and screenshot parsing — the AI builds the label.

Coming soon

Shopify Plus Soon

Zapier Soon

NetSuite Soon

Ecwid Soon

Shein Soon

ChannelAdvisor Soon

SkuVault Soon

Zoho Inventory Soon

The rates are the feature. The rest still comes with it.

Negotiated rates you didn't negotiate.
Plus everything else.

Built-in pricing would not be worth much attached to a thin tool. It arrives with four-carrier rate shopping, a free unlimited REST API, store connectors, AI drafting, and a prepaid wallet — none of which asks you for a carrier account number.

One prepaid wallet,
five ways to fund it

Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer, and crypto all top up the same balance, and every method buys identical rates, carriers, and features. Instead of four carrier statements, there is one balance going down.

Wallet balance

$1,247.36 USD

AI drafting instead of
account admin

A DM, a comment thread, a voice note, a screenshot — Billy reads any of them and drafts the whole label at the built-in rates. The setup work you were expecting simply is not in the path.

Billy LIVE

Where's the package to Maya?

It's in transit via UPS. Expected Friday, Aug 7.

1Z8923A6B05G4123456

In transit

Austin, TX → Dallas, TX

Ask Billy anything...

No monthly minimum
to print

Fund the wallet, pay per label, and ship nothing in February without paying for February. Pro is an optional flat plan that lowers per-label pricing as volume grows — the discount curve you would otherwise be negotiating for yourself.

Shipment summary

UPS Ground $12.49

Insurance $0.75

Fuel surcharge $0.32

Total $13.56

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL
in one quote

Live all-in rates side by side, discounted on the platform's own panel, and the number you see is the exact amount that leaves your balance. If you need a carrier outside that four, a bring-your-own-account platform is the honest recommendation.

Compare rates

UPS $12.48

FedEx $13.22

DHL $14.10

USPS $11.79

Duties & taxes paid

The API asks for a token,
not an account number

REST and JSON, one Bearer header, idempotency keys so a retry cannot double-buy a label, and signed webhooks for tracking and label events. Your first call returns discounted rates with no carrier credentials configured anywhere.

POST /v1/shipments

{

"to" : { "name" : "Maya" },

"from" : { "name" : "Alex" },

"service" : "ups_ground" ,

"label_format" : "pdf"

}

Webhook delivered

GoatLabels mobile shipments queue with all-in carrier prices

Billy drafting a label from a pasted DM on mobile

Label ready

CL-1038 · Brooklyn, NY

From signup to first label

Discounted rates on the first parcel.

Nothing about getting good pricing here happens off-platform. There is no application to submit, no account number to paste into a settings screen, and no waiting to be approved before you can see what a parcel actually costs.

Paste the DM, snap the thread, or drop the screenshot — Billy pulls the name, the address, and the parcel out of it.

No carrier signup, no account numbers, no approval wait before the first quote.

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL come back as four all-in prices on one screen.

Buy from the prepaid balance and one-tap print to a share sheet or a thermal printer over Wi-Fi.

Hold the mic at the packing table and say the address — Billy drafts it and reads the rate back.

One relationship, not four

Talk to Billy, not to four carrier portals.

When the carrier accounts are yours, so is every login, every claim, and every invoice question. Here you ask one place. Hold the mic, say who it is going to, and Billy rate-shops USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, queues the label against your prepaid balance, and answers for it afterwards. This is the real product, not a render.

Billy reading back a parcel's tracking history over the purchased labels list

Listening

"Where's Maya's package?"

Out for delivery

CL-1039 · Austin, TX · by 6 PM

Plain English in — names, addresses, weights, carriers, services · no carrier credentials anywhere in it · reads the all-in rate back before a cent leaves the wallet · phone, browser, or Telegram.

All-in quotes

The quote is the debit.

Three carriers on the same parcel, each an all-in number that is the exact amount leaving your prepaid balance. When the carrier bills the platform rather than you, there is no statement arriving later with a surcharge on it — and voiding a shipment credits the wallet.

US → DE 2.6 lbs 12×8×4 in

USPS

Priority Mail Intl

10–15 days

$18.30

$10.00 of taxes & duties included

all-in · no surprises

Best balance

FedEx

Intl Connect Plus

3–5 days

$22.80

$11.00 of taxes & duties included

all-in · no surprises

DHL

Express Worldwide

1–2 days

$26.20

$12.20 of taxes & duties included

all-in · no surprises

No carrier invoice the day after Void → credit back to the wallet you funded Multi-currency display

Public API v1

Rates in the first call. No accounts to attach.

REST, JSON, one Bearer header. Real idempotency keys so a retried request cannot double-buy a label, signed webhooks for tracking and label events instead of polling, and errors that name what to fix. Nothing in the request expects a carrier account id, because the discounted rates live on the account already.

Create, rate-shop, and buy — discounted rates on the very first call

Signed webhooks for tracking and label events instead of polling

Real idempotency keys — a retried request never buys two labels

OpenAPI 3.1 spec, no SDK lock-in, unlimited calls on every plan

Read the API docs Get an API key $0 on every plan

curl https://api.goatlabels.io/api/v1/shipments

201 Created · 187ms

request response

POST /api/v1/shipments
Authorization: Bearer sk_live_…
Idempotency-Key: ord_8421

{
  "to": { "name": "Joyce", "city": "Berlin", "country": "DE" },
  "parcel": { "weight": 1.2, "weight_unit": "kg" },
  "service": "fedex_intl_priority"
}

← 201 Created // buy it with POST /api/v1/shipments/{id}/purchase
{
  "id": "shp_44819",
  "status": "draft",
  "amount": { "subtotal": 72.25, "duty_and_tax": 14.20, "total": 86.45 }
}

No contracts to qualify for

The discount comes with the account.

Free covers 50 shipments a month with the public API, the store connectors, and Billy all unlimited underneath it — we make a little on each label instead. Pro is a flat monthly fee for unlimited shipments and cheaper label pricing as volume grows, which is the volume discount you would otherwise be negotiating carrier by carrier.

Pro

Free

$0 / forever

Negotiated rates without a negotiation.

50 shipments a month, no monthly minimum to print

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rate-shopped on every parcel

The full REST API with unlimited calls and signed webhooks

Billy AI in the web app, unlimited — paste, screenshot, or speak

Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync included

Start free

Billy is not a paid tier

The assistant that reads a DM, a screenshot, or a voice note into a drafted label runs unlimited in the web app on Free. Pro adds Billy on Telegram.

Web — every plan Telegram — Pro

API free on every plan

GET /api/v1/shipments

200 OK · plan: free

Unlimited calls on Free — still unlimited on Pro.

Bring the invoice you pay today

On Pro we will work with you to beat the label rates you are already getting from

ShippoPirateShipShipStation

No contracts No monthly minimum to print Start in seconds

Label prices are quoted live from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL and shown as one all-in number — the same number that leaves your wallet. EasyPost's account requirements and plans move, so check their current documentation before deciding. Full pricing details

Who benefits from built-in rates

Built-in wins below contract volume.

Above a certain scale your own negotiated carrier contracts will beat any shared panel, and this page says so. Below it, built-in rates are simply the price you could not have got on your own.

New shops with no shipping history

TikTok Shop & live commerce

No accounts

Carriers price on volume you have already shipped. Starting from zero, a built-in panel is not a compromise — it is the only competitive rate available to you.

4 carriers per quote no carrier accounts no monthly minimum

GoatLabels shipments queue with purchased labels

Sellers who don't want the admin

Etsy & independent creators

Four carrier logins, four invoices, and an annual renegotiation is a job. One wallet and one all-in number per label is not.

One bill, four carriers

Order #1024 · quoted price = wallet debit

Sellers living in the DMs

The orders that never became JSON

got the dress! can you ship to Austin?

Label drafted · CL-1024

Devs shipping for someone else's shop

REST and the UI, one balance

carrier accounts to collect from your client

Real sellers, real words

Sellers shipping on rates they never negotiated.

A video took off and I had 80 TikTok Shop orders by morning. I printed every label from my phone on the bus to the post office.

Early customer · TikTok

TikTok Shop seller

TikTok Shop

I run my Etsy shop from the kitchen. The AI reads the order, picks the carrier, the label prints. That's the whole workflow now.

Early customer · Etsy

Etsy maker

Etsy

The API is what every shipping API pretends to be. Idempotency that actually works.

Sasha R.

Staff engineer, marketplace

API user

Shipping without carrier accounts FAQ

Can I ship via API without my own carrier accounts?: Yes. GoatLabels comes with discounted USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rates built into the account, so your first API call returns real negotiated pricing without you applying for a carrier account, supplying an account number, or negotiating anything. Nothing is gated behind a bring-your-own-account step.
Why do some platforms want my carrier accounts?: Because their model is to be the integration layer rather than the rate source: you hold the contracts, they move the requests. That is genuinely better at high volume, where your own negotiated rates beat any shared panel. Below that volume it means the platform's best pricing is pricing you have to go and get yourself.
Are the built-in rates actually competitive?: They are negotiated rates rather than retail counter prices, and every parcel is quoted against four carriers at once so the cheapest service that hits the date is always visible. If you are already getting better pricing somewhere, bring the invoice — on Pro we will work with you on the label rates you pay today.
Is the quoted price final?: Yes. Each quote is a single all-in number and that exact amount is debited from your prepaid wallet balance when you buy. There is no carrier invoice arriving days later with an adjustment on it, and voiding a label credits the wallet.
What if I already have carrier contracts?: Then the honest answer is that a bring-your-own-account platform may serve you better, and that is written into this page on purpose. Strong contracts at real volume are hard to beat with a shared panel — the built-in model is aimed at everyone who does not have them yet.
Do I need to connect a store or write code first?: Neither. Print from the dashboard, let Billy draft the label from a pasted order or a screenshot, or call the free REST API — all three quote the same four carriers from the same built-in rates and spend the same prepaid balance.
How do I fund labels without a carrier account?: A prepaid wallet topped up with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer, or crypto. Every funding method buys identical rates, carriers, and features, and there is no monthly minimum to print.

Comparing further? Read GoatLabels vs EasyPost, the pricing teardown, or how label pricing works here.

Quote a real parcel before you apply for anything.

Skip the carrier paperwork.
Keep the discounted rate.

Fund a wallet with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, drop in your next order, and compare the built-in all-in USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rate against what you pay today.

Create your account Talk to us

An EasyPost alternative with carrier rates built in

Four carriers, none of them yours to set up

One prepaid wallet, not four carrier bills

Built-in rates versus bringing your own to EasyPost.

Three costs of bringing your own carrier accounts.

You can't negotiate from zero

Carrier accounts are ongoing work

One number, not a number and an invoice

And when EasyPost is the right choice

Account, wallet, label. No carrier onboarding in between.

Straight to the rate, skipping the paperwork.

Connectors for the storefronts, rates already attached.

Negotiated rates you didn't negotiate. Plus everything else.

One prepaid wallet, five ways to fund it

AI drafting instead of account admin

No monthly minimum to print

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL in one quote

The API asks for a token, not an account number

Discounted rates on the first parcel.

Talk to Billy, not to four carrier portals.

The quote is the debit.

USPS

FedEx

DHL

Rates in the first call. No accounts to attach.

The discount comes with the account.

Pro

Free

Billy is not a paid tier

API free on every plan

Bring the invoice you pay today

Built-in wins below contract volume.

New shops with no shipping history

Sellers who don't want the admin

Sellers living in the DMs

Devs shipping for someone else's shop

Sellers shipping on rates they never negotiated.

Shipping without carrier accounts FAQ

Skip the carrier paperwork. Keep the discounted rate.

Negotiated rates you didn't negotiate.
Plus everything else.

One prepaid wallet,
five ways to fund it

AI drafting instead of
account admin

No monthly minimum
to print

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL
in one quote

The API asks for a token,
not an account number

Skip the carrier paperwork.
Keep the discounted rate.