How does Shippo pricing work?

There are two components. The starter plan charges a platform fee on each label you buy, on top of the carrier rate. The Pro tiers replace that with a monthly subscription priced by tier, which changes both your per-label cost and your fixed cost. The current figures are on Shippo's own pricing page and they change, so read them there.

What does GoatLabels charge instead?

The carrier rate, and nothing on top of it. You fund a prepaid wallet, every label debits the all-in rate you accepted, and there is no monthly minimum to print. Pro is an optional flat monthly plan that lowers label pricing at volume — a discount, not a gate.

Is the quoted rate the final price?

Yes. Each quote is a single all-in number and that exact amount leaves the wallet balance when you buy. Nothing is added at checkout, and voiding a label credits the amount straight back to the balance.

What does a month with no shipments cost?

Nothing. There is no subscription on the free plan and no monthly minimum to print, so the wallet simply sits where you left it until the next label.

Does the API cost extra?

No. The REST API is free with unlimited calls on every plan, including Free — no request budget, no API tier, and signed webhooks included.

When is a Shippo Pro tier actually cheaper?

When your volume is high and steady enough that the tier's rate discounts exceed its monthly cost. That is a real case and it is worth calculating honestly against your last three months of labels rather than your best month.

Can I compare both on a real order?

Yes, and it is the only comparison worth making. Put one real shipment through GoatLabels, note the all-in rate, and compare it against the carrier rate plus whatever your current plan adds. There is no monthly minimum making the overlap expensive.

Two moving parts: a fee and a tier.

Shippo pricing, explained

And what a carrier-rate model costs instead.

Shippo charges a per-label platform fee on its starter plan and monthly subscriptions on Pro tiers, while GoatLabels charges only the carrier rate from a prepaid wallet with no monthly minimum.

Create your account Log in

The carrier rate, and nothing on top

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted as one all-in number that is the exact amount debited.

all quoted

Four quotes One all-in price each.

No label fee Nothing added at checkout.

Same via API Dashboard or endpoint.

A prepaid wallet, not a subscription

Top up with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto and spend it label by label.

Prepaid Spent label by label.

No minimum A quiet month costs nothing.

Voids credited Back to the balance.

The two moving parts

What you are actually paying Shippo for.

Shippo's pricing has two components that behave very differently. One is charged per label, so it scales with how much you ship. The other is a monthly subscription on the Pro tiers, so it scales with the calendar. Which of the two hurts depends entirely on whether your volume is steady, seasonal, or nonexistent this month.

	GoatLabels	Shippo
The per-label component	None. The all-in carrier rate you accept is the whole price of the label.	A platform fee is charged per label on the starter plan — the current amount is on their pricing page.
The subscription component	None required. Pro exists as an optional flat plan for cheaper label pricing at volume.	Pro tiers are monthly subscriptions, priced by tier and billed whether you shipped or not.
The month you don't ship	$0. No monthly minimum to print and nothing to cancel.	Plan-dependent — a paid tier still bills.
What the quote means	The number on screen is the number debited from the wallet. Nothing is added at checkout.	Carrier rate plus whatever platform fee your plan carries.
Where a refund goes	A void credits the prepaid balance, spendable on the next label.	Standard carrier refund flow through their billing.
API access	Free and unlimited on every plan, including Free.	Tied to their plan structure — check their current pricing page.

Shippo is a trademark of its owner and is not affiliated with GoatLabels. Their plans, fees, and carrier list change — compare against their current pricing page before you decide.

Three ways the fee structure shows up on your invoice.

The per-label fee is a tax on order count

It does not care whether a label costs $4 or $40, so it takes the largest proportional bite out of your smallest parcels. Shops with high order counts and low order values feel it first, which is most of social and handmade commerce.

The subscription is a tax on the calendar

A Pro tier bills for the month, not for the labels. That is fine at steady volume and expensive when your year has one enormous quarter and three quiet ones, because you are paying peak-shaped pricing through the trough.

The quoted rate is not the whole rate

When a fee sits between the quote and the charge, the number you see while rate-shopping is not the number that lands on the bill. GoatLabels shows one all-in figure per carrier and debits exactly that from your prepaid wallet, so margin maths uses the number on screen.

And when Shippo's pricing is the right choice

Your volume is high and steady enough that a Pro tier's rate discounts more than cover the subscription. That is a real arithmetic case — run it against their current pricing page.
You need a carrier outside USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, or you run your own negotiated carrier accounts. Their network and bring-your-own-account support are broader than ours.
The cost is already budgeted, the integration works, and nobody on your team is complaining. A pricing page is not a reason to migrate.

What a no-fee model looks like

One number per carrier. That number leaves the wallet.

Here is the whole pricing model, end to end. Orders arrive however they arrive — a store connector, an API call, a DM, or a screenshot you drop in — and Billy drafts the label from any of them for you to confirm. Rate-shopping returns live all-in prices from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, and the price you accept is debited from a prepaid wallet funded with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto. There is no platform fee inserted between the quote and the debit, no monthly minimum to print, and nothing to cancel if you stop shipping for a season. Void a label and the amount is credited back to the balance rather than refunded through a billing cycle. The optional Pro plan is a flat monthly fee that lowers label pricing at volume — a discount you choose, never a gate you clear.

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

Connectors, REST API, DMs, and screenshots — one queue and one prepaid balance behind all of it.

2 Billy AI

Drafted before a cent moves.

Reads a DM, comment thread, voice note, or screenshot
Fills the addresses and the package details
Rate-shops USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL at the all-in price
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

No platform fee between the quote and the debit. No monthly minimum to print.

What you get without paying a tier for it.

Connectors on the free plan, not behind one.

Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into To Ship and get tracking pushed back when you print — included rather than unlocked. The orders that never became records go into the same queue by paste or screenshot, and the REST API is free and unlimited alongside both.

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 pieces that are priced, and the pieces that are not.

One price line: the label.
Everything else is included.

The clearest way to read a pricing page is to ask what has a meter on it. Here the answer is short: the label, at the carrier's all-in rate. The API, the connectors, the AI assistant, and the dashboard do not have meters, and there is no subscription you must hold to print.

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. Void a shipment and the credit lands back in the wallet, spendable immediately rather than refunded through a statement cycle.

Wallet balance

$1,247.36 USD

AI drafting for orders
that are not JSON

The assistant that turns a DM, a screenshot, or a voice note into a drafted label is not a paid add-on and not a Pro feature in the web app. It runs unlimited on Free, because the thing we charge for is the label.

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 for when volume makes cheaper label pricing worth it — a discount you opt into, not a minimum you have to hit before a label prints.

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 from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL side by side, and the number on screen is the exact amount that leaves your balance — that is what makes the pricing legible. That is also the honest carrier list; if you need one outside it, Shippo's broader network is the reason to stay. Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into To Ship and push tracking back when you print, at no additional cost and behind no tier.

Compare rates

UPS $12.48

FedEx $13.22

DHL $14.10

USPS $11.79

Duties & taxes paid

The API you did not
want to give up

REST and JSON, one Bearer header, idempotency keys so a retry cannot double-buy a label, and signed webhooks instead of polling — free and unlimited on every plan. The dashboard and the API buy from the same balance, so there is one number to reconcile rather than two.

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

Where the fee model gets personal

A small parcel deserves a small price.

A flat fee per label is hardest on the shipment that was already cheap. If your average parcel is a padded mailer rather than a pallet, the fee is a meaningful share of what you paid — and it is charged again on the next one. A carrier-rate model keeps the cheap parcel cheap.

Paste the order or drop a screenshot — Billy pulls the name, the address, and the parcel out of it.

No import mapping and no CSV step, and neither one is a paid feature.

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.

Included, not upsold

Talk to Billy, on the free plan.

Assistants are usually the thing a pricing page puts behind the top tier. Hold the mic, say who the parcel is going to, and Billy looks up the buyer, rate-shops USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, and queues the label against your prepaid balance — unlimited in the web app on Free. 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 · nothing to import and nothing to map · 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. That equality is the entire pricing model: no platform fee on the way through, no carrier invoice the day after with an adjustment, and a void credits the wallet rather than a card statement weeks out.

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

The API has no price line.

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. Unlimited calls on Free and on Pro — it is not a tier, an add-on, or a metered resource.

Create, rate-shop, and buy — the same three calls you already write

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 plan to clear first

No plan to clear first.

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 of charging a platform fee on top of it. Pro is a flat monthly fee for unlimited shipments and cheaper label pricing: the plan for the months when the label count stops being the point. Neither one is a minimum you have to hit before a label prints.

Pro

Free

$0 / forever

Enough to run a real shop without a subscription under it.

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. Shippo's fees and tiers change, so read their current pricing page for the figures rather than trusting a number quoted on someone else's site. Full pricing details

Who the fee structure hits hardest

Not every Shippo customer is overpaying.

Whether the per-label fee or the subscription matters depends on the shape of your volume. These are the shapes where a carrier-rate model wins — and the ones where it does not are named on this page too.

Seasonal and drop-driven sellers

Peak-shaped volume, flat-shaped bill

Prepaid

A subscription priced for your busiest month keeps billing through the quiet ones. A prepaid wallet only moves when a label prints, so the trough is genuinely free.

4 carriers per quote no monthly minimum bulk print

GoatLabels shipments queue with purchased labels

High order count, low order value

Where a flat fee bites hardest

A per-label fee takes the same amount from a $6 order as a $600 one. Shops selling many small things pay it many times, on the parcels that could least afford it.

One queue, connector or not

Order #1024 · pasted from a comment thread

Sellers living in the DMs

Orders no plan tier accounts for

got the dress! can you ship to Austin?

Label drafted · CL-1024

Devs pricing an integration

Unit economics that survive scale

wallet behind the API and the dashboard

Real sellers, real words

Sellers who read the invoice and did the arithmetic.

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

Shippo pricing FAQ

How does Shippo pricing work?: There are two components. The starter plan charges a platform fee on each label you buy, on top of the carrier rate. The Pro tiers replace that with a monthly subscription priced by tier, which changes both your per-label cost and your fixed cost. The current figures are on Shippo's own pricing page and they change, so read them there.
What does GoatLabels charge instead?: The carrier rate, and nothing on top of it. You fund a prepaid wallet, every label debits the all-in rate you accepted, and there is no monthly minimum to print. Pro is an optional flat monthly plan that lowers label pricing at volume — a discount, not a gate.
Is the quoted rate the final price?: Yes. Each quote is a single all-in number and that exact amount leaves the wallet balance when you buy. Nothing is added at checkout, and voiding a label credits the amount straight back to the balance.
What does a month with no shipments cost?: Nothing. There is no subscription on the free plan and no monthly minimum to print, so the wallet simply sits where you left it until the next label.
Does the API cost extra?: No. The REST API is free with unlimited calls on every plan, including Free — no request budget, no API tier, and signed webhooks included.
When is a Shippo Pro tier actually cheaper?: When your volume is high and steady enough that the tier's rate discounts exceed its monthly cost. That is a real case and it is worth calculating honestly against your last three months of labels rather than your best month.
Can I compare both on a real order?: Yes, and it is the only comparison worth making. Put one real shipment through GoatLabels, note the all-in rate, and compare it against the carrier rate plus whatever your current plan adds. There is no monthly minimum making the overlap expensive.

Want the model rather than the teardown? Read how label pricing works here or the full pricing page. Comparing the tools directly? See GoatLabels vs Shippo or the step-by-step migration guide.

Price one real parcel before you decide.

Keep the carriers.
Lose the fee and the tier.

Fund a wallet with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, quote the next parcel you were going to ship anyway, and compare the all-in USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL number against the carrier rate plus whatever your current plan adds to it.

Create your account Talk to us

Shippo pricing, explained

The carrier rate, and nothing on top

A prepaid wallet, not a subscription

What you are actually paying Shippo for.

Three ways the fee structure shows up on your invoice.

The per-label fee is a tax on order count

The subscription is a tax on the calendar

The quoted rate is not the whole rate

And when Shippo's pricing is the right choice

One number per carrier. That number leaves the wallet.

Drafted before a cent moves.

Connectors on the free plan, not behind one.

One price line: the label. Everything else is included.

One prepaid wallet, five ways to fund it

AI drafting for orders that are not JSON

No monthly minimum to print

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL in one quote

The API you did not want to give up

A small parcel deserves a small price.

Talk to Billy, on the free plan.

The quote is the debit.

USPS

FedEx

DHL

The API has no price line.

No plan to clear first.

Pro

Free

Billy is not a paid tier

API free on every plan

Bring the invoice you pay today

Not every Shippo customer is overpaying.

Seasonal and drop-driven sellers

High order count, low order value

Sellers living in the DMs

Devs pricing an integration

Sellers who read the invoice and did the arithmetic.

Shippo pricing FAQ

Keep the carriers. Lose the fee and the tier.

One price line: the label.
Everything else is included.

One prepaid wallet,
five ways to fund it

AI drafting for orders
that are not JSON

No monthly minimum
to print

USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL
in one quote

The API you did not
want to give up

Keep the carriers.
Lose the fee and the tier.