USPS
Priority Mail Intl
10–15 days$18.30
$10.00 of taxes & duties included
all-in · no surprises
Low-volume shipping.
Pay per label. Nothing renews.
Occasional shipping without a Stamps.com subscription
Pay per label. Nothing renews.
If you ship a handful of parcels a month, GoatLabels' pay-per-label wallet beats any subscription: the monthly cost of shipping nothing is zero.
Four carriers quoted on a single parcel
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL — live all-in rates, no monthly minimum to print.
all quoted Four quotes One all-in price each.
Quote = debit No day-after invoice.
Same via API Free on every plan.
A balance you top up, not a bill that arrives
Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto — one prepaid balance.
Prepaid Spent label by label.
Nothing renews Idle costs nothing.
Voids credited Back to the balance.
Low volume, side by side
What a quiet month costs on each, versus Stamps.com.
Feature comparisons are the wrong lens at this volume. The only number that decides it is what happens in the months you barely ship — because for an occasional shipper, those are most of the months.
| GoatLabels | A monthly plan | |
|---|---|---|
| A month with two parcels | You pay for two labels. That is the entire bill. | Two labels plus the subscription, whatever it is that month. |
| A month with no parcels | Nothing leaves the wallet, because nothing was bought. | The plan renews regardless of whether you shipped. |
| Coming back after a long gap | Log in, top up, print. Nothing lapsed while you were away. | Re-subscribe, or keep paying through the gap to avoid it. |
| Carriers quoted on each parcel | USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL side by side as all-in prices. | A postage-first lineup built around USPS — see their site for current coverage. |
| Money sitting with the provider | Only what you chose to load, and voids credit straight back to it. | A postage account balance plus the recurring software charge. |
| Cost of keeping the account open | Zero. An idle GoatLabels account costs nothing to hold. | Holding the account is the thing that costs money. |
Stamps.com is a trademark of its owner and is not affiliated with GoatLabels. Their plans and terms change — compare against their current pricing page before you decide.
Three reasons low-frequency shippers drop the plan.
Per-month pricing punishes exactly your pattern
A subscription is a bet that you will ship enough to amortise it. Sell a few pieces a month, ship for a client twice a quarter, or fulfil an invoice when a customer finally approves it, and the bet loses every time. Pay-per-label has no minimum to amortise: the arithmetic of a slow month is simply the labels you bought.
A balance you top up, not a bill that arrives
Fund the wallet with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer, or crypto, and spend it label by label. Nothing renews, nothing auto-charges, and nothing needs cancelling before a quiet season — the account can sit untouched for months and cost exactly nothing to keep.
Occasional shipping is where the AI earns its keep
The infrequent shipper is the one who has forgotten where everything is since last time. Paste the order, drop a screenshot, or say the address out loud and Billy drafts the whole label — no re-learning a postage client you last opened in the spring.
And when Stamps.com is the right choice
- Your volume has quietly grown to the point where a flat plan is genuinely cheaper — at that point compare Pro, or a Stamps.com plan, against your real label count.
- You need a carrier or specialised USPS service GoatLabels doesn't rate-shop — we quote USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, and that is the honest list.
- You are already tied to a meter or desktop client for other reasons and the shipping is incidental to it.
Shipping twice a month
A pipeline that costs nothing when it is standing still.
Nothing here has to run continuously to earn its place. Orders arrive from Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, or TikTok Shop if you have them, from the REST API, or as a pasted message or screenshot when you simply have a parcel to send. Billy fills in the addresses, the package details, and the service, then hands the draft back for you to confirm — which matters most to the shipper who last did this six weeks ago. Every label is a debit against a prepaid wallet topped up with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, so the months between parcels are free rather than billed. Rate-shop USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL at the all-in price, print from your phone or a thermal printer, and let signed webhooks and idempotency keys carry the same events on the API side.
1
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 none of it required to send one parcel.
2 Billy AI
For the parcel you send once in a while.
- 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.
3
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 monthly minimum to print. Signed webhooks push tracking back to the store and to your stack.
Connect something, or connect nothing.
Connectors for the storefronts, AI for everything else.
Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into To Ship and get tracking pushed back when you print, but at a few parcels a month a connector is optional in the truest sense — plenty of people here have never set one up. Paste an Instagram or Facebook DM, or a screenshot of one, and Billy builds the label without any integration existing at all.
Via AI tiles: an order that never became a record still becomes a label.
13 connected today 2 via AI 8 coming soon
Connected today 13 storefronts sync to To Ship
Shopify 
Etsy 
WooCommerce 
TikTok Shop 
Amazon 
eBay 
Squarespace 
Wix 
Walmart 
Square 
BigCommerce 
Magento 
Temu Coming soon Shopify Plus Soon 
Zapier Soon 
NetSuite Soon 
Ecwid Soon 
Shein Soon 
ChannelAdvisor Soon 
SkuVault Soon 
Zoho Inventory Soon
Shopify Plus Soon Zapier Soon NetSuite Soon Ecwid Soon Shein Soon ChannelAdvisor Soon SkuVault Soon Zoho Inventory Soon Everything a subscription implied you had to commit to. A full shipping platform.
A full shipping platform.
Priced by the parcel.
Occasional shipping usually means accepting a worse tool, because the good ones want a monthly commitment. Here the low-volume account is the same account as everyone else's: four carriers, the full API, store sync, AI drafting, and a prepaid balance.
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 you load only what the next parcels need. Void a shipment and the credit lands back in the wallet rather than in a separate postage ledger.
Wallet balance
$1,247.36 USD
AI
AI drafting for the shipper
who is out of practice
A DM, a comment thread, a voice note, a screenshot — Billy reads any of them and drafts the whole label. When you ship twice a month, not having to remember the workflow is worth more than any feature list.
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...
The cost of a month
with no parcels is zero
Fund the wallet, pay per label, and let a dead month be genuinely free. Pro is an optional flat plan for when volume makes cheaper label pricing worth it — and at a handful of parcels a month, it is not for you yet.
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, and the number you see is the exact amount that leaves your balance. At low volume this is where the real saving sits — one parcel routed to the right carrier beats a plan discount you would never have earned. That is the honest carrier list; if you need a service outside it, Stamps.com's postage-centric coverage is the reason to stay.
Compare rates
UPS $12.48 FedEx $13.22 DHL $14.10 USPS $11.79
Duties & taxes paid
An API you can use
twice a month
REST and JSON, one Bearer header, idempotency keys so a retry cannot double-buy a label, and signed webhooks for tracking and label events instead of polling. Unlimited calls on Free — nobody meters your occasional script.
POST /v1/shipments
{
"to" : { "name" : "Maya" },
"from" : { "name" : "Alex" },
"service" : "ups_ground" ,
"label_format" : "pdf"
}
Webhook delivered
Label ready
CL-1038 · Brooklyn, NY
For the parcel on the kitchen table
No desktop client, no meter to lease.
Postage software assumes a shipping station that exists all year. If yours is a kitchen table twice a month, the plan is renting an architecture you never touch. Everything here runs in the browser and on the phone already in your hand.
Paste the DM, snap the thread, or drop the screenshot — Billy pulls the name, the address, and the parcel out of it.
Nothing to install and nothing to keep updated between parcels.
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.
Faster than remembering the workflow
Talk to Billy, not to a form you last saw in spring.
The tax on occasional shipping is re-learning the tool every time. 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 — then answers questions about it afterwards. This is the real product, not a render.
goatlabels.io/dashboard/shipments — Billy
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 install and nothing to renew · 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 you only ship a few times a month, the saving lives here rather than in a plan discount, and voiding a shipment credits the wallet rather than opening a refund case.
US → DE 2.6 lbs 12×8×4 in
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
Free and unlimited, even at two calls a month.
Low volume usually means the API is the first thing a provider takes away. Here it is not metered at all: REST, JSON, one Bearer header, real idempotency keys so a retried request cannot double-buy a label, signed webhooks instead of polling, and errors that name what to fix.
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 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"
}
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 — well past what an occasional shipper will ever use, and we make a little on each label instead. Pro is a flat monthly fee for unlimited shipments and cheaper label pricing, which is a plan to grow into rather than one to start on.
Pro
Most popular $40 / month
Unlimited shipments — no monthly cap
Cheaper label pricing that scales down as your volume grows
Billy AI on Telegram — draft a label without opening the dashboard
API access still free and unlimited
Volume pricing
illustrative less volume more volume
more volume → lower per-label rates
Free
$0 / forever
More than enough for a few parcels a month, at no cost.
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
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. Stamps.com's plans move, so compare against their current pricing page rather than a figure on ours. Full pricing details
Who ships rarely, and why it matters
Low volume is a shape, not a stage.
Plenty of sellers never intend to ship daily — side businesses, made-to-order work, client fulfilment, seasonal drops. Per-month pricing treats all of them as customers who have not grown up yet; a prepaid wallet just charges them for parcels.
Seasonal and drop-driven sellers
TikTok Shop & live commerce
Volume that arrives twice a year fits a prepaid wallet better than a plan. Pre-fund before a drop, print all night, then pay nothing at all through the quiet months after it.
4 carriers per quote no monthly minimum bulk print
goatlabels.io/dashboard/shipments
Made-to-order and small-batch makers
Etsy & independent creators
When a parcel goes out because a piece finally finished, not because a queue filled up, the shipping tool should be idle and free in between — and ready the moment it is not.
One queue, connector or not
Order #1024 · pasted from a comment thread
Sellers living in the DMs
A parcel whenever someone asks
got the dress! can you ship to Austin?
Label drafted · CL-1024
Devs who want the dashboard too
REST and the UI, one balance
1
wallet behind the API and the dashboard
Real sellers, real words
Sellers who ship when there is something to ship.
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
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
The API is what every shipping API pretends to be. Idempotency that actually works.
Sasha R.
Staff engineer, marketplace
Occasional shipping FAQ
- Is there a monthly fee if I only ship occasionally?
- No. There is no monthly minimum to print, so a month in which you ship nothing costs nothing. You fund a prepaid wallet and each label is a debit against it — the account itself is free to hold whether you use it weekly or twice a year.
- What is the cheapest way to ship a few parcels a month?
- Stop paying for the software and start rate-shopping the parcel. Every shipment here is quoted against USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL at once as all-in prices, and at low volume the difference between the right carrier and the default one is usually larger than any plan discount would have been.
- Can I use this for one-off or seasonal shipping?
- That is exactly the case this page is about. Load the wallet before the parcels you know are coming, print them, and let the balance sit until next time. Nothing lapses, nothing expires into a plan, and there is no reactivation step when you come back.
- Do I have to load a large minimum into the wallet?
- No. Top up roughly what the next batch of labels will cost — the wallet is a prepaid balance, not a deposit or a commitment, and you can only ever spend what you have loaded.
- What happens if I void a label I bought by mistake?
- Void the shipment and the amount is credited back to the same wallet it left. For a low-volume shipper that matters more than it sounds: the money returns to a balance you control instead of waiting out a refund cycle on a separate postage account.
- Do I need to connect a store?
- No. Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into the To Ship queue if you have them, but plenty of occasional shippers connect nothing at all and simply paste the order, drop a screenshot, or type the address.
- At what volume would a subscription start making sense?
- When your label count is consistently high enough that flat pricing beats per-label margin — which is why Pro exists as an optional flat plan for unlimited shipments and cheaper label pricing. If you are shipping a handful of parcels a month, you are nowhere near that line, and any per-month fee is money spent on the months you did not ship.
Already on a plan? Switching from Stamps.com step by step times the move to your billing date, and the billing friction people report explains why a prepaid balance behaves differently. For the per-label numbers, see how label pricing works.
Ship the one parcel you have today.
Pay for labels.
Never for the months between.
Fund a wallet with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, load only what the next parcels need, and compare the all-in USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rate before you buy.
Sign up in seconds. No card required. No monthly minimum.