Two questions separate these platforms: who owns the carrier account, and how labels get paid for. EasyPost expects you to bring negotiated contracts on its BYOCA plans and meters per label. GoatLabels rate-shops its own USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL panel and debits a prepaid wallet.
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted on your first parcel — no account numbers, no carrier onboarding, nothing to negotiate first.
no contracts needed No per-call price and no per-label platform charge. Fund a wallet, spend it label by label.
EasyPost is a mature, API-first shipping platform with a carrier network in the hundreds and a model built around carrier accounts you own. If you have negotiated contract rates, or you depend on a regional or freight carrier, both of those are advantages we do not have and cannot fake — we rate-shop four carriers on our own accounts, and that is the whole list. This page is about the two places the models genuinely diverge, not about pretending the breadth is not real.
This is the question that decides which platform you should be on, and it gets asked far too late — usually after an integration is already written.
EasyPost's centre of gravity is bring your own carrier accounts. You hold the UPS or FedEx relationship, you negotiate the rates, and the platform is the layer that speaks to all of them in one API shape. That is genuinely powerful at scale: your discount is yours, it improves as you grow, and no intermediary sits between you and the carrier on the rate. It is also a prerequisite. Getting a contract worth having means volume you can prove, an account rep, and a negotiation — and until that exists, a BYOCA-shaped platform is asking you to bring the one thing you do not yet have.
GoatLabels sits on the other side of that line deliberately. We hold the USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL accounts, and a brand-new account gets all four quoted on its first parcel with no onboarding call and no account numbers to enter. You are renting our position rather than building your own, which is the correct trade for anyone who does not yet have leverage — and an actively bad trade for anyone who does. If you already ship enough to hold real contract rates, keep them. That is not a concession, it is arithmetic.
There is a middle path we are happy to state plainly: on Pro, bring the invoice you pay today and we will work with you to beat those label rates. That is a conversation, not a checkbox, and it is the honest answer for a seller sitting between "no contracts" and "good contracts".
The second divergence is how the platform makes money from you, and it is the one that shows up in a spreadsheet. A metered platform charges per label purchased, so its revenue is a line that tracks your shipping volume exactly. GoatLabels charges nothing per label and nothing per API call: there is a flat optional Pro plan, and the labels themselves are bought from a prepaid wallet at the carrier's all-in rate.
That difference is invisible at ten labels a month and structural at a thousand. Here is our side worked at two volumes, with nothing hidden in a footnote.
| Cost line | GoatLabels at 50 labels a month | GoatLabels at 500 labels a month |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $0 — Free covers 50 shipments a month | One flat Pro fee, or $0 if you stay under the Free ceiling across several months |
| Charge per label bought | None. The label price is the carrier's all-in rate | None, and Pro lowers the label rates themselves as volume grows |
| API calls | Unlimited, on Free | Unlimited, on Pro — the same unlimited |
| Where carrier rates come from | Our own USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL panel — no account of yours required | The same panel; bring your invoice and we will work to beat the rates you pay today |
| What you pre-fund | Only the labels. A prepaid wallet you top up when you want | The same wallet, topped up in bigger increments |
| A month with zero shipments | $0 | $0 on Free; the Pro fee is the only thing that runs in a quiet month, and Pro is optional |
We are not going to print a competitor's prices on our own page and let them rot there. Pull these four off easypost.com and the comparison does itself:
Two shapes fall out of that exercise. If your volume is growing and your margin per order is thin, a charge that scales one-to-one with labels is the line item to watch, because it grows exactly as fast as the thing you are trying to make money on. If your volume is lumpy — a drop, a season, a campaign — a prepaid wallet handles the shape better than any plan does: pre-fund before the burst, print through it, then pay nothing at all through the quiet weeks, because there is no monthly minimum to print.
The API side of that story is short by design. Calls are unlimited on every plan, so automating more of the loop never moves you to a pricier tier — which is a different sentence from most platforms', where the API is the product and the metering is how it is sold. For what the API actually looks like — authentication, idempotency, signed webhooks — read the docs and run the request yourself, or see GoatLabels vs Shippo, which argues the API surface at length rather than repeating it here.
A comparison page that never reaches this heading is an advertisement. Three cases, stated as narrowly as we can make them.
You hold contract rates worth more than the difference. If you have negotiated UPS or FedEx pricing off real volume, a platform built to carry your accounts is the right architecture and nothing on this page outweighs your own discount.
You need a carrier outside our four. Regional carriers, freight, and the long tail of international partners are breadth we do not have. Four carriers rate-shopped well is a deliberate product decision, not a roadmap promise, and if the fifth one is load-bearing for you, that settles it.
Your integration works and nothing hurts. Migration has a cost even when the destination is better. If you cannot name the problem you are solving, the honest recommendation is to stay.
What is left is a real and common shape: a developer or a seller with no carrier contracts to bring, who wants four carriers quoted from day one, labels paid for out of a prepaid balance rather than metered, and an API whose call price stays at zero as the automation grows. If that is the shape, start with what the plans actually cost and how per-label pricing works.
This is the whole commercial difference on one screen. Free covers 50 shipments a month with the REST API unlimited underneath it, and the labels are bought at the carrier's all-in rate from a prepaid wallet rather than metered and invoiced. Pro is a flat monthly fee for unlimited shipments and cheaper label pricing — the only line that runs in a month you did not ship in, and it is optional.
Volume pricing
illustrativemore volume → lower per-label rates, not a bigger per-label charge
$0 / forever
Enough to run a real integration before anyone asks you for a contract.
The assistant that turns a pasted order, a screenshot, or a spoken address into a drafted label runs unlimited in the web app on Free. It is the half of the job an API cannot do for you, and it is not metered either.
GET /api/v1/shipments
200 OK · plan: free
Unlimited calls on Free — still unlimited on Pro. No per-call price at any volume.
On Pro we will work with you to beat the label rates you are already getting from
EasyPostShippoyour own carrier contract Label prices are quoted live from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL as one all-in number, and that exact amount leaves your prepaid wallet. EasyPost's plans and carrier list are theirs to publish and they change — compare against easypost.com rather than a figure on our page. Full pricing details
Evaluating more than one API? GoatLabels vs Shippo covers the API surface itself, and the docs are open without an account.
Create a free account, call the API as much as you like, and buy labels at the carrier's all-in rate from a prepaid wallet — with no per-label platform charge sitting on top of it.
Sign up in seconds. No card required. Unlimited API calls on every plan.
GoatLabels is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by EasyPost. All trademarks belong to their respective owners, and EasyPost's plans, carrier list, and pricing are theirs to publish — check easypost.com for current details.
