USPS
Priority Mail Intl
10–15 days$7.40
$1.90 of duties & taxes prepaid, not billed to your buyer
all-in · no surprises
Whose carrier account is it?
Bring contracts, or bring nothing.
GoatLabels vs EasyPost
Bring contracts, or bring nothing.
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.
Our carrier panel, not your contracts
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted on your first parcel — no account numbers, no carrier onboarding, nothing to negotiate first.
no contracts needed No BYOCA We own the accounts.
Four quotes One all-in price each.
Same via API Dashboard or endpoint.
Unlimited calls, prepaid labels
No per-call price and no per-label platform charge. Fund a wallet, spend it label by label.
Prepaid Committed before the label.
Unmetered Calls are free on every plan.
Voids credited Back to the balance.
Start with what EasyPost does better
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.
Who owns the carrier account: BYOCA vs our own panel
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".
Per-label metering vs unlimited calls plus a wallet, at two volumes
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 |
The same four lines on EasyPost
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:
- The per-label or per-shipment charge on the plan you would actually be on — this is the number that scales with you.
- Whether that plan is BYOCA (your own negotiated carrier accounts) or includes EasyPost-provided rates, because it changes who you have to go get a contract from.
- The plan fee itself, and whether it changes at the volume you are projecting rather than the volume you are at.
- What a month with no shipments costs — a metered platform and a flat platform diverge fastest in the quiet months.
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.
Where EasyPost is the better choice
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.
What onboarding looks like without a contract
No account numbers. Four quotes on parcel one.
The BYOCA shape puts work before your first label: a carrier relationship, account numbers to enter, and usually a negotiation you have to be big enough to win. Here the carrier accounts are already ours. An order arrives however it arrives, Billy drafts the label, and USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL all quote it — on the first parcel of a brand-new account, with nothing to onboard first.
1
Order in, however it arrived
API call, sync, DM, or typed
maya_boutique
Hey! 2x hoodies (M) 1x tee (L) 😅 Ship to: Maya R. Austin, TX 78701
Shopify
New order #1042
TikTok Shop
New order #5827
Order screenshot
- Order
- #1847
- Customer
- Jordan Lee
- Items
- 1x Hoodie (L)
- Address
- Brooklyn, NY
Drop screenshot or paste order
Post it to the REST API, sync it from a storefront, paste a DM, or type the address in. None of these paths asks you for a carrier account number.
2 Billy AI
Drafted and validated before anything is bought.
- Reads a pasted order, a screenshot, or a spoken address into a draft
- Validates the address before a cent leaves the wallet
- Rate-shops USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL on our accounts — none of them yours
- Included on every plan, and not metered either
Checked. Quoted. Nothing charged yet.
3
Bought from the balance
Cheapest of four that hits the date
Debited from a prepaid wallet
Committed before the label, not invoiced after it
$12.47
Label purchased
No per-label platform charge on top
$12.47
The all-in quote you approve is the exact amount that leaves the balance, and a label voided before it moves credits straight back to it. Nothing is metered on the way past.
An API, and somewhere to click.
Orders arrive from more places than an endpoint.
An API-first platform assumes every order reaches you as a POST. Real ones do not. Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and TikTok Shop sync into the To Ship queue, the REST API covers what your own systems generate, and an Instagram or Facebook DM gets pasted straight in — all three paths land in the same queue and quote against the same four carriers.
Shopify 
Etsy 
WooCommerce 
TikTok Shop 
Amazon 
eBay 
Squarespace 
Wix 
Walmart Shopify Plus Soon
Square 
BigCommerce 
Magento 
Zapier Soon
NetSuite Soon
Ecwid Soon
Temu 
Shein Soon
ChannelAdvisor Soon
SkuVault Soon
Zoho Inventory Soon Five differences that survive a spreadsheet. Where the two models actually diverge.
Where the two models actually diverge.
Not the feature checklist.
Feature grids between shipping platforms mostly rhyme. These five are the ones that change what you owe, who you have to go negotiate with, and what a quiet month costs.
A prepaid wallet,
not a metered invoice
Fund it with a card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto, then buy labels out of that balance at the carrier's all-in rate. Nothing is charged per label on top and nothing is reconciled after the fact — the money is committed before the label rather than invoiced after it, and a void credits straight back. One honest caveat: a carrier adjustment that lands after shipping and exceeds your balance is charged to the card on file.
Wallet balance
$1,247.36 USD
AI
Billy is included,
and an API cannot do his half
The AI assistant drafts a whole label from a pasted order, a screenshot, or a spoken address, and validates the address before you spend anything. That is the half of the job no endpoint does for you — the orders that arrive as a message rather than a webhook — and it runs unlimited on Free.
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 quoted number
is the number debited
One all-in price per service at quote time, and that exact amount leaves the wallet. Fuel, residential, and handling are inside it. The only thing that can move it afterwards is a carrier re-weigh, and that arrives as its own clear ledger entry rather than a line on a monthly bill.
Shipment summary
UPS Ground $12.49
Insurance $0.75
Fuel surcharge $0.32
Total $13.56
Our carrier panel,
not your contracts
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL are quoted on our accounts, so a new account gets all four on its first parcel with no onboarding and nobody to negotiate with. Four is the honest list, and it is deliberately short — if a regional or freight carrier outside it is load-bearing for you, a platform built to carry your own accounts is the better architecture and we will not pretend otherwise.
Compare rates
UPS $12.48 FedEx $13.22 DHL $14.10 USPS $11.79
Duties & taxes paid
A REST API with
unlimited calls, on Free
REST, JSON, one Bearer header, real idempotency keys, and signed webhooks — with unlimited calls on Free as well as Pro. There is no per-call price, no burst tier, and no developer plan to graduate onto, so automating more of the loop never moves you up a tier.
POST /v1/shipments
{
"to": { "name": "Maya" },
"from": { "name": "Alex" },
"service": "ups_ground",
"label_format": "pdf"
}
Webhook delivered
Label ready
CL-1038 · Seattle, US
The part an API-first platform leaves to you
Someone still has to pack the box.
An integration handles the orders your systems already know about. It does not handle the one that came in as a DM while you were taping a carton, and it does not give whoever is packing a screen to work from. That operator side is a product here, not a thing you were expected to go build on top.
Paste or snap a DM, a screenshot, or a handwritten note — Billy pulls the name, address, and item and validates it.
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL come back with all-in prices side by side on one screen.
Buy the one that fits; it debits the same prepaid wallet your API-bought labels come out of.
One-tap print to your phone's share sheet or a thermal printer over Wi-Fi.
Hands full of tape? Hold the mic, speak the address, and Billy quotes it and queues the label.
Billy is included, not a paid tier
Ask about a shipment without writing a query.
On an API-only platform, "where is Maya's package?" is a tracking endpoint, a bit of glue, and a screen somebody has to build. Here it is a question. Hold the mic, ask it, and Billy pulls the tracking history and reads it back — the same assistant that quotes a parcel from a spoken address and queues the label. 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
Speaks plain English · quotes all four carriers as one all-in price each · remembers customers and saved boxes · included on every plan, never a pricier tier.
All-in quotes
One all-in number, whoever owns the account.
Rate-shopping our panel looks the same as rate-shopping your own contracts: the same parcel priced by every carrier at once, each column a single all-in number locked at quote time. What is different is that you did not have to go get the accounts first, and no platform charge is riding on top of the winner.
US → DE 2.6 lbs 12×8×4 in
Cheapest all-in
FedEx
Intl Connect Plus
3–5 days$8.90
$2.20 of duties & taxes prepaid, not billed to your buyer
all-in · no surprises
DHL
Express Worldwide
1–2 days$9.80
$2.50 of duties & taxes prepaid, not billed to your buyer
all-in · no surprises
No per-label charge on top of the winner Void → credit straight back to your wallet Multi-currency display
Public API v1
The same API, with no meter on it.
REST, JSON, one Bearer header, signed webhooks instead of polling, and real idempotency keys — with unlimited calls on Free as well as Pro. The endpoints are the boring part; the part worth comparing is that no number goes up when you call them more.
Unlimited calls on every plan — no per-request price, no burst tier
Signed webhooks instead of polling for tracking events
Real idempotency keys — a retried order never buys two labels
OpenAPI 3.1 spec, no SDK lock-in, and no carrier account to attach first
Read the API docs Get a free API key $0 per call, 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": 2.6, "weight_unit": "lb" },
"service": "fedex_intl_priority"
}
The cost model, not the feature list
Nothing per label. Nothing per call.
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.
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, not a bigger per-label charge
Free
$0 / forever
Enough to run a real integration before anyone asks you for a contract.
50 shipments a month, no monthly minimum to print
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL on our accounts — bring no contracts
REST API with unlimited calls and signed webhooks, on Free
Prepaid wallet: card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, or crypto
All-in quotes — the number you approve is the number debited
Billy is not a paid tier
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.
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. No per-call price at any volume.
Bring the invoice you pay today
On Pro we will work with you to beat the label rates you are already getting from
EasyPostShippoyour own carrier contract No contracts to bring No per-label platform charge Unlimited API calls
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
Who this comparison actually resolves for
Four shapes where BYOCA is the wrong ask.
Nothing here argues with a business that already holds contract rates. These are the four shapes that reach a shipping API with no accounts to bring, and get told to go get some first.
Developers with no contracts yet
Building the integration before the volume exists
You can write the whole quote-and-buy loop this afternoon, but a BYOCA platform wants a carrier relationship you cannot have until you ship. Our four carriers quote your first test parcel, and the calls to get there are unlimited on Free.
4 carriers on our accounts unlimited API calls no per-label charge
goatlabels.io/dashboard/shipments
Sellers with lumpy volume
A drop, a season, a campaign
A metered platform charges in proportion to a month you cannot forecast, and a plan tier asks you to guess it in advance. A prepaid wallet just holds what you put in it: fund before the burst, print through it, pay nothing through the quiet weeks.
A month with zero shipments
$0 — there is no monthly minimum to print
Teams whose orders are not all API-shaped
The orders that arrive as a message
can you ship this one to Austin today?
Drafted, quoted, and queued · CL-1024
Anyone shipping internationally
Duties inside the same all-in number
DDP
duties prepaid, so the quote survives to the door
GoatLabels vs EasyPost FAQ
- Do I need my own negotiated carrier contracts?
- Not with GoatLabels. We rate-shop our own USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL panel, and a new account gets those four quotes on its first parcel with no carrier onboarding, no account numbers, and nobody to negotiate with. EasyPost's model centres on connecting carrier accounts you own — bring your own carrier accounts, in their terms — with EasyPost-supplied rates available depending on the plan. If you already have hard-won contract rates, that ownership is a feature and it is the strongest reason on this page to stay with them.
- How are labels paid for — card per label or a prepaid balance?
- GoatLabels debits a prepaid wallet you fund with a card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfer, or crypto. The all-in quote you approve is the exact amount that leaves the balance, and a label voided before it moves credits straight back to it. That is a different shape from a platform that meters your labels and invoices them: with a wallet, the money is committed before the label rather than reconciled after it. One honest caveat — a carrier adjustment that lands after shipping and exceeds your balance is charged to the card on file.
- Is the GoatLabels API free to call?
- Yes, with unlimited calls on every plan including Free. There is no per-call price, no burst tier, and no separate developer plan to move onto when the automation starts working. See the API docs for endpoints, authentication, and webhooks.
- How many carriers does each platform support?
- GoatLabels rate-shops four: USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL. That is the honest list and it is deliberately short — each is quoted as one all-in price on the same parcel. EasyPost advertises a network in the hundreds, including regional and freight carriers we do not touch. If a carrier outside our four is load-bearing for your business, that breadth is a real advantage and this page is not going to argue you out of it.
- What does it cost to send 500 labels a month on each?
- On GoatLabels: the labels themselves, plus one flat Pro fee if you want unlimited shipments and lower per-label rates — no charge attaches to an individual label and API calls stay unlimited. On EasyPost the arithmetic is a per-label charge multiplied by 500, plus whatever plan carries it, against carrier rates that come from your own contracts on a BYOCA plan. We are not going to print their numbers on our page; read them off easypost.com and multiply. The structural point is that one model scales with label count and the other does not.
- When should I stay on EasyPost?
- Three cases, and they are common. You have negotiated carrier contracts worth more than any platform difference — then bringing your own accounts is exactly what you want. You depend on a carrier outside USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, especially regional or freight. Or you have a working, tested integration and no problem to solve, in which case a comparison page is not a reason to touch it. GoatLabels is the better fit when you have no contracts to bring, want the label paid for out of a prepaid balance instead of metered, and want the per-call price to stay at zero as the automation grows.
Evaluating more than one API? GoatLabels vs Shippo covers the API surface itself, and the docs are open without an account.
Real sellers, real words
Sellers who arrived with no contracts to bring.
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
No carrier contracts. No per-call price.
Bring nothing but the parcel.
Get four quotes.
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.