See the full picture: freight rates, demurrage, detention, surcharges, and total landed cost across Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, Yang Ming, and ZIM.
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The freight rate you see on a carrier's website or get from a broker is rarely the final cost of moving a container from origin to destination. Ocean freight typically represents only 60% to 75% of the total landed cost. The remaining 25% to 40% comes from a maze of accessorial charges, surcharges, and penalties that vary by carrier, route, port, and season. Without comparing these hidden costs side by side, you could choose a carrier with the lowest headline rate and still end up paying significantly more in total.
Consider a real-world example: shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Carrier A might quote $2,800 for the ocean freight but offer only 4 free days for demurrage and charge $500 in destination terminal handling. Carrier B quotes $3,100 but offers 7 free days and charges $350 for terminal handling. If your average dwell time is 6 days, Carrier B actually saves you $450 on total cost despite the higher freight rate.
A complete rate comparison must account for every cost component between the shipper's dock and the consignee's warehouse:
ShippingRates is the only platform that provides programmatic access to tariff data from all 8 major carriers in a single, unified API. Whether you are a freight forwarder building a quote comparison tool, an enterprise shipper optimizing your routing, or an AI agent making autonomous shipping decisions, our 27 endpoints give you everything you need:
All data is available via REST API with x402 micropayments (Base and Solana), or through our MCP server for direct integration with AI agents running on Claude, GPT, or any MCP-compatible platform.
Our step-by-step tutorial shows you how to connect to the ShippingRates API, compare D&D rates, and build a landed cost estimator in under an hour. The free tier gives you 25 requests per month to test and prototype.
ShippingRates provides data for the 8 largest container carriers by TEU capacity: Maersk, MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company), CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE (Ocean Network Express), Evergreen, Yang Ming, and ZIM. Together these carriers control over 80% of global container shipping capacity across all major trade lanes.
Our rate data is updated on a weekly cycle for standard tariff rates and daily for spot market surcharges and accessorial charges. D&D tariffs are refreshed whenever carriers publish amendments, which we monitor continuously. Transit time and port congestion data is updated in real time based on vessel tracking feeds.
The total landed cost includes far more than just the ocean freight rate. It encompasses: the base freight rate, origin local charges, origin haulage, BAF and CAF surcharges, war risk and piracy surcharges, EU ETS carbon levy, destination terminal handling charges, demurrage risk, detention risk, destination haulage, customs fees, and any applicable tariffs or duties. Our total-cost API endpoint calculates all of these components for a given route.
Yes. ShippingRates offers a full REST API with 27 endpoints covering rates, D&D comparisons, local charges, transit times, port congestion, regulatory data, and more. We also offer an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for AI agent integration. The free tier includes 25 requests per month. API documentation is available at api.shippingrates.org/docs.
Unlike broker-focused platforms that require login and manual quote requests, ShippingRates provides instant programmatic access to carrier tariff data. Our unique differentiators are: real D&D comparison across all 8 carriers (no competitor offers this), dual-chain crypto payment support via x402, an MCP server for AI agent consumption, and coverage of all major surcharges and accessorial charges in a single API.