At a glance
Average postage cost per EasyPost-routed parcel over the period, post-discount and including standard surcharges. Because EasyPost rate-shops across many carriers (USPS, FedEx, UPS, regional carriers such as OnTrac, and international partners) and bills against its volume-pooled negotiated rates, this number reflects the outcome of every rate-shopping decision your rules made, not a single carrier’s rack rate. It is the headline unit-economics figure for the despatch operation: the denominator of shipping-cost-as-a-share-of-revenue, and the first place a silent cost creep shows up.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your EasyPost shipment and billing data. The card sums the billed cost of every EasyPost label bought in the window and divides by the count of those shipments:avg_shipping_cost = SUM(shipment.selected_rate.rate + surcharges + easypost_fee) / COUNT(shipments) over the rolling 30 days.
A few mechanics worth knowing:
- It is a blended average across carriers, not per carrier. The headline pools USPS, FedEx, UPS, regional and international volume. A shift in the carrier mix (more FedEx Ground, less USPS Ground Advantage) moves the average even if no single carrier changed its rate. Use Shipments by Underlying Carrier to separate mix from rate.
- It reflects net-billed, not rack rates. EasyPost’s pooled discount is already applied. The number is what you actually paid, so a typical EasyPost account reads below the equivalent direct-to-carrier rack rate.
- Refunds settle on the next cycle. Cancelled or voided labels are refunded by EasyPost on the next billing cycle. Until a refund posts, the card shows the gross figure, so a heavy void week can read slightly high until the credit lands.
- Zone and weight are the real drivers. Far-zone and heavier parcels cost more regardless of carrier. A rise in this card is more often a shift in where and what you are shipping than a carrier rate change. Pair with Cost by Zone.
Worked example
A US DTC apparel merchant ships through EasyPost, rate-shopping mostly USPS and regional carriers with FedEx for expedited orders. Reading taken at 09:00 ET on 23 Jun 26 for the trailing 30 days (24 May 26 to 22 Jun 26) against the prior 30 days.
The card reads 5.62 (prior 30D), a +5.9 percent rise. The alert at
+10% vsP has not tripped. Five things to notice:
- A 5.9 percent rise that does not trip the alert is usually carrier rate increases, not a problem. USPS and FedEx both publish January general rate increases (typically 5 to 6 percent); those propagate through the 30-day window over the following weeks. This is the expected, non-actionable kind of creep. The +10 percent threshold is set above routine rate rises on purpose.
- Check mix before blaming rates. The fastest way to confirm “rates, not mix” is Shipments by Underlying Carrier. If USPS Ground Advantage share (the cheapest line at 24.80) had risen, the average would climb with no carrier changing a single rate. Here the mix is stable, so the rise is genuinely rate-driven.
- The regional carrier is the cheap lever. OnTrac at $6.20 is well below USPS Priority and FedEx for the West Coast metros it serves. Rate-shopping is correctly selecting it where it wins. If its share fell, the average would rise; watch it.
- Read it against on-time performance, not in isolation. Pair with Avg Transit (days) and On-Time Delivery Rate. A 5.9 percent cost rise with stable transit and on-time means you are paying a bit more for the same service quality (a rate story). A cost rise paired with a transit or on-time drop means rate-shopping has started trading reliability for price, which is a rules-tuning conversation with your EasyPost contact.
- Annualise before deciding it is fine. At 15,480 parcels a month, 5,100 a month, about $61k a year. Below the alert threshold does not mean below notice; finance should still see the trend on Cost Per Shipment Trend.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Average shipping cost is the headline unit-economics number. Pair it with these to tell rate from mix from geography:Reconciling against the source
Where to look in EasyPost’s own tooling: EasyPost is the aggregator, so the cost reconciliation lives in EasyPost’s billing, with the underlying carrier charges visible per shipment.- Aggregator billing: EasyPost Dashboard → Billing → Statements. The monthly statement shows total spend and shipment count, from which the average is straightforward. This is the authoritative figure for what you paid EasyPost.
- Per-shipment detail: EasyPost Dashboard → Shipments → Detail. Each shipment shows the selected rate, surcharges and the EasyPost fee, the same components this card sums. Programmatically this is the bought
rateon each shipment viaGET /v2/shipments. - Underlying carrier scans and charges: the carrier’s own portal (USPS Business Customer Gateway, FedEx Billing Online, the UPS Billing Center) holds the carrier’s view of the charge, including post-shipment adjustments such as dim-weight reweighs and address corrections, which can land days after delivery.