USPS
Ground Advantage
2 to 5 days$11.40
all-in · no surprises
Pay per label. Nothing per month.
The wallet is the whole pricing model.
Pay-as-you-go shipping software, explained
The wallet is the whole pricing model.
Pay-as-you-go shipping software charges you per label at the carrier rate from a prepaid wallet, with no monthly fee, so a quiet month costs nothing and a busy month costs exactly the labels you printed.
Four carriers on every parcel
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted side by side, from US and Singapore origins, on every order in the queue.
all quotedFour quotesOne all-in price each.
No monthly feePay per label, nothing per month.
13 connectorsOne To Ship queue.
A wallet, not a plan tier
Top up a prepaid wallet with the amount you choose and spend it label by label at the carrier rate.
PrepaidSpent label by label.
No minimumA slow month costs nothing.
Pay-as-you-goFree covers 50 a month.
Updated 2026-09-11
Two pricing models, side by side
How is pay-as-you-go different from subscription shipping software?
Pay-as-you-go shipping software charges the carrier rate per label from a prepaid wallet, with no monthly fee. A quiet month costs nothing and a busy month costs exactly the labels you printed. Subscription tools invert that: a fixed plan first, labels second. Neither is wrong; the table shows which one fits which seller.
| GoatLabels | Subscription software | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay before the first label | Nothing. Fund a wallet with the amount you choose and print. | A monthly plan, chosen from tiers before you know your volume. |
| What a quiet month costs | Zero. The balance sits until you need it. | The plan fee, shipped or not. |
| What a busy month costs | The labels you printed, at the carrier rate. | The plan fee, and possibly a tier upgrade if you cross a cap. |
| Rate shopping | USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL side by side on every parcel. | Usually included; check which carriers and at which tier. |
| Store connectors and CSV | 13 connectors and bulk CSV import on the same wallet. | Often gated by tier — more stores, higher plan. |
| API access | REST label API on every account. | Commonly a higher tier or a separate product. |
Subscription tools are described here in general terms. Plans, fees, and carrier lists change — compare against each tool's current pricing page before you decide.
Who should use pay-as-you-go shipping software?
Sellers whose volume is low, uneven, or seasonal, because a quiet month costs nothing on a prepaid wallet.
Seasonal and launch-driven shops
Volume that arrives in bursts fits a wallet, not a plan. Pre-fund before the launch, print all week, and pay nothing through the quiet stretch after it. There is no tier to downgrade and no fee to remember to cancel.
Sellers on more than one channel
Subscription tools often price by store count. Pay-as-you-go with 13 connectors, from Shopify and Amazon to TikTok Shop, Etsy, Walmart, and Temu, puts every channel into one To Ship queue and charges for labels, not for connections.
Anyone who has ever paid for a month they did not use
The plan fee is easy to forget until the quiet month makes it obvious. With a prepaid wallet the only money that leaves is the carrier rate on a label you chose to print, and the wallet balance is the whole story.
And when a subscription is the better deal
- Your volume is high and steady every month and a subscription tool's negotiated rates beat the carrier rates you would pay per label. Run the arithmetic on their current pricing page.
- You need features beyond labels, such as inventory, warehouse management, or returns portals, that come bundled with a plan.
- Your team already lives inside a subscription tool and nobody is unhappy. A pricing model is not by itself a reason to migrate.
Orders end to end
Sync the stores. Handle the rest too.
Connect any of the 13 live connectors — Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop, Etsy, Walmart, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, Square, Magento, and Temu — and orders land in one To Ship queue. Import a spreadsheet in bulk by CSV, paste a message, or drop in a screenshot, and the AI assistant drafts the recipient, the parcel, and the service for you to confirm. Every label is a pay-as-you-go debit against a prepaid wallet with no monthly fee, and the quote you accepted for USPS, UPS, FedEx, or DHL is the exact amount that leaves the balance.
1
Orders from anywhere
Store sync, CSV, message, 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
13 connectors, bulk CSV import, DMs, and screenshots — one queue.
2Billy AI
Drafting the order no feed carries.
- Reads a message, a voice note, or a screenshot
- Fills in the buyer, the address, and the parcel 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
Pay-as-you-go, no monthly fee
$12.47
Label purchased
USPS Priority Mail — all-in rate
$12.47
No monthly fee and no minimum to print. Auto-print via PrintNode or the browser.
Where orders actually come from.
13 connectors for the stores, AI for the messages.
Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop, Etsy, Walmart, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, Square, Magento, and Temu sync into one To Ship queue. The orders that never became a record — the custom request agreed in messages, the repeat buyer who asked by text — go into the same queue by paste or screenshot, without a connector existing for them at all.
Shopify
Etsy
WooCommerce
TikTok Shop
Amazon
eBay
Squarespace
Wix
WalmartShopify PlusSoon
Square
BigCommerce
Magento
ZapierSoon
NetSuiteSoon
EcwidSoon
Temu
SheinSoon
ChannelAdvisorSoon
SkuVaultSoon
Zoho InventorySoon
PatreonWhat pay-as-you-go sellers keep, and what they stop paying for.Everything you had before.
Everything you had before.
Without a monthly fee.
Leaving a subscription tool should not cost you the carriers, the store sync, or the API. Those all come with you. What does not come with you is the monthly fee — and what is new is an assistant that turns a message into a drafted label.
One prepaid wallet,
pay-as-you-go
Top up the wallet with the amount you choose and every label is debited at the carrier rate quoted on screen. There is no subscription, no plan tier, and no monthly minimum to print — a slow month costs nothing and the balance waits for the next order.
Wallet balance
$1,247.36USD
AI
AI drafting for orders
that are not JSON
A message or a screenshot is not a structured order. The AI assistant reads it and drafts the whole label from it — recipient, parcel, and service — for you to confirm. For a shop that sells through conversations, that is most of the week.
BillyLIVE
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...
No monthly fee
on the Free plan
Free covers 50 shipments a month with no fee. Past that, Pro is one flat $40 a month with unlimited shipments, never a per-label surcharge.
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 from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL side by side from US and Singapore origins, and the number on screen is the exact amount that leaves your balance. That is the honest carrier list; if you need one outside it, that is a fair reason to stay where you are.
Compare rates
UPS$12.48FedEx$13.22DHL$14.10USPS$11.79
Duties & taxes paid
The API you did not
want to give up
A REST label API with JSON in and out, so the queue, the bulk CSV import, and your own code all buy labels from the same prepaid wallet. Nothing about it sits behind a subscription.
POST /v1/shipments
{
"to": { "name": "Maya" },
"from": { "name": "Alex" },
"service": "ups_ground",
"label_format": "pdf"
}
Webhook delivered
Label ready
CL-1038 · Brooklyn, NY
The packing table, not the desk
A message is a valid order input.
Most tools expect the order to already exist somewhere they can read. When a buyer messages instead, you become the integration. GoatLabels takes the message itself, on the phone that is already next to the tape gun.
Paste the message or drop a screenshot — the AI assistant pulls out the buyer, the address, and the parcel.
No CSV export and no import mapping: the message is the order record.
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL come back as four all-in prices on one screen.
Buy from the prepaid balance and auto-print via PrintNode or print from the browser.
Hold the mic at the packing table and say the address — the assistant drafts it and reads the rate back.
Hands full of packing tape
Talk to Billy, not to an import screen.
Packing is a two-hands job, and most software's answer is a form. Hold the mic, say who it 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 for it afterwards when the buyer asks where the parcel is. 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 import and nothing to map · 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. No monthly fee sits underneath it and no plan tier sits in front of it.
CA → NY2.6 lbs12×8×4 in
Cheapest
UPS
Ground
1 to 5 days$9.85
all-in · no surprises
FedEx
Ground
1 to 5 days$11.20
all-in · no surprises
No carrier invoice the day afterPay-as-you-go from the wallet you fundedMulti-currency display
Public API v1
A REST label API on every account.
Create, rate-shop, and buy in a few REST calls with JSON in and out. The dashboard, the bulk CSV import, and the API all spend from the same prepaid wallet, and none of them sit behind a subscription.
Create, rate-shop, and buy — three calls, no SDK required
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quoted in one response
The same prepaid wallet as the dashboard and the CSV import
Available on every account, no plan tier to clear first
Read the API docs Get an API key$0 monthly fee
curl https://api.goatlabels.io/api/v1/shipments
201 Created · 187msPOST /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"
}
No tier to clear first
No plan tier to clear first.
Pay-as-you-go labels from a prepaid wallet with no monthly fee: fund it, print at the carrier rate, and stop there. The 13 store connectors, bulk CSV import, the REST label API, and the AI assistant come with the account rather than with a tier. Pro is an optional flat plan for the months volume takes off — never a minimum you clear before a label prints.
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 available on every plan
Volume pricing
illustrativeless volumemore volume
more volume → lower per-label rates
Free
$0 / forever
Enough to run a shop through a slow season without a subscription under it.
50 shipments a month, no monthly fee
Pay-as-you-go labels, no monthly fee, no minimum to print
USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL rate-shopped on every parcel
The REST label API and bulk CSV import
The AI assistant that drafts labels from a message or a screenshot
13 store connectors into one To Ship queue
Billy is not a paid tier
The assistant that reads a message or a screenshot into a drafted label comes with the account. Pro adds Billy on Telegram.
Web, every planTelegram, Pro
API on every plan
GET /api/v1/shipments
200 OK · plan: free
The REST label API is not gated by tier.
Bring the invoice you pay today
On Pro we will work with you to beat the label rates you are already getting from
ShippoPirate ShipShipStationNo contractsNo monthly feeStart 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. Other tools' plans and fees move, so compare against their current pricing page rather than a figure on ours. Full pricing details
Who this actually suits
Not everyone should move.
These are the sellers for whom pay-as-you-go labels, the shared queue, and the AI drafting add up to a real difference. The ones who should stay put are named on this page too.
Seasonal and launch-driven shops
Q4 rush, quiet spring
Volume that arrives in bursts fits a prepaid wallet better than a subscription. Pre-fund before the rush, print all night, then pay nothing at all through the quiet months after it.
4 carriers per quote no monthly fee bulk CSV import
goatlabels.io/dashboard/shipments
Shops on more than one channel
13 connectors, one queue
Connect the storefronts that have connectors, and handle the market-stall sale, the wholesale enquiry, and the friend-of-a-friend order in the same queue as everything else.
One queue, connector or not
Order #1024 · pasted from a comment thread
Made-to-order sellers living in messages
The orders that never became JSON
got the dress! can you ship to Austin?
Label drafted · CL-1024
Teams with a developer on call
REST and the dashboard, one balance
1
wallet behind the API and the dashboard
Real sellers, real words
Sellers who stopped paying for months they did not 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
Pay-as-you-go shipping software FAQ
- What is pay-as-you-go shipping software?
- It is shipping software that charges per label at the carrier rate from a prepaid wallet, with no monthly fee. You fund the wallet, print labels across USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, and the balance goes down by the quoted amount each time.
- Is pay-as-you-go cheaper than a subscription?
- For low, irregular, or seasonal volume, usually yes, because a quiet month costs nothing. For high, steady volume a subscription with negotiated rates can come out ahead. Compare against the subscription tool's current pricing page rather than any figure quoted here.
- Is there a minimum monthly spend?
- No. GoatLabels has no monthly fee and no minimum to print. A month with no labels is a month with no charge.
- Is there a shipment cap?
- Free covers 50 shipments a month. Pro is a flat $40 a month with unlimited shipments and cheaper label rates.
- How does the prepaid wallet work?
- You top up the wallet with an amount you choose, and every label is debited from that balance at the all-in carrier rate quoted on screen. The dashboard, the bulk CSV import, and the REST label API all spend from the same wallet.
- Do I lose features by not paying a subscription?
- Not with GoatLabels. Four-carrier rate shopping, 13 store connectors, bulk CSV import, auto-print via PrintNode or the browser, the REST label API, and the AI assistant that drafts labels are all available on a pay-as-you-go account.
- Which carriers are included?
- USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, quoted side by side on every parcel, from US and Singapore origins.
Leaving a specific plan? See the ShipStation alternative with no monthly fee or the Stamps.com alternative. Want the mirror of this page? Read shipping labels without a monthly subscription. Weighing a contract instead? See contract vs pay as you go for high-volume teams.
Test it on the next order that lands.
Pay for labels.
Not for months.
Fund a wallet, put the next order through, and compare the all-in USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL quote against what the same label costs you today, plan fee included.
Sign up in seconds. No card required. No monthly fee.