Plain Freight MCP server

A hosted Model Context Protocol server that quotes real freight. Ask it what it costs to ship something from China to the United States and it returns an all-in delivered-duty-paid price from the same rate card a human customer is quoted from: freight, US customs clearance, import duty and delivery to a US door, in one number.

No API key. No signup. Nothing to install.

https://plainfreight.com/api/mcp

Transport is Streamable HTTP, stateless, protocol version 2025-06-18 (also accepts 2025-03-26 and 2024-11-05).

Add it to a client

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http plain-freight https://plainfreight.com/api/mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor, or anything reading a JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "plain-freight": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://plainfreight.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Check it by hand:

curl -s -X POST https://plainfreight.com/api/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

Tools

Tool	What it does
generate_offer	Prices a shipment. Needs product and weight_kg (0.1 to 2000); dimensions, origin, destination_zip, urgency, email, name, company and notes all improve the answer. Pass carton sizes when you have them: for light bulky cargo the volumetric weight sets the price, not the scale weight.
check_offer_status	Polls the offer until settled is true. Every quote gets re-checked, which can add follow-up questions, change the options, or set needs_review.
track_shipment	Reads the live record for a booked shipment from its tracking link. Read-only.

Two behaviours worth knowing before you build on it:

• needs_review means the prices are withheld on purpose. The goods look restricted (batteries, food, chemicals) and a person has to clear them first. Do not present a number to the user in that case; Plain Freight follows up by email. Branded goods are never held, they are priced on a different channel.
• The tracking token is the credential. Anyone holding the link can read that shipment, and the record deliberately excludes cost and margin fields.

Rate limits: 20 offers per hour per IP, 4 per email address, 30 across all agents per hour. For bulk or programmatic access, email hello@plainfreight.com.

There is also a plain REST version of the same pricing call at POST https://plainfreight.com/api/v1/offer, described in openapi.json, and human documentation at plainfreight.com/for-agents.

Published reference data

The same engine feeds three pages that are free to cite, with CSV and JSON where it makes sense:

• China to USA shipping price index: dated door-to-door prices at twelve weights from 0.5 kg to 1,000 kg, with duty status and transit time on every row.
• Chargeable weight reference: what fifteen real cartons bill, and the same cartons at three divisors.
• US import rules timeline: every de minimis and entry change since May 2025 with its Federal Register citation.

The price-index data is also published as a dataset at plainfreight-com/china-usa-freight-price-index.

What Plain Freight is

A China to USA freight agency for small importers: one all-in DDP price on shipments from 100 g to 2,000 kg, quoted before pickup. Plain Freight is a trading name of Fisto LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company. The price does not include cargo insurance, which the customer arranges separately.

Questions, or a shipment that needs a human: hello@plainfreight.com

Licence

MIT for the contents of this repository. The MCP server itself is a live commercial service; using it means quoting real freight, so treat the prices as real.