Methodology
Why no prices are published
Shipping platforms give us prices, but their terms forbid republishing them. So we publish what the prices reveal without reproducing them: who wins, the order of the rest, and relative gaps. Raw prices stay in our database and are never sent to your browser.
Picking the winner
For each request we send the same shipment to every live source in parallel. The winner is the option with the lowest all-in price before tax: base rate + fuel surcharge + any other surcharges reported. Prices in US dollars are converted at the Bank of Canada’s daily rate before comparing. No source pays to be ranked.
The quote tool narrows down in steps. At country level it shows the service that wins most of today’s basket. At province level it asks the live sources for each province’s largest city. At area level it uses the first three characters of the postal code (FSA). Then the exact address, then your own size and services.
The basket
Every day we price 5 everyday goods on 132 parcel lanes (from Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg to 22 destinations in Canada and the US), and freight goods on 8 main corridors. Reference addresses are fixed so the index measures the same thing every day.
| Envelope of documents | Parcel | 0.3 kg · 32×24×3 cm |
| Pair of shoes | Parcel | 1.5 kg · 34×22×13 cm |
| Laptop, boxed | Parcel | 3.5 kg · 50×38×12 cm |
| Small appliance | Parcel | 7 kg · 45×35×35 cm |
| Case of wine | Parcel | 16 kg · 34×26×32 cm |
| Pallet of maple syrup | Pallet (LTL) | 1 × 650 kg · 122×102×110 cm |
| Truckload of lumber | Truckload (FTL) | 20 × 900 kg · 122×102×120 cm |
The index
For each basket item (one good on one lane) we take the day’s cheapest all-in price. The index is the geometric mean of that price relative to the item’s first observed day, times 100. An index of 104 means the cheapest option costs 4% more on average than at the start.
- Premium: how much more a carrier’s best option costs than the cheapest option, for the same item.
- Win share: the share of basket items on which the carrier is cheapest.
- Remoteness: the cheapest price to a destination relative to the median destination, for the same goods.
- Fuel vs base: the fuel surcharge the source reports, as a share of the base rate.
Limitations
- Prices are those charged to a new account; negotiated rates differ.
- Province- and area-level quotes use representative addresses; the winner can change at the exact address, which is the point of the tool.
- The final invoice is set by the source or carrier.