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Vinay Bhosle
Vinay Bhosle

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Give Your AI Agent Real-Time Shipping Intelligence in 2 Minutes

#ai #webdev #automation #api

If you're building AI agents that touch logistics, supply chain, or international trade, you've probably hit this wall: your agent can reason about shipping but has zero access to actual rate data.

No freight rates. No demurrage charges. No surcharge breakdowns. No port congestion info. Just hallucinated numbers.

I built ShippingRates to fix that — 24 MCP tools that give any AI agent real-time access to ocean shipping data from Maersk, MSC, CMA-CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, and COSCO across 184 countries.

It's now live on the Apify Store as a pay-per-event MCP server. No crypto wallet needed. No API key setup. Just connect and query.

What you get

Free tools (no charge):

  • shippingrates_stats — database coverage stats
  • shippingrates_lines — list all carriers
  • shippingrates_search — full-text search across all data
  • shippingrates_fx — currency exchange rates

Paid tools ($0.03 - $0.35 per call):

  • Demurrage & detention calculators (per carrier, per country, per container type)
  • Freight rate lookups by trade lane
  • Surcharge breakdowns (BAF, CAF, GRI, PSS, war risk)
  • Port congestion data and vessel schedules
  • Local charges (THC, documentation fees, seal fees)
  • Inland haulage rates and CFS tariffs
  • Total landed cost calculator
  • Route risk scoring

All data is verified from official carrier tariff PDFs. Zero estimates, zero hallucinations.

Connect to Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shippingrates": {
      "url": "https://vinaybhosle--shippingrates-mcp.apify.actor/mcp"
    }
  }
}
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That's it. Claude now has access to all 24 shipping tools.

Example: Calculate D&D costs

Once connected, just ask Claude:

"What are the demurrage charges for a 40HC container with Maersk in India if I'm 5 days late?"

Claude calls shippingrates_dd_calculate and returns the actual slab-by-slab breakdown from the carrier's published tariff — not a guess.

Example: Compare carriers

"Compare detention rates across all 6 carriers for a 20GP container in Germany"

Claude calls shippingrates_dd_compare and returns a side-by-side comparison table showing free days, per-diem rates, and total cost at different day counts.

Why this matters

Container shipping has $2.3 trillion in annual cargo value. The data is fragmented across carrier PDFs, port authority websites, and proprietary systems. AI agents need structured, real-time access to this data to be useful in logistics workflows.

This is the first shipping intelligence MCP server on the Apify Store. If you're building anything in freight tech, trade compliance, or supply chain automation — this is your data layer.

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