Flexport’s Alleged Rate War With Freightos Is Rattling Forwarders

Something is happening on the trans-Pacific freight lanes, and the forwarding community is paying close attention. According to multiple sources close to the matter, Flexport has been aggressively discounting ocean freight rates on key China-to-US corridors — in some cases undercutting competitors by 15% to 18% on spot quotes — in what insiders are calling a deliberate land-grab strategy targeting mid-market ecommerce shippers that currently route volume through Freightos-connected brokers.

The alleged campaign, which sources say began in earnest around Q1 2026, has reportedly caught several independent freight forwarders and 3PL operators off guard, particularly those who had built hybrid models around the Freightos Baltic Exchange rate data and its marketplace infrastructure. Whether it constitutes a coordinated pricing strategy or opportunistic market behavior is unconfirmed, but the chatter at this month’s Manifest Freight conference in Las Vegas was reportedly dominated by the topic.

What Is Flexport Actually Doing on Spot Rates?

Sources with direct knowledge of recent Flexport sales activity say the company’s commercial team has been armed with what one contact described as “aggressive latitude” on spot pricing, particularly for ecommerce shippers moving between 5 and 50 containers per month — exactly the sweet spot that Freightos has cultivated through its digital marketplace. The alleged discounting is most visible on COSCO and Evergreen vessel allocations out of Yantian and Ningbo.

“We’ve had three accounts in the last 60 days come back to us with Flexport quotes that were frankly impossible to match without losing money. These weren’t negotiated rates — they were spot quotes pulled from Flexport’s platform overnight.” — a senior commercial director at a Chicago-based independent freight forwarder, speaking on condition of anonymity

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen has not publicly addressed the rate competition claims. A company spokesperson, reached by Ecommerce Times, declined to comment on specific pricing strategy but said Flexport “remains committed to bringing transparency and efficiency to global trade for ecommerce operators of all sizes.”

Why Is Freightos Reportedly at the Center of This?

The Freightos angle is what’s generating the most heat in logistics circles. Sources say Flexport views the Freightos marketplace — which aggregates quotes from dozens of forwarders and gives shippers comparative pricing visibility — as a structural threat to its own direct-shipper model. By allegedly undercutting Freightos-connected brokers on price, Flexport would theoretically erode the marketplace’s value proposition: that it surfaces the best available rate across multiple providers.

Freightos CEO Zvi Schreiber has previously been vocal about the importance of neutral marketplace infrastructure in freight. He has not commented on the current situation, but sources familiar with internal conversations at Freightos say the company is “watching the pattern closely” and has had informal discussions with several affected forwarder partners about coordinated response options. Those discussions are unconfirmed and their nature is unclear.

“If a vertically integrated forwarder decides to price below sustainable margin to pull volume off a neutral marketplace, that’s not competition — that’s platform predation. The question is whether shippers notice when the ‘deal’ comes with reduced service options six months later.” — a logistics industry analyst who advises mid-market 3PLs, speaking not for attribution

Which Ecommerce Operators Are Being Targeted?

The alleged rate war is not affecting all shippers equally. According to sources, Flexport’s commercial outreach has been concentrated on a specific profile:

• DTC brands shipping 200–1,000 CBM per month on trans-Pacific lanes
• Amazon FBA sellers who use a freight forwarder rather than Amazon’s own partnered carrier program
• Shopify Plus merchants who recently scaled international sourcing post-tariff restructuring
• Mid-market brands currently using multi-forwarder strategies to benchmark rates via Freightos

One Shopify Plus operator in the home goods category, who asked not to be named, said a Flexport account executive reached out proactively in March with a quote that was “significantly below” what they’d been paying through their existing forwarder relationship. “It felt coordinated,” the merchant said. “Like they had a list.”

Is ShipBob’s Freight Arm Getting Caught in the Crossfire?

An unexpected subplot in this story involves ShipBob, which has been quietly expanding its freight and import services offering over the past 18 months as part of its push to become a full-stack logistics provider rather than a pure-play 3PL. Sources say ShipBob’s freight team, which partners with select forwarders to offer import-to-fulfillment bundled services, has seen at least two of its forwarding partners lose accounts to Flexport’s alleged pricing campaign.

ShipBob co-CEO Dhruv Saxena declined to comment directly on the competitive dynamic but told Ecommerce Times in a brief exchange: “We’re focused on building the most integrated import-to-last-mile experience in the market. The freight side of this business is still being defined industry-wide, and we feel good about our position with brands that value reliability over a single low quote.”

That framing — reliability versus price — is becoming a recurring defense among the operators allegedly losing volume to Flexport’s discounting. But whether that message resonates with cost-sensitive DTC founders navigating a margin-compressed environment in 2026 is another question entirely.

What Are 3PL Operators Saying Privately?

The 3PL community’s frustration runs deeper than just freight pricing. Several warehouse operators who also offer import coordination services say the alleged Flexport campaign is destabilizing relationships they’ve spent years building with mid-market ecommerce clients. The concern is that once Flexport captures the freight relationship, it becomes easier to pitch those same clients on Flexport’s own warehousing and fulfillment services — effectively walking a customer up the value chain away from their existing 3PL.

“Freight is the top of the funnel for logistics. If you own the import relationship, you’re a phone call away from owning the fulfillment relationship. Everyone in this industry knows that. The rate discounting is the acquisition cost.” — operations director at a Southeast US regional 3PL, speaking anonymously

This concern is particularly acute among mid-sized 3PLs that lack the scale to compete on price with a well-capitalized platform like Flexport. Several operators told Ecommerce Times they are accelerating conversations with software providers like Extensiv (formerly 3PL Central) and Ware2Go about deeper technology integrations to differentiate on service and visibility rather than price.

What Happens Next — and Should Shippers Care?

The immediate beneficiary of any rate war is, of course, the shipper. If Flexport is genuinely undercutting market rates on trans-Pacific ocean freight by double digits, DTC brands and Amazon sellers moving significant import volume have a legitimate reason to get a Flexport quote in the next RFP cycle. The risk, as several sources noted, is evaluating those quotes in context:

• Spot rates can reset sharply when capacity tightens — locked relationships with forwarders often provide buffer
• Flexport’s service infrastructure, while significantly rebuilt under Petersen post-2023, still receives mixed reviews from operators managing complex SKU counts
• Bundled freight-plus-fulfillment offers from any single provider carry concentration risk that multi-vendor stacks hedge against
• Customs and ISF filing performance — not just FOB pricing — determines true landed cost

One senior supply chain consultant who works with brands in the $20M–$100M revenue range put it bluntly: “A rate that looks 18% cheaper on paper needs to be stress-tested against detention and demurrage history, customs clearance speed, and what happens when a container gets held. That’s where cheap forwarders get expensive fast.”

For now, the alleged Flexport rate campaign remains unconfirmed as a formal strategy, and the company has given no public indication it is engaged in targeted competitive pricing against Freightos-adjacent operators. But the pattern being reported by forwarders, 3PLs, and merchants across multiple markets suggests something is shifting — and in a freight environment still recalibrating from two years of post-tariff disruption, even the rumor of a rate war has the power to move relationships.

Ecommerce Times will continue to monitor the situation. Flexport, Freightos, and ShipBob were all contacted for this story. Flexport and ShipBob provided limited responses; Freightos did not respond by publication time.