Published rates only · no survey averages · no sponsored placements
3PL pricing in 2026, from published rate cards
Most pages answering this quote a survey average. This one holds 214 published fees from 23 fulfilment operations, each read off the provider's own page, with the URL and the date attached, every row verified 2026-08-04 or later, from 30 sources.
The short answer, if you want one number to carry into a quote call: a standard DTC order costs $2.50 to $9.45 to pick and pack before postage, and every other line is below.
How much does a 3PL cost?
One row per fee category, showing the range across every provider that publishes a figure, on the basis the most of them use. These are published rate-card figures, not quotes and not survey responses: your volume and profile move them. Where a category is missing from this table, it is because fewer than two companies publish a comparable number, and one data point is not a market rate.
| Fee category | Published range | Basis | Who publishes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving and inbound | $325 to $1,000 | per container | Flexport, MyFBAPrep, ShipCalm and Simple Global |
| Pick and pack | $2.50 to $9.45 | per order | Flexport, Fulfyld, Launch Fulfillment and ShipCalm · Shipfusion, Simpl Fulfillment and Simple Global publish a floor, ceiling or formula rather than a rate |
| Account, platform and minimums | $59.99 to $750 | per month | Flexport, Fulfillrite and Simpl Fulfillment |
| Returns processing | $2 to $4.95 | per return | Fulfyld, Launch Fulfillment and ShipCalm |
| Fulfillment, all-in per unit | $3.45 to $13.45 | per unit | Amazon MCF and Walmart WFS |
| Prep and compliance | $0.50 to $1 | per unit | MyFBAPrep and Walmart WFS |
| Storage | $0.75 to $7.50 | per cubic foot per month | Amazon FBA and Walmart WFS |
| Removal and disposal | $0.35 to $2.27 | per unit | Flexport and Walmart WFS |
Ranges are ours, computed over published rows in the same category on the same basis. Rows that are not the fee itself are excluded: figures recording a rate increase or decrease, which are a change to a price rather than a price, and surcharges a vendor's own page describes as an add-on to another fee. Leaving them in gave fulfillment a range of $0.08 to $20, which is neither the cheapest nor the dearest thing anyone charges. Every underlying row, excluded ones included, is at 3PL fee benchmarks.
Why nobody else shows you this table
Because most of the market does not publish. Of the 23 operations we track, 10 publish no dollar figure anywhere, and 12 publish nothing for at least one whole fee category. Those are not the same claim and we never merge them: the second counts a company that discloses its storage rate and withholds its returns fee, and the first does not.
Pages that answer "how much does a 3PL cost" mostly fill that gap with survey averages, which cannot be checked against anything: you cannot click a survey response back to the page it came from. Every figure above can be. We take no referral or affiliate fees from any provider, name the company behind each one, and log every correction we make to our own numbers on the corrections page.
Which providers publish their rates · Every published fee, by vendor · What ShipBob publishes, and what it withholds
The categories with no published range
B2B and wholesale, Inbound placement, Kitting and assembly, Other, Other, Packaging, Payment processing, Software and Surcharges each have published rows in our dataset, but not from two companies on the same basis, so there is no honest range to print. We would rather leave a gap than average across bases that are not comparable. If you have a rate card covering one of them, send it and it goes into the next update.
Every fee, in depth
20 guides, each on one line of a rate card: what drives it, what the published figures are, and what a number outside the band should make you ask.
Have a quote in hand? We will tell you, free, which of these 8 categories it leaves out →
When these ranges move
We re-read every figure against the provider's own page and publish each correction. Leave an address and you get an email when a range on this page changes or a company is added - nothing else, and nothing on a schedule. To come off, email data@ratecardlab.com and we delete the record.
Where these numbers come from
241 rows from 30 provider pages, every row verified 2026-08-04 or later. Nothing here is a quote, an estimate or a survey response. 7 providers publish enough to have a page of their own; read how we collect and verify this, or take the whole dataset from 3PL fee benchmarks under CC BY-SA 4.0.