Guides / Pick & pack

Pick and Pack Pricing in 2026: Every Published 3PL Rate

By Wayan Sunnasy Published 2026-08-05 Data last verified 2026-08-04 35 sources How we verify →

You have two or three quotes open and each one prices picking differently. One says $2.65 per order plus $0.95 an item. One says “from $7.00” and includes postage. One says nothing at all and asks you to book a call. You want to know what the average additional-item pick fee is so you can tell whether you’re being had.

The honest answer is that the average is not computable, and chasing it will cost you money. Below is every published pick, pack, and per-order fulfillment rate we could source, the mechanics that actually drive your cost per order, and the specific things a number above or below the published band should make you ask.

What is pick and pack pricing in 2026?

Pick and pack is what a 3PL charges to take the items in an order off the shelf and box them. It is quoted in two shapes, and which shape you are being quoted matters more than the rate itself: a per-order fee covering the first item or the first few picks, and an additional-item fee for every pick after that.

On the rate cards we could source as of 2026-08-04, published additional-item pick fees run $0.23–$1.25. A single-item order lands roughly between $1.36 and $7.74+ depending on the structure, and most of that spread is postage sitting inside or outside the number rather than one warehouse being five times dearer than another.

There is no usable average between those two figures, and that is the finding this guide exists for. What follows is the entire published set, vendor by vendor, with the structure column first.

Every published pick/pack and per-order rate we have

This is the full set from our two rate datasets. Not a survey, not an estimate, just what vendors put in writing on a public page as of 2026-08-04. Read the structure column first. It is doing more work than the dollar figure.

VendorFeeAmount (USD)StructureConditionsSource
ShipCalmDTC per-order fee2.65Per order, flatStandard DTC orderShipCalm
ShipCalmDTC per-item pick fee0.95Per itemListed separately from the order feeShipCalm
ShipCalmDTC drop-shipped order fee3.65Per order, flatDrop-ship ordersShipCalm
ShipCalmDTC inner-pack / case fee2.95 / 4.95Per unitInner-pack and case picksShipCalm
ShipCalmB2B single- / multi-parcel order3.55 / 9.45Per order, flatB2B channelShipCalm
ShipCalmOversized surcharge0.12Per lb over 15 lbAdds to the aboveShipCalm
FulfyldAll-inclusive per-order fee7.74Per order, bundled501–1,000 orders/mo tier, 4–12 oz, standard shipping; published average ($7.74+), not a quoted rate; includes postage, pick & pack, packaging, labelFulfyld
FulfyldAll-inclusive per-order range7.51–10.27Per order, bundledPublished averages, both in the 4–12 oz band; varies by volume tier and destination, not by weight; shown with a ”+”Fulfyld
FulfyldAdditional item pick fee0.50Per itemOnly beyond the first 5 picks, which are freeFulfyld
Simpl FulfillmentBase per-order feefrom 7.00Per order, bundled, floorWeight-based; includes up to 3 picks, postage, pick-pack, packagingSimpl
Simple GlobalPick and pack feeup to 1.75Per order, ceilingCustom rates by volume; no additional-item rate publishedSimple Global
Launch FulfillmentOrder processing fee2.50Per order, flatVendor labels this a sample rate, not a guaranteed quoteLaunch
Launch FulfillmentItem picking fee0.75–1.25Per item, rangeSame sample-rate caveatLaunch
ShipfusionFirst pick fee1.36–1.52Per orderDrawn from case-study examples on the pricing page, not a rate cardShipfusion
ShipfusionConsecutive pick fee0.23–0.28Per itemSame case-study caveatShipfusion
FulfillritePick-and-pack monthly minimum399Per month, floorRoughly 140 orders; no per-order rate publishedFulfillrite
FlexportB2B order processing fee7.00Per order, flatB2B/wholesale onlyFlexport
FlexportEach / case / pallet picking0.50 / 1.50 / 14.00Per unit / carton / palletB2B/wholesale onlyFlexport
FlexportDomestic DTC outbound fulfillmentNot publishedQuote-gatedVaries by rate card, service level, item sizeFlexport
Amazon MCFSmall standard 0–4 oz, standard speed, 1 unit7.34Bundled weight tier, per unit, banded by units per order3-business-day deliveryMCF rate card
Amazon MCFSmall standard 0–4 oz, standard speed, 4+ units3.64Bundled weight tierRate card’s 4+ unit entry for the same tierMCF rate card
Amazon MCFLarge standard 1–2 lb / 2–3 lb, 1 unit10.64 / 11.75Bundled weight tierStandard speedMCF rate card
Amazon MCFLarge standard 3–20 lb, 1 unit11.75 + 0.70/lb over 3 lbBundled weight tier + linearStandard speedMCF rate card
Amazon MCFSmall bulky up to 30 lb18.08 + 0.75/lbBundled weight tier + linearStandard speedMCF rate card
Amazon MCFFuel and logistics surcharge3.5% of the feePercentage overlayAll US MCF fulfillment feesMCF rate card
Walmart WFSStandard item ≤1 lb / 2 lb / 3 lb3.45 / 4.95 / 5.45Bundled weight tier, per unitStandard fulfillment feeWFS fees
Walmart WFSStandard item 4–20 lb5.75 + 0.40/lb over 4 lbBundled weight tier + linear, per unitStandard fulfillment feeWFS fees
Walmart WFSApparel / hazmat / sub-$10 retail surcharge0.50 / 0.50 / 1.00Per-unit add-onAdds to the tier feeWFS fees
ShipBobStarting pick and pack feeNot publishedQuote-gatedPage states all quotes are customizedShipBob
Amazon FBACurrent per-tier fulfillment fee tableNot published (static)Quote/login-gatedExact 2026 US table lives in the JS-rendered pricing tool and login-gated Seller Central helpAmazon

Four things should jump out. Only one vendor here (ShipCalm) publishes a complete, unconditional DTC structure: a firm order fee and a firm per-item fee, both unqualified. Several of the most quotable numbers are floors (“from $7.00”) or ceilings (“up to $1.75”), which are marketing anchors, not rates. Two of the tidiest-looking figures, Shipfusion’s $1.36–$1.52 first pick and $0.23–$0.28 consecutive pick, come from case-study examples the vendor published rather than from a rate card. And the largest fulfillment providers in the table publish weight tiers that swallow the pick fee entirely, so there is no pick fee to compare.

Averaging across those rows would produce a number that describes nothing. Fulfyld’s $7.74+ average order includes the postage and the box. A $2.65 ShipCalm order does not. A $3.45 WFS unit is a unit, not an order. Blending them is how operators end up “benchmarking” their way into a worse deal.

Stop normalizing quotes by hand. The 3PL Quote Normalizer Kit takes your order profile plus up to 5 competing rate cards and returns true all-in cost per order, a 12-month projection, and breakeven volumes — plus the RFP template and 40-point contract red-flag checklist. Get the Kit →

First item vs additional item: where the real money moves

The first-item/additional-item split is the dominant unbundled structure, and the reason “average pick fee” is a broken question. Two vendors can quote nearly identical first-item rates and diverge by thousands of dollars a month once your basket grows.

Here is the same order priced across the published structures, at 1 to 8 items. Every input is a real published rate; the item counts are an illustrative order profile.

Items in orderShipCalm ($2.65 order + $0.95/item)Shipfusion ($1.36–1.52 first + $0.23–0.28 each)Launch ($2.50 order + $0.75–1.25/item)Fulfyld ($7.74+ average all-in, 5 free picks)
1$3.60$1.36–$1.52$3.25–$3.75$7.74
2$4.55$1.59–$1.80$7.74
3$5.50$1.82–$2.08$4.75–$6.25$7.74
5$7.40$2.28–$2.64$6.25–$8.75$7.74
8$10.25$2.97–$3.48$8.50–$12.50$9.24

Note the ShipCalm column carries an assumption we cannot resolve from the published page: the order fee and the per-item pick fee are listed as separate lines, so we have modelled the per-item fee as applying to every item including the first. Whether the order fee already covers the first pick is exactly the question to put in writing before you sign. On a 2,000-order month at three items per order, that single ambiguity is worth $1,900.

Now the part that matters. The spread between structures at one item per order is modest, roughly $1.36 to $7.74+, and most of that gap is postage being inside or outside the number. At eight items the ranking inverts. ShipCalm’s unbundled model reaches $10.25 before you have bought a label; Fulfyld’s bundled model reaches $9.24 with the label included. The vendor that looked 2.1x more expensive on a single-item order is cheaper on an eight-item order, all in.

Run it at volume. Two thousand orders a month:

  • ShipCalm’s published rates: $7,200/mo at one item per order, $11,000/mo at three. A two-item shift in average basket costs $3,800/mo, or $45,600 a year.
  • Shipfusion’s case-study band, low end: $2,720/mo at one item, $3,640/mo at three. The same basket shift costs $920/mo, or $11,040 a year.

Identical change in your business. A 4x difference in what it does to your invoice, driven entirely by the ratio between the first-item fee and the additional-item fee. That ratio, not the headline rate, is the number to negotiate. Shipfusion’s published examples imply an additional item costs roughly 17–18% of a first pick. ShipCalm’s imply 36% of the order fee. Fulfyld’s imply zero for the first five picks and then $0.50.

For context on where those sit against the wider market, aggregator survey data puts the typical B2C first item at $2–$3 (survey average $3.20) and the additional item at $0.30–$0.75 (survey average $0.48), per Fulfill.com’s 2026 provider survey. A separate 2026 figure widely cited is $2.75 first item, $0.50 each additional. Those are survey averages of a self-reported sample, not verified rate cards. Useful as a sanity check, useless as a negotiating position on their own.

Bundled weight tiers: MCF and WFS versus a pick fee

Amazon MCF and Walmart WFS do not have a pick fee. They have a weight tier that absorbs picking, packing, materials, and the outbound label into one number. Comparing them to an unbundled 3PL means adding postage to the 3PL side, which is the variable you almost never have at quote time.

Here is what the bundled models charge for a single-unit order, using the published tiers. MCF figures are shown both bare and with the 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge that applies to all US MCF fulfillment fees.

Order weightAmazon MCF, standard speed, 1 unitMCF + 3.5% surchargeWalmart WFS, per unit
0–4 oz$7.34$7.60$3.45 (≤1 lb tier)
1–2 lb$10.64$11.01$4.95 (2 lb)
2–3 lb$11.75$12.16$5.45 (3 lb)
10 lb$16.65$17.23$8.15
25 lb$35.33$36.57$17.15

The 10 lb and 25 lb figures are computed from the published formulas: MCF large standard 3–20 lb is $11.75 + $0.70/lb over 3 lb; MCF small bulky up to 30 lb is $18.08 + $0.75/lb over 2 lb; WFS 4–20 lb is $5.75 + $0.40/lb over 4 lb; WFS 21–30 lb is $15.55 + $0.40/lb over 21 lb. All from the MCF rate card and the WFS fee schedule.

Three structural differences decide whether bundled beats unbundled for you.

At a fixed volume tier and shipping speed, weight is the only lever. In a bundled model your cost per order is then a step function of weight. Reduce items per order and you save nothing. Reduce package weight by an ounce across a tier boundary and you save a dollar. That is the opposite of the optimization problem an unbundled pick fee gives you.

Units multiply differently. WFS is billed per unit, so a three-unit order of 1 lb items is 3 × $3.45 = $10.35. MCF’s published 4+ unit entry for small standard 0–4 oz is $3.64 versus $7.34 for one unit, and both are per unit — the fee is charged on each unit, at a rate that steps down as the order gets larger. Amazon’s rate card lays each size tier out in four columns headed “1-unit order” through “4+ unit order,” so a cell is the rate that applies at that order size rather than a total for the order; its surcharge note refers to “the item’s base fulfillment fee,” and its battery surcharge is stated as “$0.11 per unit.” Amazon’s pricing page advertises the multi-unit banding as a saving of up to 50% on per-unit fees, and $7.34 to $3.64 is a 50.4% saving — which is that sentence, arithmetically.

This paragraph previously told you the rate card’s unit column read “per order.” The rate card has no unit column. That column was ours, it said per order, and it was wrong: read literally it made a four-unit order cost less in total than a one-unit order. We corrected 23 rows on 17 August 2026 and logged it. Two things are worth taking from that rather than from the fix. The first is that the error was self-evident from inside our own file — the row recording Amazon’s 2026 increase was already stored as per unit while every rate row it applied to said per order, and one vendor cannot bill on two bases at once. The second is that this guide told you to confirm the basis in writing before modelling MCF against a 3PL quote. That advice was right, we had not taken it ourselves, and it is now confirmed: per unit.

Speed and geography are priced as multipliers, not line items. MCF small standard 0–4 oz goes from $7.34 at standard speed to $10.70 expedited for a single unit, a 45.8% premium for one delivery day. At 4+ units the same jump is $3.64 to $3.96, only 8.8%. Outside the 48 contiguous states plus DC, MCF’s remote area surcharge is 100% of the fulfillment fee for standard size and 200% for oversized, turning a $7.34 order into $14.68 before fuel. On the discount side, MCF Preferred Pricing offers up to 15% off outbound fulfillment for a 6- or 12-month commitment, which would take that $7.34 tier to $6.24 — a term-commitment discount rather than a volume discount, and the only published percentage off outbound fulfillment fees anywhere in our data. Volume-tiered pricing does exist elsewhere in it: MyFBAPrep’s per-unit prep fee drops from $1.00 at 5,000 units a month to $0.50 at 50,000, and Fulfyld notes its storage tiers get up to 13% cheaper at higher volume.

One published oddity worth flagging because it will not survive a cost model: WFS’s tier table is not monotonic as printed. A 30 lb standard item computes to $19.15 ($15.55 + $0.40 × 9), while a 31 lb item computes to $14.55, which is $4.60 cheaper for a heavier item. That is what the published schedule says. Verify it with Walmart before building a packaging strategy on it.

Amazon FBA belongs in this section but cannot be benchmarked properly, which we cover next. What we can say is dated: Amazon’s announced 2026 change is an average $0.08 per-unit increase effective January 15, 2026, and its April 15, 2024 adjustment cut standard-size fulfillment by $0.20 and large bulky by $0.61 per unit against the then-current baseline. Those 2024 figures are historical deltas, not current rates. Separately, a temporary 3.5% fuel surcharge on FBA fulfillment fees, roughly $0.17 per unit on average, took effect April 17, 2026.

What we can’t benchmark, and why the published set is skewed

This is the part most pick-fee articles skip. The vendors that publish real numbers are the minority, and they are not a random minority.

In our mid-market dataset, eleven providers publish no dollar figure for pick and pack at all: eFulfillment Service, Red Stag Fulfillment, ShipHero, ShipNetwork, Falcon Fulfillment, Atomix Logistics, Cahoot, a2b Fulfillment, ShipMonk, ShipBob, and Ryder E-commerce by Whiplash, for which we could not locate a pricing page on the vendor’s own domain at all.

Some are refreshingly blunt about it. Cahoot’s pricing page states that “you won’t see a rate card.” a2b’s says “you won’t see a rate card on our website.” Red Stag’s get-pricing page is a multi-step lead form; its own pricing blog cites third-party industry averages rather than Red Stag’s rates. ShipHero’s 3PL billing documentation describes the fee categories (recurring, receiving, storage, shipment, return, ad hoc) with no dollar amounts attached to any of them. Atomix lists receiving, storage, pick and pack, shipping, kitting, and software as categories and directs you to book a meeting.

ShipBob deserves a specific mention because it is the most-searched name in the category. Its pricing page lists implementation, receiving, warehousing, and pick/pack/ship as categories. The only numeric figure on the page is a zero: the WMS/software platform fee, stated as completely free. Starting pick and pack, bin/shelf/pallet storage, inbound receiving, onboarding, kitting, returns management, and B2B/EDI order fees are all quote-gated. “ShipBob does not publish a pick and pack rate” is a fact, and it is the most useful thing we can tell you about ShipBob’s pick and pack rate.

Even the partial publishers have holes. Flexport publishes storage, removal, receiving, and its entire B2B picking schedule, but its domestic DTC outbound fulfillment fee is quote-gated. Simple Global publishes hourly value-added-service rates and a $1.75 pick-and-pack ceiling, but not setup, packaging, order minimums, kitting, returns, or account management. Amazon publishes MCF’s full rate card openly while keeping FBA’s current per-tier table inside a JavaScript-rendered pricing tool and login-gated Seller Central help pages.

So what does that do to the “published band”? It biases it in a direction we cannot measure. The vendors publishing any per-order or per-item figure at all (ShipCalm, Fulfyld, Launch, Simpl, Simple Global, Shipfusion, Fulfillrite) are smaller operators using transparency as a differentiator and self-serve signup as a channel. Only ShipCalm’s pair is firm and unconditional. The rest are tier-bound (Fulfyld), vendor-labelled sample rates (Launch), a floor (Simpl), a ceiling (Simple Global), case-study examples (Shipfusion), or a monthly minimum with no per-order rate behind it (Fulfillrite). The enterprise and upper-mid-market names route everything through a salesperson. A negotiated rate at 20,000 orders a month might sit well below any list price in our table, or a premium provider’s rate might sit well above it. We do not know, and neither does anyone publishing an “industry average pick fee.” Nobody has a representative sample, because most of the market’s prices are private by design.

Treat the published band as what it is: a set of list prices from vendors willing to show them. It is a reference point for whether a quote is plausible. It is not a market average, and we will not compute one from structurally different fees. Our methodology page has the full sourcing rules, and the living benchmark table carries every row with its source and last-verified date.

What a rate above or below the band should trigger

Above the band. Every published unbundled DTC per-order fee we have sits between $1.36 and $3.65, and every published additional-item fee between $0.23 and $1.25 — with the caveat that both of those floors are Shipfusion’s case-study figures rather than rate-card rates. B2B is a separate schedule and runs higher: ShipCalm publishes $3.55 single-parcel and $9.45 multi-parcel, Flexport $7.00. If your DTC quote’s per-order fee is above $3.65, the first question is not “can you come down” but “what is inside it.” Postage? The box and void fill? The first pick? Fulfyld’s $7.74+ average and Simpl’s “from $7.00” look expensive next to ShipCalm’s $2.65 until you notice they include the label. Get the inclusion list in writing before you argue about the number.

If your additional-item fee is above $1.25, it is above every published figure in our dataset and above the $0.30–$0.75 range in the Fulfill.com survey. That is your strongest single piece of leverage, because additional-item pricing is where multi-item brands quietly lose the most and where vendors have the most room.

Below the band. A conspicuously low pick fee means the margin is somewhere else. Look for it in four places. Monthly and quarterly minimums: Flexport raised its monthly minimum fulfillment spend to $5,000 effective January 1, 2026, up from $500; ShipCalm carries a $6,000 quarterly minimum billed pay-the-difference; Simpl carries a $750/month minimum, roughly 100 orders at its base tier; Fulfillrite carries a $399/month pick-and-pack minimum plus a $59.99/month account fee. Market-wide, the average monthly minimum reached $517 in 2026, up 53% from $337.50 in 2024. Second, shipping markup, reported at 5–20% over carrier cost, or a flat $0.50–$1.50 per package. Third, receiving and compliance penalties: ShipCalm publishes $150 for a delivery without an ASN and $250 for a delivery without an appointment. Fourth, the split-shipment rule: a second full pick-and-pack fee when one order ships from two locations, plus multi-box surcharges reported at $3–$8 per extra carton.

The magnitude of this gap is documented. One aggregator case study found a quoted $2.75/order rate represented roughly 16% of the actual all-in invoice once account management, tech fees, and minimum shortfalls were added, with the quoted-to-actual spread typically running 60–120%. Our hidden fees guide walks the full category list.

Either way, make the rate hold still. Standard rate-increase language, which makes rates adjustable for “changes in operating costs, labor rates, or market conditions” on 30 days’ notice, is a blank check. The negotiated alternative is a cap at 3–5% or CPI, whichever is lower, with 60–90 days’ notice and an exit right if the increase exceeds the cap. Note also that some providers give less notice on pass-throughs than on their own fees: ShipBob’s terms of service specify 30 days for general fee changes but only 15 days for carrier-surcharge pass-throughs, and state that continued use after the effective date means acceptance. See our contract red flags guide for the rest.

And keep a copy of the quote. Beardbrand, on the record with Practical Ecommerce, described a new 3PL that “altered quoted rates without notification” during a warehouse move, caught only because the ops manager had kept a printed copy of the original quote. The brand expected per-order shipping cost to fall from $13 to about $10 after the move; it rose to $14.50 instead, and only dropped below the $10 target after a second move. That is a single named case, not a statistic, but it is the failure mode this whole exercise exists to prevent.

What to do next

  1. Get your real items-per-order distribution, not the average. Pull last 90 days from your OMS and bucket it: what share of orders are 1 item, 2, 3, 5+. The average hides the tail, and the tail is where additional-item fees compound.
  2. Force every quote into the same structure. Order fee, first-item fee, additional-item fee, packaging, label, surcharges, as separate lines. If a vendor will not itemize, that is an answer. Our apples-to-apples comparison guide has the normalization worksheet.
  3. Ask the two questions that resolve the ambiguities above: does the per-order fee include the first pick, and does a split shipment incur a second full pick-and-pack fee.
  4. Price the bundled alternatives at your actual weights. If your median package is under 1 lb and mostly single-unit, WFS’s $3.45 and MCF’s $7.34 are real comparators, surcharges included.
  5. Model the switch before you commit, including the minimums you would run in parallel during cutover. See what it costs to leave a 3PL.

Sources

All rows verified 2026-08-04.

Who publishes pick and pack rates

4 of the 7 providers whose rate cards we hold publish pick and pack rates outright. Each page below lists every fee that provider publishes, with the source URL and the date we read it.

  • ShipCalm 10 published pick and pack rates · 35 fees in total
  • Fulfyld 3 published pick and pack rates · 12 fees in total
  • Flexport 2 published pick and pack rates · 75 fees in total
  • Simple Global 1 published pick and pack rate · 8 fees in total

All published fees by vendor · What a 3PL costs in 2026

When a figure on this page changes

We re-check these rates against the vendor's own page and publish every correction. Leave an address and you get an email when a number in this guide moves or a company is added — nothing else, and nothing on a schedule. To come off, email data@ratecardlab.com and we delete the record.