Free · No call · No obligation

Send us your 3PL quotes. We will tell you, free, what each one leaves out.

Two quotes for the same warehouse work are almost never the same measurement. One vendor publishes an average of $7.74+ per order with postage, packaging and the label inside it. Another publishes $2.65 for the order fee alone, then $0.95 per item picked. Put those side by side and the cheaper-looking one can cost more.

Before two quotes can be compared, you need to know which lines each one does not state. That part works on any quote, however incomplete, and we do it for free.

Step one · Free

The Quote Gap Check

Email us the quotes you have, in whatever format they came in. Within two business days you get back, for each quote:

Every fee line needed to cost it on your order profile that the quote does not state, checked against the 218 distinct fee records we hold from 23 operations.
The exact question to send that vendor to get each missing line, written so you can paste it into your reply.
Whether a like-for-like all-in cost per order is reachable from what you hold, and if it is not, which missing line stands in the way.

Free, no call, no obligation. You do not need to buy anything, now or later.

Email your quotes for a free gap check →

If the button does not open your mail app, write to hello@ratecardlab.com with the subject "Free quote gap check".

What to send

Required: your quotes. Attach them or paste them into the email. PDF, screenshot, spreadsheet, forwarded email, whatever you were sent.

Quotes sent for a gap check or audit are used only to answer you. They are not added to our dataset or published unless you tell us to (privacy policy).

Optional: your order profile. Estimates fine / skip if unknown. A missing answer never holds up a reply; where one matters, the reply says what we assumed.

Orders per month
Items per order, on average
Average weight per order: actual, and dimensional if you know it
Active SKU count
Storage used, in cubic feet or pallets
Return rate
Busiest months
Inbound shipments per month

The profile decides which missing lines matter to you. A returns fee a quote leaves out is irrelevant if you have no returns; a receiving fee it leaves out is not if you take four inbound shipments a month. The email the button opens already lists these questions.

Step two · Only if you want it · $500 flat

The Quote Audit: full normalization

For when you want more than the gaps. We rebuild 2 to 5 quotes against your order profile, so you are comparing the same thing.

What it adds to the gap check

One all-in cost per order for each vendor whose quote contains the lines to build it, on the same profile, with every line shown so you can check the arithmetic rather than trust it.
A twelve-month projection with your seasonality, because peak storage and peak volume are two different questions and most quotes price only one.
The breakeven volumes, where they exist: the order counts where the ranking between your vendors flips. If no ranking can be built from your quotes, the audit says so rather than forcing one.
A short written memo: which is cheapest at your volume, what would have to change for that to flip, and where the contractual risk sits.

Before any payment, we tell you exactly what the audit can and cannot produce from what you sent. Most of the published rate cards we hold leave out postage, and a quote with no postage line cannot give an all-in cost however carefully it is worked. If yours cannot, we say so before you pay, and we will not take $500 for a number your quotes cannot support.

$500

Flat. One profile, up to 5 quotes. No retainer, no subscription.

Ask about the audit →

Same email, same intake. Nothing is charged until you have read what the audit can produce.

If we cannot do it, you do not pay. Sometimes a quote simply does not contain enough to normalize — no unit stated, no volume tier, postage bundled with no weight band. If that is true of what you send, we will tell you and refund in full. That risk is ours, not yours, because you cannot tell from the outside which quotes are complete.

What this is not

Not a vendor recommendation service. We tell you what each quote leaves out and, in the audit, what it costs on your numbers. Which company you want to work with involves service, location and fit, and we have no basis to judge those.
We do not contact your vendors and we do not negotiate for you. You get the questions; you ask them.
No referral fees, ever. We take no money from any 3PL, which is the only reason our answer is worth anything. If a vendor ever pays us, this page comes down.
Not a track record. We are not going to show you logos or case studies. What we will show you is the method, published free and the 241 sourced rows behind it. Judge those.

Or do it yourself

The method is published and free. The 3PL Quote Normalizer Kit is the audit's arithmetic as a spreadsheet you run yourself — $99 once, 14 tabs, 30-day money-back. If you would rather do the normalization yourself than pay for the audit, buy that instead. The gap check stays free either way.

Not ready, but want the data as it changes

One email when a published rate we track moves or a company is added — the same figures the gap check and the audit are built on. Nothing else, and nothing on a schedule. To come off, email data@ratecardlab.com and we delete the record.