calculate_customs
Estimate customs duty and import VAT for an international shipment
LABSCO SUMMARY
The customs pair is the reason to keep this around: a threshold lookup and a duty estimate answer the question that gets asked after the parcel has already shipped.
Carrier detection and tracking-URL construction are conveniences — useful, but a search would get you there. get_postal_info and calculate_customs together are the part that is genuinely awkward to do by hand, because the answer depends on a per-country threshold before any duty rate applies. Set expectations correctly on what these numbers are: nothing here calls a carrier's API, so the outputs are estimates from reference data, not quotes you can hold anyone to. Worth knowing that the repository is a single commit with no releases and its README is a page of GitHub interface text rather than documentation — the tool descriptions are the documentation here.
What it is
A shipping-logistics calculator with six tools: carrier identification from a tracking number, tracking-URL construction, cost and delivery-time estimates between countries, postal-service reference data, and a customs duty and import VAT estimator.
What you get
- identify_carrier matches a tracking number against carrier patterns, and get_tracking_url builds the direct link — detecting the carrier itself when you do not name one.
- estimate_shipping returns costs and delivery times between two countries.
- calculate_customs estimates import duty and VAT on an international shipment, which is the number that usually surprises the recipient rather than the sender.
- get_postal_info returns a country's postal-code format, delivery times and customs thresholds — the threshold being what decides whether duty applies at all.
- list_carriers enumerates the major carriers, filterable by country.
Requirements
Nothing to supply — no key, no account. The estimates are calculated rather than fetched from a carrier, so they are reference figures rather than a quote.
Setup effort
One command — npx -y shipping-mcp
USE CASES
01
Turning a bare tracking number into a link
Identify the carrier from the number's own format and build the direct tracking URL, without knowing who shipped it.
02
Working out what the recipient will be charged on arrival
Check the destination country's customs threshold first, then estimate duty and import VAT — the threshold is what decides whether anything is owed.
03
Comparing routes before you commit to one
Estimate cost and delivery time between the two countries and see which carriers serve the destination.
6 tools
Counted once with only startup setup. Other versions, modes or optional credentials may expose a different list.
estimate_shipping
Estimate shipping costs and delivery times between countries
get_postal_info
Get postal service info, postal code format, delivery times, and customs thresholds for a country
get_tracking_url
Get a direct tracking URL for a shipment. Auto-detects carrier if not specified.
identify_carrier
Identify the shipping carrier from a tracking number using regex pattern matching
list_carriers
List major shipping carriers, optionally filtered by country
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
6 tools when we connected.
Requires
npx on PATH
CONTEXT COST
Light Standing cost
Rated by the size of the 6 tool definitions that ride along on every turn, not by how many there are
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Add the block to your client, or run the command directly.
Server setup
Configuration file
JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"shipping-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"shipping-mcp"
]
}
}
}npx
TERMINAL
npx -y shipping-mcp
