n-Flexport's Portal Is Built for Looking. Its API Is Built for Building.
Flexport publishes an API alongside its freight-forwarding portal, covering shipment data, tracking status, and documents like customs paperwork and invoices, so a business can pull what Flexport knows into its own systems instead of a person checking the portal by hand. Most businesses running freight through Flexport only ever touch the portal. The API is where the real automation happens.
What the Flexport API actually gives you
Through the API, you can read shipment and booking data, pull tracking and milestone status as a container or air shipment moves, and retrieve documents Flexport generates along the way, commercial invoices, bills of lading, customs filings. That's the same underlying data the portal shows a person logging in, just reachable by code instead of a screen.
For a business that already has landed cost, customs status, or in-transit inventory reaching other systems manually, someone checking the portal and updating a spreadsheet, or forwarding an email when a shipment clears customs, the API is what replaces that person with a direct feed.
Where it fits alongside Flexport's other connections
Flexport also offers more specific integrations for certain use cases, a Shopify connection for fulfillment orders is one example, which cover a narrower, defined workflow without custom API work. The general API is the broader tool: useful anywhere the narrower integrations don't reach, or where the data needs to land somewhere specific to your business rather than a standard connection's default behavior.
The gap we usually end up closing isn't whether Flexport can expose the data. It's getting that data to land correctly in a specific accounting system, ops dashboard, or planning tool that Flexport was never going to build a connector for, because it's specific to how your business runs, not a workflow common enough for Flexport to productize.
What we build against the Flexport API
Landed cost pulled directly into accounting
Freight charges, duties, and fees come straight from Flexport's data into QuickBooks or your ERP as part of the real product cost, with nobody re-entering numbers from a portal.
Customs and milestone status reaching ops automatically
A hold, a missing document, a cleared shipment shows up where your team already works, pulled through the API instead of someone checking the portal.
Need Flexport's data landing somewhere specific to how your business runs?
Describe the system that needs to see it and what it needs to look like once it's there. We'll scope what the API can hand you directly.
Running freight through Flexport and still pulling numbers off the portal by hand?
Tell us what you're currently checking manually, landed cost, customs status, shipment documents, and we'll scope what moving it through Flexport's API actually takes. Freight is one piece of a bigger operation, and we build the same kind of connection wherever else your business is still running on someone checking a screen.
Let's talk