FreighAI vs Freightos for Forwarders
Freightos is where a great deal of air freight gets priced, booked and paid for. FreighAI is where the work around the email gets done. The two names land on the same shortlist, so this page sets them beside each other.
The overlap is real and it is partial. Rates and quoting are shared ground. Booking an airline, paying one and putting a self-service portal on your website are Freightos work. Every email your company receives is read, understood and turned into a task for the right person, with the answer already drafted. Your team approves. Nobody lives in the inbox any more.
This page compares the forwarder products only. Freightos also runs a marketplace for importers and exporters, which is a different buyer and is left out. Every statement about Freightos comes from its own published pages, fetched on 3 September 2026.
- 01Freightos for Forwarders is a booking network first. Air bookings across airlines representing over 78% of global capacity, 300 or more airlines on the rate side, and payment straight to the airline. FreighAI runs no carrier network and no payment rail.
- 02Its answer to the email problem is to move your customer off email. Sales Portal puts quoting, booking and tracking on your own website, open at any hour. Customer self-service portals stay in your own system with FreighAI.
- 03FreighAI goes the other way. It takes over the inbox instead. Every company mailbox is read, and each conversation becomes a task for a named person with the reply already written and waiting for their approval.
- 04Nothing in the Freightos forwarder material describes reading your mailboxes, drafting a reply for someone to approve, or passing a job from pricing to operations. That is recorded here as not described, never as absence.
- 05Most forwarders who look at both end up wanting both. Settle who owns the rate and who owns the conversation before you buy either one.
What Freightos for Forwarders does well
Freightos publishes one of the widest forwarder propositions anywhere. Six products sit on the forwarder page: air booking, rate and quote, a sales portal, payment, market intelligence and procurement. 7LFreight is named beside them as a sister-company brand covering rate management for forwarders in the United States and Canada. Behind all of it sits the part that is genuinely hard to build, which is a direct connection to airlines and a way to pay them. A forwarder whose daily pain is finding capacity, holding a rate and getting the booking confirmed is looking at a company that plainly owns that ground.
Book Air describes free, instant air freight pricing and eBooking with surcharges, fees and real-time rates, across airlines representing over 78% of global capacity, with AWB stock, auto-AWB options or direct eAWB integration. The forwarder page adds handling for dangerous goods, perishables and temperature-controlled cargo. The air rate page counts 300+ airlines and 75+ eBooking connections. FreighAI does none of that and does not claim to.
Freightos Pay describes booking and paying airlines directly, with funds deposited instantly or a flexible credit line, and states plainly that there are no bank guarantees. Its non-IATA page goes further. A forwarder with no airline account and no IATA code can still book, or quote from an IATA agent’s rates, with credit lines of 15 to 60 days. That removes a commercial barrier, not a software one. Nothing in FreighAI moves money to a carrier.
Rate & Quote presents itself as one rate management and quoting engine for freight forwarders across air, ocean and multimodal. Its air page describes live access to contract rates, origin and destination rates, fee and surcharge management, and door-to-door quotes carrying your brand with clear surcharges, fees and markups. Terminal adds benchmarking and live event feeds, and 7LFreight covers rate management for forwarders in the United States and Canada. FreighAI presents nothing equivalent as a separate rate-management product.
Sales Portal offers your customers instant online quoting, booking, tracking and document handling on your own website, around the clock. Its page names the effect it wants: no inbox ping-pong, and nobody waiting an hour while somebody checks with pricing. Customer self-service portals sit outside what FreighAI does and stay in your own system. If your customers are asking to serve themselves, that point goes to Freightos without argument.
Procure describes launching RFQs to 200+ carriers and thousands of LSPs, reading every response back in one format, tracking rate changes and expiry, and awarding on cost, transit time or sustainability. Its published page addresses enterprise importers, exporters and procurement teams rather than forwarder pricing desks, and this page says so rather than implying otherwise. Separately, the TMS pages put pricing, comparison and booking across 75+ carriers inside the system you already run, in both directions, over REST APIs.
The booking rail, or the inbox
Both products touch the same quote and arrive at it from opposite ends. Freightos supplies where the rate and the booking come from: the airline connection, the contract rate, the surcharge table, the confirmation and the money. FreighAI supplies who does the work around the email: reading it, finding the answer, writing the reply and handing a finished task to the person who owns it. The shared ground is rate management and quoting. Outside that, each does work the other does not attempt.
Where the rate comes from, and who does the work
Both end in a priced quote your customer can accept. What sits either side of that quote is different work.
Freightos describes the forwarder job as a run from rate to booking. Contract rates and live carrier connections come in. Surcharges, fees and markups are applied. A branded door-to-door quote goes out. The customer accepts, and the booking reaches the airline with the airway bill and the payment behind it. Its TMS pages put that same run inside the system you already work in, so nobody leaves the screen they know.
FreighAI starts a step earlier and finishes several steps later. It watches every company mailbox, pricing, operations, tracking and accounts, and follows each conversation from start to finish. It works out what each email is and what it needs, then takes the action that message calls for. It writes the reply, creates the task, and puts it in front of the right person in the right department, beside the original conversation. Your team approves. They do not compose, forward, file or chase. The reply goes out in their name.
Two answers to the same complaint
Both companies noticed the same thing. The inbox is where a forwarder’s day disappears. The Sales Portal page says so almost in those words. Its answer is to move the customer off email and onto your website, where they quote and book themselves at any hour.
FreighAI’s answer runs the other way. Your customer keeps writing the email they already write, and nothing changes at their end. Your people work in FreighAI. Not in the inbox. Not in five browser tabs. One approach asks your customer to change a habit. The other asks nothing of them at all. Which suits you is a question about your customers, not about the software.
Whose rate, and whose account
You keep your own carrier accounts and negotiated rates. FreighAI never sits between you and your carrier relationship. It emails all your agents for a lane in one go, with the route and charge lines filled in, then chases the ones who do not reply. Freightos answers the other half of the same question, by offering airlines you may hold no account with at all. Those are different problems, and one forwarder can genuinely have both at once.
- Every company mailbox, every department
- Each conversation becomes an assigned task
- The quiet agent chased, the gap asked about
- Hand-offs from pricing to operations to accounts
- Tracking replies and carrier-bill matching
- Air bookings across a large airline network
- Payment and credit straight to the airline
- A self-service portal on your website
- Market rate benchmarking and event feeds
- Rates and booking inside your own TMS
What happens to one enquiry in FreighAI
An enquiry arrives. FreighAI reads it, notices the weight is missing and asks for it. It pulls your rate cards, checks the carrier for a live rate, and emails your agents for the lanes you do not hold, then chases them until they reply. It drafts the quote with your margin rules and what that customer paid on that lane last time. Your pricer approves and it goes. It follows up. When the customer pushes back, the counter-offer is already drafted. When the quote is old, it expires. When it is won, the job is created.
Where the rate can be fetched without waiting on a person — a carrier API, a portal read in the background, or your own uploaded rate cards — a priced quote goes out in 10–15 minutes instead of 1–2 hours. That holds for ocean and air just as it does for express; the mode does not change it. Where a lane has to be priced by another agent or over the phone, the wait belongs to whoever is answering — not to the software. FreighAI still writes the RFQ, chases the reply, and turns whatever comes back into a priced, margin-checked quote the moment it lands.
- 01EnquiryIn the mailbox your customer already writes to.
- 02Missing detailSpotted, and the email asking for it is drafted.
- 03RatesYour cards, your carrier accounts, then your agents.
- 04Draft quoteYour margin rules and this customer’s history.
- GATEPricer approvesThe reply goes out in their name.
- 06Follow-upChasers and expiry run on the same thread.
At Infinity Logistics, average response time fell from more than 60 minutes to about 15 minutes, and the win rate rose from 35% to 73%. Those are one customer’s attributed results, not a promise to every business.
Where the two differ
Every row is checked against public documentation. Where they do something we do not, the row says so.
- Air booking across many airlines
- FreighAI
- NoNot offered. You keep your own carrier accounts
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesBookings across airlines representing over 78% of global capacity
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this. Count the airlines you actually book
- Paying the airline, credit, no IATA code needed
- FreighAI
- NoNothing in FreighAI moves money to a carrier
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesDeposit or a credit line, no bank guarantees, non-IATA forwarders included
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this. Ask what the credit line depends on
- Customer self-service quoting portal
- FreighAI
- NoA stated boundary. Portals stay in your own system
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesQuoting, booking, tracking and documents on your own website
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this. Ask if your customers will use it
- Rate management as a presented product area
- FreighAI
- PartialYour rate cards are read and used, not sold as a separate product
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesOne rate and quoting engine across air, ocean and multimodal
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this. Bring your real rate sources
- Market rate benchmarking and index data
- FreighAI
- NoNot offered
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesTerminal supplies benchmarking and live event feeds
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this
- Formal tender events to carriers and LSPs
- FreighAI
- NoNot offered
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesProcure, on a page written for enterprise procurement teams
- What to verify
- Freightos wins this if you run annual tenders
- Every company mailbox, every department
- FreighAI
- YesPricing, operations, tracking and accounts
- Freightos for Forwarders
- Not establishednot described in Freightos for Forwarders’ published material, checked September 2026
- What to verify
- Ask to see an accounts thread, not only a rate
- Each email becomes a task for a named person
- FreighAI
- YesWith the reply drafted beside the conversation
- Freightos for Forwarders
- Not establishednot described in Freightos for Forwarders’ published material, checked September 2026
- What to verify
- Ask who holds the task at the end of the demonstration
- Asks for the missing detail, chases your agents
- FreighAI
- YesSpots the gap, emails every agent for the lane, chases the quiet ones
- Freightos for Forwarders
- PartialTender events to carriers and LSPs are described. A spot-lane chase is not
- What to verify
- Send an enquiry with the weight left out
- A person approves before anything sends
- FreighAI
- YesEvery reply waits for the person whose name is on it
- Freightos for Forwarders
- Not establishedIts pages describe your team searching, comparing and booking themselves
- What to verify
- Ask both to show the exception path live
- Chasing and expiry run without anyone remembering
- FreighAI
- YesChasers, tracking checks and quote expiry run on their own
- Freightos for Forwarders
- Not establishedRate change and expiry tracking sit in Procure. A wider schedule is not described
- What to verify
- Ask each what runs overnight
- Works with the TMS you already run
- FreighAI
- YesStandalone, or alongside the system you keep your records in
- Freightos for Forwarders
- YesRates and airline confirmation delivered inside your own TMS, both ways
- What to verify
- Confirm your exact system, not a category
“Not described” means the reviewed public material did not settle the question. It is never a claim that Freightos lacks the capability, and a demonstration should close any row that affects your decision. The rows FreighAI marks “no” are boundaries, not gaps waiting on a date. FreighAI is an AI-first freight operations platform that can run standalone or work alongside an existing TMS or ERP. It does not require a forced replacement.
The reply lands on your customer’s own thread.
A portal asks your customer to come to your website. FreighAI answers them where they already wrote, in the name of the person who owns the account. Nobody composes it, and nobody files it afterwards.
- Read, then answeredThe conversation is followed from start to finish, not one message at a time.
- Approved, not composedYour team approves. They do not compose, forward, file or chase. The reply goes out in their name.
- Passed on with everything attachedWork passes from pricing to operations to accounts with the email and everything it found attached. Nobody forwards it, re-keys it or asks for an update.
need DHL quote Gurugram → Ajman, 72kg, by Friday. urgent pls 🙏
Hi Marco — DHL Express, AED 425 + AED 35 handling. ETA Thu·18:00, valid 24h. PDF attached.
Which one you should actually pick
If nobody should ever choose the other product, this page would not be worth reading. Here is where each genuinely wins.
- your hardest daily problem is air capacity and getting a booking confirmed, across more airlines than you hold accounts with
- you need to pay airlines directly, want a credit line instead of a bank guarantee, or book without an IATA code
- your customers are asking to quote and book themselves on your website, or you want market rate benchmarking behind your pricing
- you want rates and airline confirmation delivered inside the system your team already works in
- the bottleneck is the inbox rather than the rate, and your people spend the morning reading, forwarding and chasing
- the cost sits in the legwork around the quote, which is the missing detail, the agent who goes quiet and the counter-offer
- the work has to cross departments, from pricing to operations to accounts, without anyone forwarding or re-keying it
- you want every reply to wait for a person. Your team approves every reply before it sends. Keep your TMS for the records. FreighAI runs the work around them.
FreighAI’s central proposition is: Same team. 5x more business. That is the intended value position, not a measured result for every business. Decide from demonstrated workflow fit, on your own enquiries.
Can you run both?
Yes, and for many forwarders that is the sensible answer. The products overlap on rate management and quoting and almost nowhere else. Freightos can stay the place air capacity is found, booked and paid for. FreighAI reads the mailboxes, does the work behind each email and hands your people finished tasks.
Settle three things first. Which system holds the rate a quote is built from. Which one your customer hears back from. Which one the accepted job is created in. We scope the first workflow, integration requirements and implementation plan with your team.
Which problem do you actually have?
Most shortlists that hold both names are really two shortlists wearing one jacket. Answer the question below honestly, then run the demonstration that matches it.
Whichever answer you reach, bring the same evidence to both suppliers:
- a normal enquiry, a difficult one and one with a detail missing
- one real quotation thread, with the agent replies that arrived after it
- the rate sources you actually used, whether card, carrier account or agent
- the margin and approval rules that apply
- whichever system you expect a won booking to land in
Ask each supplier what happens when the rate is not machine-reachable. Waiting on another agent is not the same as reading a rate card, and any speed comparison that ignores the rate source is misleading.
Where does the hour actually go?
A booking network earns its place. Look at airline coverage, confirmation, airway bills and how you pay.
The inbox is the problem. Look at mailbox coverage, drafted replies, chasing and hand-offs between departments.
Buy both, and agree the boundary first: who holds the rate, who answers the customer, who owns the job.
Common questions
Is Freightos for Forwarders the same thing as WebCargo?
It is the current identity of that product family. On 3 September 2026, webcargo.co returned a permanent redirect to the Freightos for Forwarders page, and the Freightos about page lists the forwarder products under the Freightos name. If you were shortlisting WebCargo, this is the page you want.
Is this a comparison with the Freightos marketplace?
No. The marketplace serves importers and exporters looking for instant quotes. This page compares the forwarder products only: Book Air, Rate & Quote, Sales Portal, Pay, 7LFreight, and the Procure and Terminal tiles the forwarder page links to.
Does Freightos read your company email the way FreighAI does?
Its reviewed forwarder pages do not describe it. Reading your mailboxes, drafting a reply for approval and assigning a task to a named person are not described in Freightos for Forwarders’ published material, checked September 2026. That is recorded as unknown, not as absence, and it is a fair question for a demonstration.
Can FreighAI book an airline?
No. You keep your own carrier accounts and negotiated rates. FreighAI never sits between you and your carrier relationship. FreighAI reads those rates and does the work around the booking. Where you need capacity outside your own accounts, a network such as Freightos is doing something FreighAI does not.
What do they cost?
Freightos presents Book Air as free and publishes no forwarder price list at the pages checked. Ask both suppliers for terms covering the same scope, connections, volume and support, and compare those rather than headline positions.
Would we still need our TMS?
Keep your TMS for the records. FreighAI runs the work around them. Freightos says something similar in its own way, delivering rates and airline confirmation inside the system you already run. Neither product asks you to throw your records away. We scope the first workflow, integration requirements and implementation plan with your team.
- Freightos for Forwarders — the seven forwarder products and airline coverageverified 2026-09-03
- Book Air — eBooking, capacity share, AWB and eAWB optionsverified 2026-09-03
- Rate & Quote — one rate management and quoting engine across air, ocean and multimodalverified 2026-09-03
- Rate & Quote (air) — contract rates, surcharges, markups, branded quotesverified 2026-09-03
- Sales Portal — customer self-service quoting, booking and trackingverified 2026-09-03
- Freightos Pay — deposits, credit lines and paying airlines directlyverified 2026-09-03
- Non-IATA forwarders — booking without an airline account or IATA codeverified 2026-09-03
- TMS integrations — rates and airline confirmation inside your own systemverified 2026-09-03
- Freightos Procure — RFQ events, response formats and award criteriaverified 2026-09-03
- About Freightos — group brands and listing. No headquarters or founding year statedverified 2026-09-03
- Infinity Logistics customer reference, 15 May 2026 — response time and win rateverified 2026-08-31
Every Freightos performance and customer-result figure is deliberately left out, including its quoting and win-rate multiples, its cost-reduction ranges and the numbers in its July 2026 integration release. That evidence has not been reviewed for this page. Headquarters, founding year and funding are omitted because the about page does not state them. FreighAI claims come from the shared facts file and the signed Infinity Logistics reference of 15 May 2026.
Bring one real email thread from last week
Bring the enquiry, the agent replies behind it, the rate sources you actually used and the system the accepted job belongs in. Ask Freightos to show the booking and the money. Ask us to show the reading, the drafting, the chasing and the hand-off. Then decide who should own the rate, and who should own the conversation.