Live · 26 Aug 2026
Freight market intelligence

Freight markets,
made clear.

Track rates, trade lanes, congestion and market developments through one independent information platform — built for the people who quote, buy and move containers every day.

Independent by design 240+ trade lanes 90+ ports Updated every business day
SFP Global Container Index
Spot, 40′ HC, all-in · USD
2,148 −2.7% w/w
USD per 40′ high-cube, all-in, week 35 · 2026
52-week high3,410
52-week low1,932
vs 12M avg−14%
240+Trade lanes priced daily
90+Ports under congestion watch
12Corridor indices
08:00CET daily data refresh
Market movers

Biggest weekly moves.

Week 35, 2026 · spot, 40′ HC, all-in.

All 240 lanes →
Trade laneCorridorSpot 40′ HCWeekMonth13-week trend
Insights

Latest market analysis.

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Rates & trade lanes

Every lane, priced and put in context.

Pick a port pair and see the spot benchmark, the contract equivalent, where today's number sits in its 12-month range, and how volatile the lane has been. Sample data shown for demonstration.

Shanghai Rotterdam
Asia – North Europe · 32 days port-to-port · 41 contributors
2,480 USD
−3.2% w/w
12M high
12M low
vs 12M avg
Volatility
Position in 12-month range
Lane board

All benchmarked lanes.

Trade laneCorridorTransitSpot 40′ HCWeekMonth13-week trend

All-in port-to-port benchmarks in USD, excluding local charges at origin and destination unless stated. Sample data for demonstration purposes.

Freight Pulse · weekly

The market, in the ten minutes you have.

Every Tuesday at 07:00 CET: what moved on the lanes you quote, which ports are tightening, and the two or three developments worth acting on this week.

Issue 34 · 25 August 2026 7 min read

Asia–Europe softens into September as capacity returns

Blank sailings unwound faster than expected after the summer peak, and the resulting capacity is landing on North Europe first. Med lanes are holding better, and the transatlantic westbound is the only major corridor still firming.

  • Asia–North Europe spot fell 3.2% week on week, the fifth consecutive decline, and now sits 14% below its 12-month average.
  • Transpacific eastbound is flat rather than falling — carriers are defending the floor ahead of the October contract discussions.
  • Rotterdam and Antwerp waiting times both eased below two days for the first time since May.
  • Reefer premiums on South America northbound widened again ahead of the citrus season.
  • Red Sea routings remain the exception rather than the rule; Cape of Good Hope routing is still priced into Asia–Europe transit times.

This week's balance

Composite readings from contributor submissions, booked volume proxies and deployed capacity.

Corridor sentiment

Direction expected over the next four weeks.

Archive

Previous issues.

Port Watch

See the friction before it reaches your customer.

Berth waiting times, yard pressure and terminal status across 90+ ports, refreshed daily. When a port turns, you hear it from the data rather than from the complaint.

Ports monitored92
Congested now7
Improving w/w18
Avg wait, global1.9d
PortRegionBerth waitYard utilisationWeekStatus

Waiting time measured from arrival at anchorage to first-line ashore, rolling 7-day median. Sample data for demonstration purposes.

Rate Outlook · Q4 2026

A 90-day view, with the reasoning attached.

A stated range and a confidence band per corridor — never a single number pretending to be certain. Every outlook lists the drivers behind it, so you can disagree with the logic rather than the output.

Forecast band

Spot benchmark, 40′ HC, USD · shaded area is the 80% confidence band

What's driving it

The four forces on Q4.

Each driver is scored for direction and weight, and re-scored weekly.

Methodology

How the numbers are made.

A benchmark is only useful if you can explain it. This is the full basis of every rate, index and status published on SeaFreightPrices.com.

01

Collection

Rate submissions from forwarders, NVOCCs and shippers, combined with published carrier tariffs and booked-transaction data. Contributors submit under a fixed schema so like is compared with like.

02

Validation

Outliers beyond three median absolute deviations are quarantined and reviewed by hand. Any lane with fewer than eight independent contributors is published as indicative, and labelled as such.

03

Publication

Benchmarks are the trimmed mean of the validated sample, published at 08:00 CET each business day with contributor count, spread and revision history attached.

Independence

No carrier, terminal or forwarder holds an ownership stake in the index, and no commercial relationship affects a published number. Contributors can see their own submissions but never another party's. Where a lane is commercially connected to the wider ecosystem, it is disclosed on the lane page itself.

Definitions

What each term means here.

Access

Start free. Go deeper when you need to.

Headline indices, port status and the weekly briefing are open to everyone. Lane-level history, alerts and the API are where the platform earns its keep.

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  • Insights archive
  • 13 weeks of history
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Enterprise & API
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  • Everything in Professional
  • REST and streaming API access
  • Custom lane and corridor baskets
  • Index embedding in your own quoting tools
  • SSO, team seats and audit trail
  • Named analyst contact
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Developers

Pull benchmarks straight into your own systems.

One REST call returns the benchmark, its confidence metadata and the full history for any lane. Rate your quotes against the market inside your own TMS, quoting tool or pricing sheet.

# Latest benchmark for Shanghai → Rotterdam
GET https://api.seafreightprices.com/v1/rates
     ?origin=CNSHA&destination=NLRTM
     &equipment=40HC&basis=spot

{
  "lane": "CNSHA-NLRTM",
  "rate_usd": 2480,
  "change_wow": -0.032,
  "percentile_12m": 0.31,
  "contributors": 41,
  "as_of": "2026-08-26T06:00:00Z"
}
Contact

Talk to the data team.

Questions about a benchmark, a contributor agreement, API access or a custom lane basket — send a message and we reply within one business day.

Contribute rates

Forwarders who submit weekly get Professional access at no cost. Submissions stay confidential and are never attributed.

Media & research

Indices may be cited with attribution to SeaFreightPrices.com. Charts and underlying series available on request.

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