Mode 01 · Sea
The patient default
Lowest cost, slowest clock, most handovers. Made reliable by the buffer you plan, not the schedule you were shown.
The Move · Explainer + Calculator
Air buys days. Sea buys a lower number.
Every shipment answers the same question twice — how fast, and how much — and sea and air sit at opposite ends of both scales. This page walks the trade-off, explains FCL against LCL and what actually sets the price, then ends in a calculator that runs on rates and weights you enter — never a rate this page invented.
4Freight modes on this page's radar
2Ways to load a container — FCL / LCL
21Numbers the calculator needs from you
0Rates or transit times printed by this site
Freight rates move weekly with capacity, fuel and season — nothing here is a substitute for a fresh quote to your own cargo.
01 — Time vs Money, in One Line
Every mode buys a different amount of each.
Sea is the patient default: the lowest cost per kilogram for the slowest clock, with the most handovers along the way. Air is the bought clock: days instead of weeks, priced for cargo whose value or urgency out-argues its weight. Road crosses land borders and reaches addresses no port can, exactly as predictable as the slowest border crossing on the route. Rail sits between sea's price and air's speed wherever a corridor actually exists — its reach is the corridor's reach, not the map's.
None of these is generically "cheaper" or "faster" — each is a rate quoted to your specific cargo, on the specific day you ask. What follows is the part worth learning once, so you can ask a forwarder the right questions rather than take the first quote at face value.
Mode 02 · Air
The bought clock
Days instead of weeks, priced accordingly. For cargo whose value or urgency out-argues its weight.
Mode 03 · Road
The door-to-door
Reaches addresses no port can — exactly as predictable as the slowest border crossing on the route.
Mode 04 · Rail
The middle path
Between sea's price and air's clock, where a real corridor connects both ends.
02 — FCL vs LCL
A container of your own, or a share of one.
Full Container Load (FCL) means your cargo has an entire container to itself, sealed and moved as one unit. It buys sole custody, fewer touches along the route, and a cleaner claim if something goes wrong — because no one else's goods were ever in the box.2
Less than Container Load (LCL), sometimes called groupage, means your cargo shares a container with other shippers' goods, consolidated by a freight forwarder at one end and broken apart at the other.2 It buys entry-level volume — you pay for the space you use, not a whole box — at the price of consolidation waits at both ends and other shippers' delays occasionally becoming yours.
Which one wins is a sum you run for your own cargo: at low volume, LCL's shared cost usually wins; past a certain volume, a full container's flat cost per box overtakes LCL's per-unit rate, and FCL wins on both cost and handling. Where exactly that crossover sits depends on your volume, your cargo's value and how fragile or time-sensitive it is — not a fixed rule of thumb, and not a number this page will guess on your behalf.
03 — What Actually Drives the Cost
You’re charged for space, not just weight.
Carriers price cargo on chargeable weight — the greater of the shipment's actual weight or its volumetric (dimensional) weight, which accounts for how much space a light but bulky shipment occupies. A widely used industry convention, set by the International Air Transport Association, computes volumetric weight from a shipment's dimensions in centimetres divided by a standard figure of 6,000 to give kilograms — but this is exactly the kind of number that varies by carrier, and some quote a different divisor.1 Sea freight applies a parallel idea for LCL cargo, pricing on the greater of weight or volume. The practical upshot: a light, bulky product can cost more to ship than its weight alone suggests, on either mode — always ask your forwarder which figure your specific quote is actually charging on.
Beyond chargeable weight, three things move a quote more than anything else: how full the carrier's capacity is on your route and date, how volatile fuel costs are that season, and how much handling your cargo needs beyond a standard box — temperature control, hazardous-goods documentation, oversized dimensions. None of these are numbers this page can responsibly print; they are exactly what a forwarder's quote is pricing in.
04 — The Buffer, and the Unglamorous Legs
The schedule is the best case. Plan the real one.
A carrier's quoted transit time is its best case; the real time includes the customs query, the port queue, the missed connection. The buffer built around that gap isn't padding — it's bought calm, and its size should be set by what a stockout actually costs you, not by optimism borrowed from a sales deck. The calculator in section 05 puts a number on exactly one piece of that: what the slower mode's extra transit days cost in inventory value tied up and not selling.
Past the mode itself, four legs decide whether the journey is a system or a sequence of surprises: warehousing (where goods wait, who owns them while they wait, and whether duty is already paid — bonded storage exists to postpone exactly that); cold chain, for anything temperature-sensitive, a promise that must hold unbroken or the loss is discovered only at the far end; the last mile, routinely the costliest leg per kilometre because it's local and the ocean-crossing carrier has no opinion about it; and reverse logistics — returns, repairs, recalls — designed alongside the outbound plan, not improvised the day it's first needed.
05 — The Calculator
Enter your quotes. Nothing is built in.
Two shipment options, priced however your own quotes actually came in. The calculator computes landed cost per unit for each, and what the slower option's extra transit time costs in tied-up inventory value — using a holding-cost rate you set. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere.
06 — FAQ
Real questions, short answers.
Is sea freight always cheaper than air?
Usually, per kilogram, but not always per unit of value or per unit of time. Air's chargeable-weight pricing can make a light, bulky shipment cost less than expected, and the calculator on this page can show whether sea's lower freight cost is actually outweighed by the extra inventory-carrying cost of its longer transit — that depends entirely on your own numbers, not a rule of thumb.
What decides whether my shipment is charged on weight or volume?
Chargeable weight — the higher of a shipment's actual weight or its volumetric (dimensional) weight. A widely used industry convention, set by IATA, computes volumetric weight from a shipment's dimensions, but individual carriers can and do apply a different divisor, so always confirm the figure your own carrier or forwarder uses rather than assuming a fixed ratio.
What's the real difference between FCL and LCL?
FCL (Full Container Load) means your cargo has an entire container to itself — sole custody, fewer touches, a cleaner claim if something goes wrong. LCL (Less than Container Load) means your cargo shares a container with other shippers' goods, consolidated by a freight forwarder — lower entry volume, at the cost of consolidation waits and other shippers' delays becoming yours. Which wins is a sum you run for your own cargo's volume, value and fragility, not a fixed rule.
Does this page quote any freight rates?
No, deliberately. Rates move weekly with capacity, fuel and season, and any number printed here would likely be stale before it was read. The calculator on this page takes only the rates you enter yourself, quoted to your own cargo on the day.
How does the calculator decide which mode is "better"?
It doesn't decide for you — it computes landed cost per unit for each mode from what you enter, and separately computes what the slower mode's extra transit time costs in tied-up inventory value, using a holding-cost rate you set. The two figures side by side let you weigh cost-of-goods against cost-of-time yourself, for your own product and your own capital position.
07 — Sources
Where these facts come from
- International Air Transport Association — the chargeable-weight convention (greater of actual vs. volumetric weight) and the widely used volumetric-weight divisor for air cargo, flagged here as carrier-variable rather than fixed.iata.orgiata.org · industry convention, not a government regulator · accessed 25 Jul 2026
- International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA) — the working definitions of Full Container Load (FCL) and Less than Container Load (LCL) used industry-wide.fiata.orgfiata.org · industry body, not a government regulator · accessed 25 Jul 2026
About this page: information, not shipping or logistics advice. The two sources above are industry bodies, not government regulators — cited for widely used terminology and conventions, not binding rules. The customs and documentation mechanics that govern any shipment regardless of mode live on this site's Mechanics pages, not repeated here. No freight rate, duty rate or transit time is asserted anywhere on this page; the calculator computes only from what you enter.
The Line
Your quote. Your numbers.
No rate on this page is real until a carrier or forwarder quotes it to your cargo, today. The calculator above only ever computes from what you enter.