About this plugin
USPS retired its old Web Tools API and moved to the new USPS APIs. Beacon Shipping Rates for USPS is built for the new API from the start — with the two things store owners kept asking for: a setup that doesn’t take an afternoon, and rates that don’t disappear when USPS has a bad hour.
What you get, free:
- Live USPS rates at checkout for Ground Advantage, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express and Media Mail, plus First-Class Package International, Priority Mail International and Priority Mail Express International.
- A guided setup page (WooCommerce → USPS Rates) that walks you through getting USPS API keys in about 15 minutes, tests the connection, and fetches a real rate before you touch a shipping zone. Every USPS error is translated into what to actually do.
- Rates that survive the USPS quota. USPS allows 60 calls per hour by default. Identical packages are served from cache, the plugin stops calling USPS just below the limit, and a stale copy is kept for a week for when USPS is down.
- A fallback rate so an outage at USPS never shows customers an empty shipping list.
- Sane packing: one box per order, per product line or per item, with automatic unit conversion and the 70 lb USPS limit respected.
- Handling markup (fixed or percent), custom method title, Retail or Commercial pricing.
- Works with shipping zones, the block cart and checkout, and High-Performance Order Storage. Uninstalls clean.
You use your own USPS API keys — nothing is proxied through anyone’s server and there is no per-request fee.
Pro (sold separately): box packing against your real boxes, per-service rules (markup, hide, free over, min/max), per-product service restrictions, flat-rate boxes, and delivery-date estimates at checkout. Nothing in the free plugin moves behind the paywall.
Beacon Shipping Rates for USPS is an independent plugin by Beacon Events. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the United States Postal Service. USPS, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, USPS Ground Advantage and Media Mail are trademarks of the United States Postal Service.
External services
This plugin connects to the USPS APIs (operated by the United States Postal Service) to get shipping rates. It is needed to show live USPS prices at checkout.
- When: when a customer’s cart needs a shipping quote at cart or checkout (unless a cached rate is used), and when a store admin clicks “Test connection” or “Get rates” on the setup page.
- What is sent: to https://apis.usps.com/oauth2/v3/token — the store’s own USPS Consumer Key and Secret, to obtain an access token. To https://apis.usps.com/prices/v3/total-rates/search and https://apis.usps.com/international-prices/v3/total-rates/search — the origin ZIP code, the destination ZIP or postal code and country, and package weight and dimensions. No customer names, street addresses, emails or order details are sent.
- If the “USPS test environment” option is enabled, the same requests go to https://apis-tem.usps.com instead.
- USPS terms of use: https://about.usps.com/who/legal/terms-of-use.htm
- USPS privacy policy: https://about.usps.com/who/legal/privacy-policy/welcome.htm