In short: A sourced summary of the Value Packs change of 1 December 2025, how to think about cost per shipment, and why email-based quoting automation is the low-risk first step.
CargoWise pricing changed on 1 December 2025, when WiseTech Global moved CargoWise onto a new commercial model called CargoWise Value Packs. If you run a small forwarder or customs brokerage on CargoWise, your bill now scales with the jobs you process rather than the seats you hold. This is a factual summary of what changed, who it affects, how to think about the new cost per shipment, and where automation fits without adding risk.
Each Value Pack carries, in WiseTech's words, "an all-in-one transaction fee per logistics job", where a job is a shipment, a standalone customs declaration, a land transport movement or a warehouse order line. There are four packs, for forwarding, customs, warehousing and land transport. The announcement states that "there are no longer any CargoWise Cloud standard hosting costs or seat fees in the CargoWise Value Packs", and that providers "may choose to pass on the charge to their customers as a disbursement" (WiseTech Global announcement, 1 December 2025, republished by the Freight & Trade Alliance). The model it replaces is the seat-and-transaction licence WiseTech introduced in 2014, and the packs bundle a number of previously separate modules, including WiseTech's AI workflow engine and classification assistant, into the transaction price (eCommerceNews, 2 December 2025).
The Freight & Trade Alliance's member briefing of 3 December 2025 says the transition was mandatory, pricing is denominated in US dollars, and "pricing was not made available until mid-November in the lead up to the 1 December 2025 implementation". FTA asked WiseTech to reverse the rollout for further consultation and was declined. Members told FTA they hadn't had time to consult clients or amend contracts, that on-charging software fees to importers is not common practice, and that some were "left with no option but to absorb unplanned system costs" (FTA, 3 December 2025). The Daily Cargo News reported on 5 December 2025 that the head of Australia's peak industry body had called the change "unacceptable" (DCN, subscriber article).
Some customers received a "Special Offer" email on 31 October 2025 and were moved to the new arrangements on 1 December at the same price they paid under the old licence. That's delivered through a monthly Transitional Pricing Protection line on the invoice, calculated as the old licence cost minus the Value Pack charge and shown as a credit or a debit. WiseTech has said it will review the mechanism regularly, and there is no forecast end date. FTA says it has not been told how eligibility was decided (FTA, 19 January 2026). Customers without the offer are invoiced purely on transactional pricing.
WiseTech publishes per-transaction list prices for each Value Pack. The Forwarding Value Pack covers CargoWise forwarding and customs functions and is charged per shipment:
| Forwarding shipment | FCL / FTL | LCL / LTL / air |
|---|---|---|
| Import (incl. domestic legs) | US$19.95 | US$13.30 |
| Export (incl. domestic legs) | US$12.75 | US$8.35 |
| Gateway, transit, transfer, cross-trade, co-load | US$3.95 | US$2.63 |
Other packs include Customs (US$3.28 per export or core procedure, US$9.95 per import procedure; stand-alone customs is included in the Forwarding pack), Land Transport (US$1.95 per container, US$1.45 per LTL consignment) and Liner and Agency (US$9.95 per booking or bill of lading). Payment terms beyond 14 days add 2% (net 30) to 6% (net 60), and hosting, network and backup are priced separately. Source: CargoWise Value Pack list pricing, version 26.10, checked 8 November 2026. Your contract price may differ, and customers on the Special Offer have transitional pricing protection.
Work out your own figure with the CargoWise cost calculator.
A worked example: a forwarder handling 300 FCL imports, 150 LCL or air imports and 100 FCL exports a month would pay about 300 × 19.95 + 150 × 13.30 + 100 × 12.75 = US$9,255 a month at list price, before payment-term surcharges and optional services.
Every CargoWise customer, because the transition wasn't optional. For a small forwarder the practical effect depends on your shape. If you were paying for more seats than you used, or hosting for a small team, removing seat and hosting fees helps. If you run a lean team on a high job count, the per-job fee is the number to watch, and it moves with volume you don't fully control. If you're on the Special Offer, your cost is protected for now, but the protection has no stated end date and a line on your invoice that can go either way as your use of functionality changes.
The disbursement question is the awkward one. WiseTech's position is that the fee can be passed to importers and exporters. FTA members said that isn't common practice and many are reluctant to try. Whether you on-charge it or not, it's now a visible per-shipment cost, and your customers' other forwarders face the same decision you do.
Take your last CargoWise invoice and divide it by the jobs you processed that month. That's your software cost per shipment, and it's now roughly stable per job. Then do the number that was always bigger than it looked and never appeared on an invoice: labour per shipment. Count the minutes a shipment takes from the first customer email to the final invoice, across quoting, booking, documents, the declaration and billing, and multiply by what an hour of your ops staff costs.
Put the two side by side. The software figure is now a known per-job cost you can't negotiate down by trimming users. The labour figure is the one you control. So the automation question changes: it's no longer "how do we spend less on software", it's "which step costs the most minutes and can be done by software we can check".
Quoting is the step that happens before a job exists. If, like many small forwarders, you create the job in CargoWise once the customer accepts, the quote stage lives in email: read the request, look up the rates, write the reply, chase the missing details. It's the step with the most repeated reading and arithmetic per minute of staff time, and the step where being slow costs you the shipment before there's a transaction fee to argue about.
Automating it by email means nothing changes inside CargoWise. No integration project, no new modules, no seats, no data migration, no change to how you book or lodge. You forward a customer's request to a mailbox. A drafted reply, priced from your own rate sheet, comes back. You check it and send it from your own mailbox. If the customer accepts, you create the job in CargoWise exactly as you do now. If the automation isn't earning its keep, you stop forwarding emails. That's the whole exit.
Laneworks is built to be exactly that: an assistant that sits in your inbox, not in your TMS. It reads the quote request, prices it from your rate sheet, shows the rate-sheet row behind every number so you can check it in seconds, and never contacts your customer. There's a full example of a draft on the site, and a guide to triaging quote requests if you want to fix the process first.
Per-shipment software pricing only starts counting once a shipment exists. The quote is where you decide whether it ever will.
Since 1 December 2025 CargoWise is sold as Value Packs priced per transaction in US dollars. WiseTech's published list prices for the Forwarding Value Pack are US$19.95 per FCL import shipment and US$13.30 per LCL or air import, US$12.75 per FCL export and US$8.35 per LCL or air export, and US$3.95 / US$2.63 for gateway, transit and co-load shipments (price list version 26.10). Customs procedures are US$3.28 or US$9.95 each in the Customs Value Pack. Hosting and other optional services are priced separately, and longer payment terms add 2-6%.
No. WiseTech's announcement says there are no longer any CargoWise Cloud standard hosting costs or seat fees in the Value Packs. The cost moves with the number of jobs you process.
WiseTech says providers may choose to pass the charge on as a disbursement. Freight & Trade Alliance members reported that on-charging software fees to importers is not common practice, and some are absorbing the cost.
Divide your monthly CargoWise invoice by the jobs processed that month. Then compare it with labour per shipment (quoting, booking, documents, declaration, billing), which is usually the larger number and the one automation reduces.
Forward a real quote request to try@getlaneworks.com. A drafted reply comes back in about two minutes, priced from a sample tariff. Send your rate sheet and it uses your rates. No CargoWise changes, no seats, nothing to install.
Forward a quote request