Best Air Freight Software in 2026 (Top 10 Compared)

Comparing the top 10 best air freight software includes 1. CargoEZ, 2. GoFreight, 3. CargoWise, 4. Magaya Supply Chain, 5. Riege Scope, 6. Descartes, 7. WebCargo by Freightos, 8. CargoAi, 9. 7LFreight and 10. Shipthis.

Air Freight Software at a Glance

Two of the ten publish a number. Eight want a call first. That split predicts your sales cycle better than any feature list on this page.

Capability matrix

These five columns each disqualify somebody. A platform that cannot raise an e-AWB or file to CBP on the air side is not an air freight system, whatever else it does well.

Not documented means we could not substantiate it publicly. Take every one of those cells into the demo as a question. None of them is a confirmed no.

What Air Freight Software Actually Fixes

Cargo moves in hours. The paperwork behind it moves at the speed of whoever is typing. That mismatch is where the money goes, and it shows up in three places.

Quoting is too slow to catch spot business. A rate request lands at 09:14. Somebody opens three carrier tariffs, calls a GSA about space on the afternoon rotation out of ORD, works the fuel and security lines by hand, and sends the quote back at 11:40. The space went at 10:05. On air, quoting speed is not admin. It is whether you win the freight.

The same numbers get typed five times. Pieces, gross weight, dimensions, shipper, consignee, commodity. Into a spreadsheet. Into the master air waybill. Into each house. Into the commercial invoice. Into the customs entry. Every retype is a chance to transpose a digit, and the ones you catch at your desk are the cheap ones. The expensive ones surface at the airline's counter. We covered the arithmetic of this in how data duplication drains freight forwarding margins.

Tracking goes dark at the airport door. Ocean gives you a sailing and an arrival, and for ocean that is mostly enough. Air needs the events in between, because that is where things go wrong. Cargo tendered but not uplifted. A consignment rolled to the next rotation because a heavier shipment paid more. A hold at customs. A handler who has not broken down the ULD yet. Without alerts on those, you learn about the problem when your customer phones you.

What good software does about it is unglamorous. One shipment record that feeds every document downstream. Live carrier rates pulled into the quote instead of copied off a PDF. Status messages from carriers and handlers landing as alerts rather than sitting in a mailbox nobody reads.

Airline Cargo Systems vs Forwarder Air Freight Software

Read this before you shortlist anything, because it will save you a fortnight.

Airline and handler systems sell capacity. Schedules, allotments, revenue management, build-up on the ramp, the carrier end of cargo messaging. IBS Software iCargo, CHAMP Cargosystems, Accelya, SITA Cargo, Kale UPLIFT, TFLite. Excellent products. Built for airlines, GSAs and terminal operators.

Forwarder platforms sell a forwarding business. Quoting against carrier rates, consol planning, masters and houses, air customs, per-shipment costing, and whatever your customer sees.

Both call themselves air cargo software. That is why a search for the phrase returns a mess, and why the AI-written listicles rank SITA next to Magaya as though a forwarder might reasonably choose between them. You would not. The revenue model is different, the user is different, and the demo will not survive contact with your first real shipment.

Everything ranked below is a forwarder platform or a forwarder-facing rate layer.

My Picks: Best Air Freight Software

• CargoEZ for US small and midsize forwarders running air and ocean on one system.

• GoFreight for teams who need people to actually use the thing.

• CargoWise for multinationals where customs across many countries is the hard part.

• Magaya Supply Chain for mid-market forwarders with processes they will not change.

• Riege Scope for air-first operations that care about e-AWB and carbon.

• Descartes when compliance and messaging are the problem, not admin.

• WebCargo by Freightos for instant carrier rates and booking.

• CargoAi for booking with CO2 reporting and API access.

• 7LFreight for North American desks quoting air and inland together.

• Shipthis for anyone who wants a price on a web page and a trial.

How I Evaluated These 10 Platforms

Same six checks, same order, every platform. Capability claims come from vendor documentation and demos. Ratings come from G2 or Capterra, checked in August 2026, and are labelled with their sample size because a 4.8 from 13 people is a different statement from a 4.4 from 309.

Implementation figures say where they came from. A vendor estimate and a user-reported average are not the same claim and this article does not blend them. Where something is not public, it says so.

The Air Cargo Readiness Test

Gate 1. Does it build the air documents? One shipment record should produce the master, the houses under it, and an electronic air waybill that goes to the carrier. If the answer involves exporting a PDF and rekeying it into a carrier portal, that is not a pass. Our piece on electronic versus paper air waybills covers why this one matters more than it sounds.

Gate 2. Can the rate engine think in air? Chargeable against actual weight, volumetric tiers, fuel and security surcharges, contract rates and spot in the same quote. Rate tables designed for ocean contracts usually need a workaround here, and the workaround is where your margin quietly goes.

Gate 3. Air customs, specifically. ACAS data before departure, air manifest, the security requirements that apply to air and not to ocean. US operations should confirm AMS filing on the air side rather than assuming ocean coverage carries over. It often does not.

Gate 4. Real air milestones. Flight status, airport handling events, ULD movement. Some platforms map air onto an ocean milestone model and hope you do not notice. Our guide to air cargo tracking sets out what a full set looks like.

Gate 5. What it connects to. Carrier networks, cargo messaging hubs, customs, and your accounting system.

Gate 6. Can you find out what it costs, and when does it start earning? Both halves matter. A cheap platform that takes six months to go live is not cheap.

Detailed Comparison: The 10 Best Air Freight Software Platforms

1. CargoEZ

Best for

US small and midsize forwarders running air and ocean in one system.

CargoEZ is aimed squarely at the US forwarder who runs air and ocean off the same desk and is tired of reconciling two systems every month end. The air freight platform keeps one record from quote to delivery. Enter the weights, dimensions and parties once and they populate the master, the houses, the commercial invoice and the customs entry.

Its AI document capture reads inbound paperwork and pulls the shipment data out without anybody keying it. That is where an air desk loses its afternoons. ISF and AMS filing sit inside the platform rather than in a separate broker portal you tab across to.

Pros

• One record drives every air document, so the AWB, invoice and filing cannot drift apart

• AI document capture pulls shipment data off inbound paperwork automatically

• Air and ocean share one rate, customs and finance layer

• Under a month to go live on G2 averages, the quickest here

• Customer portal and CRM come with it rather than as line items

Cons

• No public price, so you cannot budget without talking to somebody

• Demo only, no trial

• Deeper door-to-door and carrier spot-rate automation are V2.0 rather than shipped today

• Forty reviews is a smaller sample than the old guard carry

What users are saying

CargoEZ holds a 4.8/5 G2 rating from 40 reviews, tied for the highest score in this comparison. Ease of use, migration support and responsiveness come up repeatedly. Forty is a respectable sample for a platform at this stage and a small one next to Magaya, so read the reviews as corroboration and then put your own air workflows through a demo.

Our Verdict

Take CargoEZ seriously if you run both modes in the US and your problem is administrative rather than architectural. Too much rekeying, too many systems, a month end that eats three days. The sub-month implementation is the strongest thing on its sheet. Two things to pin down in the demo: whether your exact air filings are covered end to end, and how it behaves on carrier spot rates on your busiest lanes. Get the pricing structure in writing before you compare it to anything.

2. GoFreight

Best for

SMB and midsize forwarders prioritising usability and fast onboarding.

The most common way a software purchase fails is not that the software cannot do the job. It is that nobody in operations wants to open it. GoFreight is built against that failure, and it is the reason it keeps winning usability awards it did not have to pay for.

Underneath the interface it is a full cloud forwarding platform covering air and ocean. On air that means masters and houses, e-AWB submission, air customs and per-shipment accounting. A ten-person desk with no IT function can run it, which is the whole argument.

Pros

• Usability is the single most-cited strength across 92 reviews

• Complete air chain from quote through e-AWB to shipment-level margin

• Carrier and accounting connectivity runs deeper than most platforms this size

Cons

• No public price and no trial

• Reviewers mention slowness at volume often enough to be worth testing

• Requests for deeper admin controls recur in the feedback

• The vendor says four to eight weeks, users average nearer two months

What users are saying

A 4.8/5 G2 rating from 92 reviews, tied with CargoEZ for the top score here and on more than double the sample. Interface, automated tracking and support draw the praise. Speed and admin depth draw the complaints. That is a healthy pattern, because both criticisms are specific enough that you can test them in an afternoon.

Our Verdict

If adoption is your binding constraint, this is the one. It is also the closest thing to a direct alternative to CargoEZ on this list, and the honest way to choose between them is to put the same three shipments through both. Push on the two documented weak spots while you do: load it up to a realistic daily volume and see how it feels, and confirm the admin controls you need exist rather than sitting on a roadmap.

3. CargoWise

Best for

Large multinational and multi-entity air operations.

Nobody buys CargoWise because it is pleasant. They buy it because it clears customs in thirty countries, closes books across a dozen entities and currencies, and has a module for whatever strange thing your Tokyo office does. On air that includes consolidation scenarios most platforms will not attempt.

Pricing changed on 1 December 2025. WiseTech moved to Value Packs, charging one automation fee per transaction in place of separate seat, hosting and module charges. Figures reported by GoFreight, a direct competitor, put a full import container with an inland leg at roughly $19.95 and a standalone import customs entry at roughly $9.95, with unlimited users and access to 216 modules and counting. There is still no public price list, so treat those as indicative and make your account manager put a projection in writing.

Pros

• Deepest multi-country customs and compliance coverage on this list, by a distance

• Unlimited users under Value Packs, which changes the arithmetic for big teams

• Module breadth covers essentially any air scenario you can describe

• Mature partner network to lean on during rollout

Cons

• Complexity, training load and configuration depth dominate the negative reviews

• No public price list, so cost discovery is a sales exercise

• Rollout runs to months and depends entirely on countries, entities and modules

• The 2025 pricing change was reported to raise costs for a slice of the existing base

What users are saying

4.3/5 on G2 from 35 reviews. Reviewers rate the integration breadth, the global reach and the ability to run a complicated business from one place. The same reviewers are blunt about complexity, training burden, cost and how much configuration stands between signature and value.

Our Verdict

Right answer for a multinational where the compliance surface genuinely is the business. Wrong answer for a single-country air desk, where you will pay in configuration for capability you never use. Before you compare it to anything per-user, model the transaction fees against your real annual air volume. The two pricing shapes cross over, and where they cross depends entirely on how much you ship.

4. Magaya Supply Chain

Best for

Mid-market forwarders with significant handling scope.

Three hundred and nine reviews. That is more than triple anything else here, and it is the main reason Magaya deserves a slot even if the score sits a little below the leaders. You are not guessing what you are buying.

What you are buying is configurability. Rate management, air document production and process automation are all there, but the thing forwarders actually choose it for is that it bends to how they already work instead of demanding they work its way. It also reaches further into handling operations than most forwarding platforms bother to.

Pros

• By far the largest evidence base on this list at 309 reviews

• Workflow customisation deep enough to fit established internal processes

• Operational scope extends past core forwarding

• Vendor gives a straight answer on timing at 30 to 90 days

Cons

• No public starting price

• Speed, support responsiveness and complexity recur in the negative feedback

• Carrier rate connectivity is not documented to the depth the rate specialists offer

• Module boundaries are where quotes move, so get them itemised early

What users are saying

4.4/5 from 309 reviews on G2. Breadth and configurability are what people like. Performance, support response times and complexity in bigger deployments are what they do not.

Our Verdict

Choose Magaya when your processes are settled and you want the system to adapt to them rather than the reverse. The sample size alone gives you more to go on than any other vendor here can offer. Get the module list and the price of each one in writing before you get attached, because scope is where these quotes grow.

5. Riege Scope

Best for

Air-first forwarders wanting direct e-AWB and carbon reporting.

Of everything on this list, Scope is the product that most obviously had air in mind from the start. It outranks every competitor organically for air freight software, which is less a marketing achievement than a reflection of how narrowly the product is aimed.

Two features stand out. It creates e-AWBs and transmits them to carriers directly, and it has a carbon footprint calculator built in rather than promised. That second one has moved from nice-to-have to tender requirement faster than most forwarders expected. Riege is strongest in Central Europe with reach into around 60 countries.

Pricing is per user or per module on subscription and is not published anywhere. No G2 or Capterra profile with a usable sample could be verified. One aggregator lists a single review, which is not a rating and is not reported as one here.

Our Verdict

Shortlist Scope if air is most of your business and e-AWB and carbon reporting are decision criteria rather than boxes to tick. Accept that you will learn nothing about price without a sales call.

6. Descartes

Best for

Compliance-heavy operations needing air messaging infrastructure.

Descartes is less an application than a set of pipes. A large share of air cargo EDI already moves across its networks, which means several other platforms on this list connect to carriers and authorities through infrastructure Descartes owns. Buying it puts you on the network rather than beside it.

For air the pieces that matter are the messaging gateway and the customs and denied-party screening tools. If your constraint is regulatory rather than operational, this is built for exactly that constraint. It is also a portfolio rather than a product, which has consequences at contract time.

Pros

• Owns messaging infrastructure that competitors connect through

• Serious depth on customs and denied-party screening

• Long-established coverage across regulatory regimes

• Eighty-one reviews is a solid evidence base

Cons

• Portfolio structure means product boundaries and network fees need nailing down in writing

• Interface complexity, required fields and glitches come up repeatedly

• No public starting price

• Around two months to live on user-reported averages

What users are saying

4.3/5 from 81 reviews. Centralised shipment control, tracking and domain coverage earn the praise. Interface complexity and required-field burden earn the complaints, which makes workflow design and user acceptance testing worth real time before you roll it out widely.

Our Verdict

Buy Descartes when compliance and messaging are the hard part and you want infrastructure rather than an app. Because it is a portfolio, get the exact product list, the module boundaries and any per-message network fees in writing before you compare the total to a single-platform quote. Forwarders whose pain is administrative rather than regulatory will want a different fit.

7. WebCargo by Freightos

Best for

Instant airline rate access and digital booking.

WebCargo is the biggest digital air booking network there is, with live rates and instant booking across most of the carriers you already fly. If your quoting bottleneck is rate lookup, it deletes that step.

Now the correction that most comparison articles get wrong. WebCargo is a rate and booking layer. It is not a forwarding management system and it will not replace one. It sits alongside your operating platform and feeds it. Judge it as a component, not as a candidate.

One more caution, because it is an easy mistake to make. Search results will hand you a Freightos rating with a few hundred reviews behind it. That belongs to the Freightos marketplace, a shipper-facing product. It is not WebCargo's score and should never be quoted as such. No product-specific public rating for WebCargo could be verified.

Our Verdict

Add WebCargo next to your forwarding platform if rate lookup and booking speed are the bottleneck. Do not put it on a shortlist against systems that run your whole desk.

8. CargoAi

Best for

Air booking with live rates and CO2 reporting.

Same category as WebCargo: live carrier rates, digital booking, no forwarding platform underneath. Two things separate it. CO2 tracking sits closer to the centre of the product than it does for most competitors, and there is an API if you would rather have the rate layer inside your own system than in another browser tab.

The AI in the name is branding, not a claim being assessed here.

There is a pricing page. It carries no numbers. No public rating with a usable sample could be verified either.

Our Verdict

Worth a look where carbon reporting is a live customer requirement and you want rates reachable by API. Expect a sales conversation before you learn what it costs.

9. 7LFreight

Best for

North American forwarders quoting air and inland together.

A Freightos company, pointed at North America, and the only tool here that treats the air leg and the inland leg as one quote. If your business is airport-to-door out of ORD, JFK or LAX, that is a real workflow advantage rather than a feature-list item.

The vendor claims north of six million lines of air rates and more than ten thousand users. Both are vendor-stated and neither is independently verified. Contracts run month to month or annually with modules picked to suit, so cost scales with what you commit to.

No published pricing. No public rating with a usable sample.

Our Verdict

Look at 7LFreight if you are quoting air and inland together in North America and want one workflow for both. Ask for module-level pricing against your real monthly quote count, not a headline figure.

10. Shipthis

Best for

Forwarders who want a published price and a real trial.

Eighty-nine dollars a user, thirty days, no card. In a category where eight of ten vendors will not tell you anything without a discovery call, that is the whole pitch and it is a good one. You can find out whether this works for you before anybody tries to sell you anything.

Feature-wise it covers the core air chain, documents and customs included, with the breadth you would expect at that price rather than enterprise depth. Nobody is claiming otherwise.

Pros

• One of only two published prices on this list

• Longest trial here at 30 days, and it does not ask for a card

• Core air documents and customs are covered

• You can budget for it before you talk to sales

Cons

• Thirteen reviews, and some were vendor-referred or incentivised

• Eight to nine weeks is slower than platforms with more under the hood

• Not built for enterprise multi-entity requirements

• Carrier rate connectivity is undocumented

What users are saying

4.8/5 on Capterra from 13 reviews, praising usability, support and the implementation experience. Thirteen is a small sample and some of it is incentivised, so treat the number as directional and let the trial do the real work.

Our Verdict

Pick Shipthis if proving the thing on your own freight matters more than enterprise depth. Then use the trial properly. Run real quotes, build a real master with houses under it, file a real entry. Thirty days of that tells you more than every rating on this page put together, ours included.

How to Choose Air Freight Software

Five tests. Run them in your demo, in this order. Each one is built to catch a platform that looks air-capable on paper.

1. One entry, full document set. Key a shipment once with dimensions and gross weight. Ask for the master, two houses under it, the commercial invoice and the customs entry, with no retyping. Listen for the moment somebody says "and then you'd export that and upload it." That sentence is the answer. Our MAWB and HAWB guide covers what a complete set contains.

2. Send an e-AWB to a real carrier. Producing the document is not the same as transmitting it. Ask to watch the message go out and the acknowledgement come back. Our notes on e-AWB implementation cover what usually breaks.

3. Move a surcharge, then requote. Change the fuel line on a lane and requote a shipment that is already priced. An air-native engine handles it without blinking. An ocean rate table usually wants the quote rebuilt from scratch.

4. Try to break chargeable weight. Give it something light and bulky where volumetric wins, then something dense where it does not. The platform should pick the right basis on its own and carry it through to pricing and the air waybill. Plenty do not.

5. Roll a flight. Ask what happens when a consignment is offloaded or held. You are looking for an alert that finds the right person, not a status that changes on a dashboard nobody has open. Our guide to real-time cargo tracking technologies covers what those feeds should carry.

For procurement questions that apply across all modes, see our list of questions to ask before buying freight forwarding software.

Air Freight Software Mistakes That Cost Money

Assuming air came in the box. Multi-modal platforms lead with ocean because that is where the volume is, and air is often thinner underneath. Run the six gates rather than reading the mode list on the pricing page.

Mistaking a rate layer for an operating system. WebCargo, CargoAi and 7LFreight are good at what they do. None of them runs a forwarding business. Buy one expecting the other and you find out halfway through implementation that you still need the other one.

Shortlisting airline systems. iCargo, CHAMP, Accelya and SITA Cargo are strong products for airlines and handlers. A forwarder who puts them on a shortlist loses a fortnight discovering the mismatch.

Comparing per-user to per-transaction without doing the sums. CargoWise charges per transaction, Shipthis per seat. Which is cheaper flips depending on your annual air volume. Model both against your real numbers before you decide anything.

Reading the score without the sample. A 4.8 from 13 people and a 4.4 from 309 are not comparable claims, and the AI-generated listicles that rank these tools will never tell you that.

Skipping the air filing test. ISF and air security filings carry real penalties for late or wrong submissions. Confirm the platform files what you are obliged to file, on the air side, before anybody signs.

Which Air Freight Platform Fits Your Operation?

Air and ocean, under 50 staff, US. CargoEZ or GoFreight. Run the same three shipments through both and decide on implementation speed and how your team feels about the interface.

You want proof before budget. Shipthis. It is the only genuine try-before-you-buy here.

Air is most of what you do. Riege Scope, for the air-first design, direct e-AWB and carbon reporting.

Multinational, customs everywhere. CargoWise. Model the transaction cost first.

Your processes are fixed. Magaya, for configurability and the biggest evidence base on the page.

Compliance and messaging are the problem. Descartes.

Rate lookup is the bottleneck, not operations. WebCargo or CargoAi beside your existing platform, or 7LFreight if you quote air and inland together in North America.

The Bottom Line on Air Freight Software

This is a smaller category than the search results make it look. Take out the airline and handler systems. Take out the rate layers that are not operating platforms. What remains, the products that can genuinely run a forwarder's air desk end to end, is a short list.

Two questions sort it. Does the platform build and transmit air documents from one record, or does it hand you a PDF to retype somewhere else? And can you find out what it costs? Only two of the ten answer that second one on a web page, which tells you more about the months ahead than any feature grid will.

Judge on time to live, admin overhead and whether the price is knowable before a sales cycle. Then run the five tests on your own freight. A platform that passes all five on real shipments beats every rating on this page, ours included.

Comparing across modes rather than air alone? Our best freight forwarding software comparison covers the same vendors on wider criteria, and freight rate management software goes deeper on pricing engines.

Sources

• CargoEZ on G2, checked August 2026

• GoFreight on G2, checked August 2026

• CargoWise on G2, checked August 2026

• Magaya Supply Chain on G2, checked August 2026

• Descartes Forwarder Enterprise Suite on G2, checked August 2026

• Shipthis on Capterra, checked August 2026

• Riege Scope air freight, vendor documentation

• WebCargo by Freightos, vendor documentation

• CargoAi, vendor documentation

• 7LFreight by Freightos, vendor documentation

• CargoWise Value Pack transaction rates as reported by GoFreight, December 2025 pricing change