Container Loading Software Pricing in 2026: What Every Tool Actually Costs

Container loading software pricing is unusually opaque for such a practical category: one vendor publishes everything, another publishes nothing, one sells day tickets, another sells perpetual desktop licences. This guide collects the real numbers in one place and — more importantly — explains the pricing-model differences that change your actual annual spend far more than the sticker price does.

Disclosure: published by ContainerMath, one of the tools compared. All prices are from public vendor pages as of July 2026 and rounded; always verify on the vendor’s own site before budgeting.

Want to try the category before spending anything? The CBM calculator is free with no signup, and gives you volumes, weights and container-fit recommendations in a minute.

The 2026 price table

Tool	Entry price	Model	Everything-included tier	Free option
ContainerMath	$19.90/mo	Flat per workspace	$129/mo Pro Plus (≈33% off annual)	Trial (no card) + free CBM calculator
CubeMaster Online	~$49/mo	Per-seat tiers; team packs $99–$290/mo	Desktop perpetual ~$995–$2,495	Free trial
EasyCargo	~$79/mo per user	Per seat (~$67 annual); ~$9.70 day tickets	—	10-day trial
Cargo-Planner	~$99/mo (~$59 annual)	Per-account tiers; Standard ~$139/mo	Enterprise on request	Free trial
Cube-IQ (MagicLogic)	Quote only	Sales-led enterprise licence	Quote only	Trial via sales demo

Sources: easycargo3d.com, cargo-planner.com/pricing, cubemaster.net, magiclogic.com, containermath.com/pricing.

Four pricing models, four very different annual bills

1. Per seat (EasyCargo, CubeMaster team packs). The sticker is per user. A three-person ops team on EasyCargo is ~$237/month — about $2,850/year — even though they’re planning the same containers. If more than one person touches load plans, multiply before comparing.

2. Flat per workspace (ContainerMath). One price regardless of team size; plans differ by capability, not headcount. Three users on Pro Plus cost the same $129/month as one user. The flip side: there’s no pay-per-use option for very occasional loads.

3. Day tickets (EasyCargo). ~$9.70 buys a day of access. For someone loading a container once a quarter, ~$39/year beats every subscription in this table — genuinely the cheapest way to plan four loads a year, and worth saying plainly.

4. Quote-only enterprise (Cube-IQ, CubeMaster desktop). No published price; procurement, demos and a sales cycle before you see a number. Comparable enterprise desktop load-optimisation licences generally run $2,500+ (unconfirmed for Cube-IQ specifically). You may get exactly the integration depth you’re paying for — see ContainerMath vs Cube-IQ for when that’s the right call — but you can’t budget it from their website.

What the cheap tiers leave out

Entry tiers differ more in limits than in features, and this is where comparisons quietly break down:

• Calculation caps. ContainerMath Starter includes 50 calculations/month; unlimited starts at Carton Pro ($50) / Freight Pro ($99). A calculation is only re-metered for a new manifest — recalculating the same load doesn’t burn another.
• Users. Per-seat tools mean the entry price covers exactly one person.
• Capabilities. ContainerMath gates AI manifest import to paid tiers, air ULDs and the embeddable widget to Pro Plus, and the REST API to Freight Pro and up. Cargo-Planner’s interactive mode needs Standard (~$139/mo). Check the one capability you actually need, not the feature-count marketing.
• Exports. Watermark-free PDF/CSV exports typically start one tier above free everywhere.

The buyer’s guide lists the eight capabilities worth checking before any of the prices matter.

Worked examples

A solo forwarder quoting ~2 loads/month: ContainerMath Starter at $19.90/mo ($239/yr) or EasyCargo annual at ~$67/mo (~$800/yr). If it’s truly 4–6 loads a year, EasyCargo day tickets (~$50/yr) win outright.

A 3-person export ops team, daily planning, FMCG cartons: ContainerMath Pro Plus $129/mo flat (~$1,037/yr annual) with Carton Fit + freight + AI import; EasyCargo ~$201/mo annual (~$2,400/yr) without the carton step; CubeMaster team pack $99–$290/mo depending on tier.

An enterprise embedding load optimisation into a WMS: this is Cube-IQ BlackBox / CubeMaster enterprise territory — budget a sales cycle and (likely) four figures. ContainerMath’s REST API covers programmatic calculation at subscription pricing, but deep bespoke ERP integration programmes are the incumbents’ home ground.

How to actually compare

Ignore stickers; compute your number: (people who plan loads) × (loads per month) × (the capability tier you truly need), on each tool’s model, over a year. Then run one real shipment through the free trials — every tool here has one — and let the piece count and the data-entry time break the tie. The full head-to-heads are here: vs EasyCargo, vs Cargo-Planner, vs Cube-IQ, vs CubeMaster.

Frequently asked questions

How much does container loading software cost?

As of July 2026: entry subscriptions run $19.90/mo (ContainerMath) to ~$99/mo (Cargo-Planner), with CubeMaster Online at ~$49/mo and EasyCargo at ~$79/mo per user. Enterprise desktop products (Cube-IQ, CubeMaster desktop) are quote-only or ~$995–$2,495 perpetual. Day tickets (~$9.70, EasyCargo) cover one-off use.

What is the cheapest container loading software?

For occasional single users, EasyCargo’s ~$9.70 one-day tickets. For regular use, ContainerMath’s $19.90/mo Starter is the lowest subscription in the category — and because it’s priced per workspace, it stays the cheapest by a wide margin once two or more people share it.

Is there completely free container loading software?

No full 3D planner is free-forever — every tool here uses free trials. Genuinely free, no-signup options are single-purpose calculators like the CBM calculator, which handles volumes, weights and container-fit recommendations without an account.

Why doesn’t Cube-IQ publish pricing?

MagicLogic sells through a sales-led enterprise motion — every public path leads to a demo request. That’s normal for deep WMS/TMS-integrated products, but it means you can’t self-serve a price; budget time for procurement, and compare against published-price tools so you know your alternative number walking in.

Do annual plans save much?

Yes: ContainerMath and Cargo-Planner discount ≈33–40% on annual billing, EasyCargo ~15%. If you plan loads year-round, annual billing is usually the single biggest lever on this table.