The Real Price Ladder for Load Planning Software in 2026
EasyCargo publishes an eleven-tool price comparison, from a free calculator to Cube-IQ at $2,500 a year. Two rows have already moved. Here is the ladder re-checked, the team-seat math nobody compares, and where Truck Packer honestly sits on it.
EasyCargo does something most software companies will not: it publishes a side-by-side price comparison of eleven load planning tools, competitors included, running from a free 3D calculator up to Cube-IQ at $2,500 a year. It is genuinely useful, and it is also drifting out of date, including the row about EasyCargo itself. So we went and re-checked the numbers, added the tools built for teams rather than single planners, and put ourselves on the ladder honestly.
The ladder as published
EasyCargo's table, in annual cost order: 3D Load Calculator free, Load! at $79, Cargo Optimizer Enterprise at $117, Goodloading at $180, SeaRates at $300, EasyCargo at $499, PackApp at $593, CubeMaster at $708, CargoWiz at $799, PackVol at $1,008, and Cube-IQ at $2,500. Trials range from a single demo calculation (SeaRates) to a genuinely unrestricted 30 days (CubeMaster, PackVol, Cube-IQ).
Two of those rows have already moved
EasyCargo's own listing is the biggest change. Their help documentation now puts the annual license at $799 per user, or 12 monthly payments of $79, with one-day tickets at $9.70 each in packs of ten and a 30 percent discount on year licenses for three or more users. That is a 60 percent increase over the $499 in their own comparison, and it moves them from the middle of the ladder to the top third. The pricing page still offers a 10-day full trial with no credit card.
Goodloading moved too. Its current price list, effective April 30, 2026, is 280 euros a year for one user, not the $180 in the comparison, and the seat math climbs fast: a second user adds 165 euros, five users add 485, ten users add 1,155. The trial is 4 euros for seven days. CargoWiz is the confusing one. The comparison lists it at $799 a year, while Capterra shows $747 as a flat, one-time payment with no free trial and no free version. Depending on which is current, that is either the eighth most expensive subscription on the list or a perpetual license that pays for itself in year two.
There are really three rungs, not eleven
The first rung is free or near-free calculators, fine for checking whether a load fits and useless the moment you need to save, share, or version a plan. The second is single-seat annual software in the $250 to $800 range, which is where most of the list actually lives. The third is anything priced per team, and that is where the sticker prices stop being comparable. Cargo Planner is the clearest example: Lite is $59 a month billed annually ($708 a year) for one account, Standard is $99 a month billed annually ($1,188 a year) for up to five accounts, which works out near $238 per user per year if you actually fill the seats and roughly $1,188 per user if you do not.
That is the number nobody compares. A $799 per-seat tool is cheaper than a $1,188 team plan for one planner and dramatically more expensive for six. Before you compare prices, count how many people need to open the plan: the production manager building it, the crew chief loading against it, and the driver or carrier reading it are three different seats in most of these products.
Where Truck Packer sits
Truck Packer Pro is $28 a month, or about $252 a year with the 25 percent annual discount, with a 7-day trial and no credit card. That puts us on the second rung, above Goodloading's single seat and below EasyCargo, CubeMaster, CargoWiz, and Cargo Planner Lite. Business is priced by conversation rather than by page, which is the same opacity we just criticized in Cube-IQ, and it is fair to hold us to it.
Two honest caveats. Multi-truck packing is still listed as coming soon on our pricing page, and CubeMaster at $708 will split a load across multiple trailers today. And the general-freight tools on this ladder are better at cartons, pallets, and mixed-SKU container stuffing than we are, because that is what they were built for. What they are not built for is a rig of road cases with real stacking rules and a weight distribution you have to defend at a scale house, which is why we exist.
The takeaway is not that cheap wins. It is that the comparison worth running is annual cost divided by the people who actually need access, against a tool that models your freight instead of somebody else's.
Ready to price out your own load plan? Log in to Truck Packer and build it.
