For decades, booking air freight meant phoning airlines for rates and capacity and confirming by email: slow, opaque, and impossible to compare at a glance. A wave of digital marketplaces changed that. Forwarders now see live capacity, instant rates and online eBooking with airlines, and the three leading platforms are WebCargo, cargo.one and CargoAi. Nexport Logistics uses these tools to source and book your air freight, with the result surfaced in the Nexportal platform.
WebCargo (by Freightos)
A rate and eBooking platform for forwarders: instant air rates, live capacity and direct eBooking with airlines. It's used by thousands of forwarders and, with recent airline additions (Virgin Atlantic Cargo, Norwegian Cargo, China Airlines and many more), covers a large share of global air cargo capacity. It also integrates into forwarder TMS systems and offers WebCargo Sky for broad airline rate access.
cargo.one
An air cargo booking marketplace where forwarders discover, quote and book airline capacity. It has expanded airline partnerships steadily (American Airlines Cargo, Philippine Airlines, United Cargo and others) and increasingly positions itself as an AI-native operating system spanning air and ocean.
CargoAi
A digital air cargo platform offering rate search, eBooking and capacity across a wide airline network (CargoMART), with API connectivity and sustainability tooling (CargoCO2 for emissions reporting). It's part of the same shift: turning air cargo procurement into something you can search, compare and book online.
How they fit together
These marketplaces handle the commercial layer: finding and booking the right airline rate and capacity fast. They complement the IATA standards (the e-AWB as the contract, ONE Record as the data backbone) and the airport community system (Cargonaut at Schiphol) that moves the shipment data through handling and customs. A good forwarder uses the marketplace to buy well and the standards/community systems to execute cleanly.
The catch: you can't just do this yourself
This part is easy to miss. The platforms are built for forwarders, not for shippers, and access to them runs on IATA accreditation. To book air cargo directly with airlines (and to be the party on the e-AWB), in practice you need to be an IATA-accredited cargo agent: a status with real requirements — qualified and trained staff, Dangerous Goods competence, financial security and ongoing compliance — that you do not simply get by signing up. For a regular importer or exporter it's a non-starter to set this up for your own shipments. That accreditation, and the platform access that comes with it, is what a forwarder brings.
What this means for your rates
More transparency and competition in air rates means better buying and faster quotes; you're no longer at the mercy of one airline's phone line. A forwarder who shops these platforms can find capacity and price that a single-carrier relationship can't, and does it as an accredited agent, so you don't need the IATA status yourself.
How Nexport Logistics handles it
We source your air freight across these platforms to get you the right capacity at the right price, book it with the e-AWB and track it in Nexportal: the buying advantage of the marketplaces, with one forwarder accountable for the result.
Need air freight priced and booked? Email info@nexportlogistics.nl.
Official sources: WebCargo by Freightos · cargo.one · CargoAi. Related: Air Freight · Iata · Cargonaut