API and Developer Portal

The Vandelta API is how a warehouse management system, checkout, or marketplace prints labels and pulls scans without a person copying tracking numbers. This page describes the contract: what you can call, how you authenticate, and what you must not do. Keys are issued to an account, not to a public form on this site.

What the API covers

Rating returns a service, transit business days, and a transportation amount for an origin, destination, and carton. Ship / label creates the same contract as Create a Shipment and returns a tracking number and a label image. Pickup creates an on-demand stop. Track returns scan history for numbers your account owns. Address validation returns a deliverable address or a correction. Returns create an inbound label tied to an RMA you supply.

The API does not clear customs by itself. You still send commodity and value. It does not replace Trade Compliance review for restricted goods. It does not give you scans for another company’s tracking numbers.

Authentication and environments

Each production account receives an API user and a secret. Send the secret only on the server. Do not embed it in a mobile app or a public JavaScript bundle. Rotate the secret if a repository leaked it.

Sandbox uses test postal codes and does not dispatch a courier. Labels from sandbox are marked so they cannot enter the hub. Promote a version to production only after you have matched billable weight and service names to the account’s rate card.

Endpoint map (conceptual)

Resource	Method	Purpose
`/v1/rates`	POST	Quote services for a carton
`/v1/shipments`	POST	Create a label and tracking number
`/v1/shipments/{id}`	GET	Retrieve label metadata
`/v1/pickups`	POST	Request an on-demand pickup
`/v1/track/{id}`	GET	Scan history for a number you own
`/v1/returns`	POST	Prepaid inbound label

Idempotency keys are required on POST so a retried checkout does not print two labels. Webhooks (when enabled on the account) POST scan events to a URL you confirm. Verify signatures. Do not expose the webhook URL without authentication.

Fair use

Track polling faster than the published interval is throttled. Rating every keystroke from a public web form without a cache will be throttled. Scraping vandelta.com HTML instead of the API violates the Website Terms of Use.

How to get access

Open an account, then contact sales with topic Rates or new account, and name the system you will connect (WMS, Shopify, custom checkout). Sales attaches API credentials to the account and points your engineers at the current OpenAPI file. This page does not issue keys in the browser.