Freight Waves

FreightWaves is a supply-chain, logistics, and transportation news and market- intelligence company based in Chattanooga, TN, and backed by 8vc. Its SONAR platform delivers freight-market data — rate indexes, tender volumes and rejection indexes, capacity and pricing signals — by market, lane, and national geography over a REST API at api.freightwaves.com. Access uses a bearer token obtained from the Credential authenticate endpoint (valid one year); data calls are billable while lookup calls (indexes, qualifiers, levels, lanes, zip3, latest) are free, and a global 100 requests/minute rate limit applies. FreightWaves also operates a hosted, OAuth-protected MCP server (api.freightwaves.com/mcp, scope mcp:read) exposing SONAR data to agents.

Freight Waves publishes 3 APIs on the APIs.io network: Authentication API, Data API, and Lookup API. Tagged areas include Company, Freight, Logistics, Supply Chain, and Transportation.

Freight Waves’ developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, support, engineering blog, signup flow, pricing, and 22 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

52.6/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 53/100 agent ready Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-10 · rubric v0.9.1

AccessSelf serve

3 APIs 1 MCP Servers

CompanyFreightLogisticsSupply ChainTransportationTruckingMarket DataAnalyticsFreight RatesSONAR

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-10 · rubric v0.9.1

Composite quality — 52.6/100 · developing

Contract Quality 16.2 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 12.5 / 20

Commercial Clarity 8.9 / 20

Operational Transparency 3.4 / 13

Governance 1.4 / 12

Discoverability 9.3 / 10

Agent readiness — 53/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

MCP Server 12 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 4 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/freight-waves: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

freight-waves-mcp.yml

MCP SERVER

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Scopes 1

OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.

Freight Waves Scopes

1 scope · authorizationCode

1 scopes

SCOPES

Get Started 4

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Login

SignUp

SignUp

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

OpenAPI

OpenAPI

Agent Surfaces 5

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

MCPServer

WellKnown

LLMsTxt

AgenticAccess

AgentSkill

Design & Contract 5

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conventions

ErrorCatalog

Lifecycle

Conformance

DataModel

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication

Authentication

OAuthScopes

OAuthScopes

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Overlay

Overlay

Source (apis.yml)

aid: freight-waves
name: Freight Waves
description: FreightWaves is a supply-chain, logistics, and transportation news and market- intelligence company based in
  Chattanooga, TN, and backed by 8vc. Its SONAR platform delivers freight-market data — rate indexes, tender volumes and rejection
  indexes, capacity and pricing signals — by market, lane, and national geography over a REST API at api.freightwaves.com.
  Access uses a bearer token obtained from the Credential authenticate endpoint (valid one year); data calls are billable
  while lookup calls (indexes, qualifiers, levels, lanes, zip3, latest) are free, and a global 100 requests/minute rate limit
  applies. FreightWaves also operates a hosted, OAuth-protected MCP server (api.freightwaves.com/mcp, scope mcp:read) exposing
  SONAR data to agents.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/freight-waves/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://www.freightwaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/FreightWaves-1.png
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- 8vc
x-tier: enriched
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Freight
- Logistics
- Supply Chain
- Transportation
- Trucking
- Market Data
- Analytics
- Freight Rates
- SONAR
apis:
- aid: freight-waves:freight-waves-authentication-api
  name: Freight Waves Authentication API
  description: Obtain and refresh API bearer tokens.
  humanURL: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
  baseURL: https://api.freightwaves.com
  tags:
  - Authentication
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/freight-waves-authentication-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
- aid: freight-waves:freight-waves-data-api
  name: Freight Waves Data API
  description: Billable index data queries by item, level, and lane.
  humanURL: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
  baseURL: https://api.freightwaves.com
  tags:
  - Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/freight-waves-data-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
- aid: freight-waves:freight-waves-lookup-api
  name: Freight Waves Lookup API
  description: Free reference lookups for valid indexes, qualifiers, levels, lanes, and zip3.
  humanURL: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
  baseURL: https://api.freightwaves.com
  tags:
  - Lookup
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/freight-waves-lookup-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://freightwaves.com
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://api.sonar.surf/Help/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://knowledge.gosonar.com/
- type: Support
  url: https://www.freightwaves.com/contact
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.freightwaves.com/news
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/FreightWaves
- type: Login
  url: https://sonar.surf/auth/login
- type: SignUp
  url: https://gosonar.com/sonar-demo-request
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.freightwaves.com/subscribe
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.freightwaves.com/terms-of-use
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://firecrown.com/privacy-policy/
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/freight-waves-sonar-openapi.yml
- type: Overlay
  url: overlays/freight-waves-sonar-overlay.yaml
- type: MCPServer
  url: mcp/freight-waves-mcp.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/freight-waves-well-known.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/freight-waves-llms.txt
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/freight-waves-authentication.yml
- type: OAuthScopes
  url: scopes/freight-waves-scopes.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/freight-waves-conventions.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/freight-waves-rate-limits.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/freight-waves-problem-types.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/freight-waves-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/freight-waves-conformance.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/freight-waves-domain-security.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/freight-waves-data-model.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/freight-waves-agentic-access.yml
- type: AgentSkill
  url: skills/_index.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

Freight Waves

Kin Score

APIs 3

Freight Waves Authentication API

Freight Waves Data API

Freight Waves Lookup API

MCP Servers 1

freight-waves-mcp.yml

Rate Limits 1

Freight Waves Rate Limits

Security Posture 2

Freight Waves Authentication

Freight Waves Domain Security