Automatically detect the carrier for an unknown tracking number using the AfterShip Courier Detection API before creating a tracking entry
domain: aftership.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Authenticate requests to the AfterShip Tracking API using the aftership-api-key header
POST the tracking number to the couriers/detect endpoint
Optionally include a slug array of likely carriers, or origin/destination country codes, to narrow and improve detection accuracy
Parse the response list of candidate courier slugs ranked by confidence
Use the top-ranked slug as the courier value when creating the tracking object via the Create a Tracking endpoint
Fall back to manual carrier selection in your UI if the detection response returns multiple equally-ranked candidates
Known gotchas
Detection accuracy depends on tracking number format overlap between carriers; some numbering formats are ambiguous across multiple couriers without added origin/destination hints
Supplying a slug hint array narrows the search space and materially improves accuracy versus an unconstrained detect call
Detection is probabilistic, not authoritative — always validate against the actual carrier's tracking response before relying on it for delivery SLA logic
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