Send by CLI

Send real mail from your terminal.

Quote, send, and track real mail from your terminal or scripts. No account, no API key.

A thin wrapper over the same public REST API the website uses.

Illustration

$ paperplane send letter.pdf \    --to "Ada Lovelace, 101 Spear St, San Francisco, CA 94105" \    --from "Alex Rivera, 421 8th Ave, New York, NY 10199" 
quoting…      $1.99 (First-Class, 1 page)confirm? [y/N] y✓ ord_8k2d created · first_class · $1.99tracking      pprln.co/t/8fq2

USPS

Stripe secured

How sending by CLI works.

Step 01

paperplane quote

Pass --to and --text; get back one all-in price and a confirmation token, free, creates nothing.

Step 02

paperplane send

Pass a PDF, --to, and --from; USPS requires a return address on every letter. Add --sandbox to run the full pipeline free and mail nothing, for testing scripts before anything is real.

Step 03

paperplane status

Check an order by ID from the same terminal you sent it from — useful for scripts and CI jobs that need to confirm a piece actually mailed.

Step 04

Scripting with --json

Any command with --json prints the exact API response as one line on stdout, so a script can pipe it straight into jq.

The old way, and this one

Same USPS service, same proof of mailing; it comes from USPS either way. Everything around it is what changes.

A quick comparison of paperplane and Certified Mail at the counter, by cost, time and effort.
What	paperplane	At the counter
Printer, envelope	not needed	yours
PS Form 3800	done for you	by hand
Address check	before you pay	Not available
Time	2 min	10 min + line
Proof of mailing	emailed, kept	a paper slip
Price, all in	$12.99	fees + your costs

›See the long version

The old way

Certified Mail, at the counter

Write the letter, print it, and find an envelope that fits it.
Address it by hand — including a return address, which USPS requires on every certified piece.
Drive to the post office during opening hours and join the line.
Fill in PS Form 3800 at the counter, peel it, and stick it on the envelope yourself.
Decide at the window: the paper green card (PS Form 3811) or the electronic Return Receipt.
Pay at the window, in cash or card, plus your own printing and envelope.
Keep the stamped Form 3800 somewhere you will still have it in a year. It is your only proof of mailing.

Ten minutes at the counter with no line. Then do it again for the next recipient.

This way

Certified Mail, from where you are

Paste the letter, or upload the PDF.The composer renders the exact pages that will print — fonts, pagination, everything.
Type the two addresses.Both are checked against USPS data before you are asked to pay.
Pay $12.99, or $14.99 with the electronic Return Receipt.We print it, seal it, and hand it to USPS the next business day. Tracking number by email.

About two minutes. No form, no line, nothing to lose.

Or hand it to an assistant: the same send runs over MCP, the API, or the CLI.

Who ends up sending letters here

Three jobs, one send flow. Everything below works today — the deeper guide is one tap away.

People who need it to hold up
The letter is the evidence: Certified Mail, a checked address, and a tracking page you can hand to a lawyer.
For the letter that has to hold up →
People mailing for other people
Upload a CSV of clients or tenants; every row becomes its own individually addressed letter.
For mailing a list without mail-merge →
Developers and AI agents
An MCP endpoint and REST API a human still approves the payment on, with a free sandbox.
For the agent and developer docs →

Illustrative scenarios · not customer reviews

What a send actually looks like

We haven't launched, so there is no one to quote yet. These are written examples of jobs the product does today: the people are made up, the capabilities are not.

A solo founder sending a contract notice
The agreement says notice by certified mail, return receipt requested — so that is exactly what gets picked, and the receipt records both the mailing and who signed for it. Certified envelopes never carry our mark, so the letter arrives looking like it came from the company that sent it.
A property manager mailing 40 tenants the same notice
A CSV export becomes 40 individually addressed First-Class letters in one pass — no mail-merge document, no campaign platform. Rows with a repaired ZIP or a missing city are flagged before anything prints, and each letter is tracked on its own afterwards.
A tenant chasing a security deposit
The demand goes Certified with an electronic Return Receipt, which is what makes the statutory clock provable rather than merely started. That receipt records who signed for it and when — the exact record a security-deposit dispute turns on.
An engineer wiring mail into an agent
The agent quotes the letter for free, then calls send and gets back a payment link for a human to approve — it cannot spend on its own. The same path runs end to end in the sandbox, free, with nothing printed.

One price. Postage included.

Printing, the envelope and USPS postage are in the number, no matter which surface you send from.

$1.99

First-Class letter

1 page, black and white, envelope and postage included

Extra pages $0.25 · Color +$0.50/page · Tracking +$0.99

Most sent

$12.99

Certified Mail

Proof of mailing and USPS tracking

The one landlords, courts and the IRS take seriously

$14.99

Certified + Return Receipt

Adds a signed electronic proof of delivery

Others charge $20 to $24 for the same piece

$24.99

Priority Mail

Flat-rate envelope, 1 to 3 day delivery

For the letter that cannot wait

Full detail on the pricing page.

Send it from your terminal.

A thin wrapper over the same public REST API the website uses.

npm install -g paperplane

Common questions

Is the CLI live today?

Yes. `npx paperplane quote`, `paperplane send`, and `paperplane status` run against the live REST API today. No account, no API key.

Do I need to install anything?

`npx paperplane <command>` runs it with nothing installed. `npm install -g paperplane` keeps it around for scripts and CI.

How does the CLI pay for an order?

Every order carries its own payment: a prepaid credit code (--credit-code), or a Stripe payment link a human approves. --sandbox needs neither and mails nothing.

What does it cost?

The same prices as every other surface: $1.99 First-Class (extra pages $0.25, color $0.50/page, tracking $0.99), $12.99 Certified, $14.99 Certified with the electronic Return Receipt, $24.99 Priority.