Drewry World Container Index (WCI)

What is the Drewry World Container Index (WCI)?

The Drewry World Container Index (WCI) is a weekly composite spot freight rate, quoted in US dollars per 40-foot container, across eight major East-West trade routes. Published by the maritime research firm Drewry, it covers lanes such as Shanghai–Rotterdam, Shanghai–Los Angeles, Rotterdam–New York and others, plus a composite of all eight. Because it is denominated directly in dollars per box rather than as an abstract index, the WCI is easy to translate into the freight line of a landed-cost calculation. It is one of the most frequently cited container freight benchmarks in trade and logistics reporting.

How often is the Drewry WCI updated and when is it published?

The Drewry World Container Index is published once a week, every Thursday. As with the SCFI, this weekly cadence drives how monitoring should be configured: treat a WCI value as fresh for about eight days and only flag staleness after more than a week, rather than applying a daily threshold that would false-alarm constantly. OilPriceAPI tracks the WCI on a weekly-cadence freshness monitor so alerts reflect the real publishing schedule.

How does the Drewry WCI differ from the SCFI?

The Drewry WCI is dollar-denominated (USD per 40ft container), published every Thursday, and spans eight East-West routes from multiple origins; the SCFI is index-form (base 1000), published every Friday, and is Shanghai-origin. The practical difference: the WCI plugs directly into cost models because it is already a dollar figure per box, while the SCFI is better for tracking proportional rate momentum out of China. Analysts who want a complete picture of container spot pricing typically follow both benchmarks together.

Who uses the WCI?

• Shippers and importers benchmarking dollar-denominated container costs
• Procurement teams modelling delivered cost of goods
• Logistics and supply-chain analysts tracking East-West container rates
• Finance teams forecasting freight as a line item in COGS

How do I get Drewry World Container Index data via API?

Request the latest WCI value from the OilPriceAPI REST endpoint using the code DREWRY_WCI_USD. Sign up for a free API key, then call:

curl "https://api.oilpriceapi.com/v1/prices/latest?by_code=DREWRY_WCI_USD" \
  -H "Authorization: Token YOUR_API_KEY"

The response is JSON with the current value, currency/unit and a timestamp. Poll on the index's publish cadence — weekly, published every thursday — rather than every minute.

When the WCI is not the right data