Detention and demurrage

Detention and demurrage is a collection of market data available in Market benchmarks that shows you the average number of available free days before demurrage and detention charges across the ports within a specific trade lane.

This data provides an easy way to compare and evaluate different ports in terms of offered free days, so you can avoid any potential delays or unexpected charges and, if necessary, consider alternative routes.

View free days data

To access the free days data, go to the Market benchmarks page and select Detention and demurrage in the Change dataset menu — the chart with market rates will be updated with the information on available free days for the selected origin (as export) and destination (as import):

If we don't have enough data to provide the number of free days for a specific port, the system will still try to show you the closest regional average.

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The number of free days offered at a specific origin or destination may differ depending on the selected container type.

By default, the chart displays market average free days before detention charges, but you can also use the chart description to select market low or market high free days values, and switch to the demurrage or combined free days view.

If your contracted rates available in Xeneta contain information on free days, you can add it to the chart as well for a side-by-side comparison with the market — go to Add comparison > Your free days > Benchmark.

Free days methodology

Similarly to market rates, we collect the free days information from the contract data that our customers share with us.

Before it appears in the platform, the data must meet the following minimum quality criteria:

Consist of at least five separate data points
Come from at least two individual customers

Since we have only started collecting this data recently, historical view of available free days may be somewhat limited.

Combined free days

It's important to note that the Combined option does not equal the sum of both free days before demurrage and detention.

It refers to the way some of our customers negotiate free days with their suppliers as a combined pool of days that can be used for either detention or demurrage depending on the circumstances.

Whenever we receive data in this format, we show it to you under Combined as is, without splitting it or combining it with the other two options.