Ocean freight itself
The base cost of moving your container from the export port to your destination port, priced per container for FCL or per cubic metre for LCL. This is the number that fluctuates most with fuel prices and seasonal demand.
Origin and destination charges
Terminal handling, documentation and customs clearance fees apply at both ends of the journey — often listed separately from the freight rate itself, and easy to miss if you're only comparing the headline freight number between quotes.
Insurance
Marine cargo insurance is usually optional but strongly worth including for furniture, given how much value can be lost to a single mishandled container. It's typically priced as a small percentage of the cargo's declared value.
What's commonly left out of a quote
Inland transport from your destination port to your own warehouse, import duties, and any destination-country compliance costs are rarely included in a freight forwarder's quote and need to be budgeted separately.