customs data

Every ocean consignment entering the United States generates a customs filing, and vendors aggregate those filings into searchable databases. The cataloged examples sit at the top of this market. Panjiva (S&P Global) documents over 2 billion shipment records and 9 million company profiles, with customs records from dozens of reporting countries representing about 35% of global trade flows. ImportGenius advertises roughly 8 billion shipment records globally, including 258,473,434 US import shipments drawn from CBP ocean-freight manifests.

Both are subscription products with no free tier: ImportGenius USA Essentials starts at $229/month for the last 12 months of US data, while Panjiva routes every search through login with quote-based pricing and enterprise delivery via XpressFeed. That pricing reflects the underlying asset - customs filings are public in some jurisdictions and licensed in others.

Customs data answers who ships what to whom - supplier discovery, competitor tracking, trade-lane risk. The failure modes are coverage gaps priced as completeness and subscription costs discovered mid-project.

• Country coverage is the product. ImportGenius aggregates 25+ reporting countries across Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa, each with its own start/end window (India January 2018 to February 2026, Russia January 2011 to March 2025); verify your lanes fall inside them.
• No free tier changes procurement. With ImportGenius from $229/month and Panjiva quote-only, budget approval precedes any evaluation - plan trials accordingly.
• Free alternatives exist for aggregate views. Census trade statistics cover US flows publicly; commercial customs data buys shipment-level party names, which official aggregates never expose.

1. Ask which countries file and since when. Panjiva's reporting countries represent about 35% of global trade flows - request the country list and per-country date windows in writing.

1. Confirm record depth per lane. ImportGenius separates 258.5M US imports from 5.6M exports; check whether your direction and mode (ocean manifest versus air) is actually covered.

1. Test company resolution, not just search. Both platforms resolve shipments into company profiles - Panjiva claims 9 million - because entity matching is where value concentrates.

1. Read download caps before scaling. ImportGenius tiers cap row-level downloads at 1,000-150,000 rows/month; model your extraction volume against the tier.

1. Compare against free official statistics. Census-based sources cover US trade freely; buy commercial customs data only for the party-level detail they uniquely add.

Entries that sit next to customs data in this glossary:

• bill-of-lading
• hs-code