About Customs Lookup

What this site is

Customs Lookup is a free reference site for international customs and import duty information. We operate three connected tools: an import duty calculator, an HS code lookup, and a library of country-by-country import guides. We also publish plain-English summaries of major trade policy changes as they happen.

There is no paywall, no signup wall, and no premium tier. The site carries no advertising at the moment. It is intended to be funded by Google AdSense advertisements, which would let us keep the underlying tools free for the people who need them most: small importers, hobbyist resellers, freelance freight agents, and the customer service teams of small e-commerce stores.

Why we built it

Free customs information online is in surprisingly poor shape. Government tariff portals are authoritative but built for trade professionals. They assume you already know your HS code, your incoterm, and your country's customs jargon. Commercial logistics platforms bury free tools behind enterprise navigation or charge subscriptions. Older "duty calculator" sites are abandoned, with broken country lists and stale tariff rates from years ago.

A small business owner shipping a $2,000 order to Brazil shouldn't need a customs broker just to find out roughly what duty they'll owe. A first-time importer working out whether to use a Mexican supplier for a US-bound product should be able to compare landed costs in five minutes, not five hours. That's the gap we're trying to fill.

Where our data comes from

Every figure this site publishes as verified is read from a primary or near-primary source, and no figure is estimated, inferred or carried over from another aggregator where a published official one exists. Not every row has reached that state: 35 of the 709 duty rows are still awaiting review or have not been traced to a source, and each one is marked as such on the page that shows it and counted in the split further down this page. The main sources we rely on:

• HS code structure: the World Customs Organization (WCO), custodian of the Harmonized System.
• US tariff rates: the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) guidance.
• EU tariff rates: the European Commission's Access2Markets and the Northern Ireland Online Tariff, which both serve the Union's Common Customs Tariff against a Combined Nomenclature code. A few rows were read by hand from the Commission's own TARIC database, which answers only an interactive browser session and so is not the routine source here.
• UK tariff rates: HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Trade Tariff service.
• Other national rates: the country's own customs authority, CBSA for Canada and the ABF for Australia.
• Low value thresholds and import taxes: the authority that sets each one, including CBIC for India, Receita Federal and Gecex for Brazil, Singapore Customs and Japan Customs. These sit behind the country guides and the calculator's relief line rather than behind a duty rate.
• Trade policy and tariff news: USTR press releases, the EU's Official Journal, and HMRC notices.

How often we update

Tariffs change. We aim to refresh major policy events (reciprocal tariff orders, anti-dumping duties, FTA changes, de minimis reforms) within seven days of their announcement. Routine HS schedule updates, such as the WCO's six-yearly amendments to the Harmonized System, are reviewed in batch when a new revision takes effect. Each FAQ and country guide carries a "Last updated" date; if it's stale, treat it as such.

How the duty calculator works

The calculator is deliberately simple, but it is not one formula for everybody. Customs authorities do not agree on what duty is charged on, so the calculator picks the dutiable base from the destination:

In most markets the dutiable value is the CIF value, Cost + Insurance + Freight. Australia, Canada and the United States are the exceptions: they value goods FOB, so international freight and insurance are left out of the dutiable value and the duty is lower than a CIF calculation would suggest. Australia splits the two bases, charging duty on the FOB value but GST on the CIF value plus duty. The calculator applies the correct basis for all 20 destination markets, and names the method it used in a line under the result. Landed cost always counts the full CIF, because the importer pays the freight whether or not the destination taxes it.

The result is an estimate: it does not account for anti-dumping duties, country-of-origin surcharges (e.g. US Section 301 on Chinese goods), excise taxes on alcohol or tobacco, broker fees, port handling, or last-mile delivery. Swiss duty is a further caveat, being levied per 100 kg of gross weight rather than on value. Any of these can move the total materially, and we do not publish a typical size for that gap, because we have no source for one. That is why the result is always labelled as indicative.

When we do not have a rate

Our duty table does not cover every one of the more than 5,000 six-digit subheadings in the Harmonized System for every one of the 20 markets. When you calculate a code and destination we have no row for, the calculator does not quietly substitute a number. It says so, in the result, above the total: no verified rate for this code and destination, showing a category level estimate.

The estimate it shows in that case is not a guess. The duty figure is the WTO's published simple average applied MFN tariff for that market across all products, cited with its year, and the result states plainly that a national average is not a rate for a specific code and that the real figure can be zero or many times higher. The tax figure is the destination's standard VAT, GST or consumption tax rate, and it is a standard rate rather than a product-checked one. Consumption tax does vary by product: the United Kingdom alone charges 20%, 5%, zero and exempt on different goods, and most markets have a reduced band of some kind. This site does not hold the reduced and exempt lists, so it applies the standard rate and the result says in words that the rate is not product-checked. Two markets cannot be reduced to one tax rate at all: Brazil, whose imports carry IPI, PIS/COFINS-Importacao and state ICMS while the CBS and IBS reform runs through 2026, and India, where IGST is charged at whichever slab the goods fall into. Both say so on the result rather than showing a number that looks checked.

A destination we hold no sourced rate for at all is refused rather than estimated.

Editorial standards

• No undisclosed sponsorship. No advertising runs on this site at the moment. If AdSense ads are enabled, they will be clearly distinguished from editorial content. We do not accept payment to write about specific brokers, freight companies, or platforms.
• Verified against official sources. A rate this site calls verified has been read from one of the primary sources listed above, rather than from another aggregator, and it carries the date it was read. A rate still waiting for that check is marked as waiting, on the page and in the data behind it, and carries no verification date at all, because a date we cannot stand behind is worse than none. Every page separately records when the page itself was last read through, and neither date moves forward without the work being done again. When a regulation changes, the correction is written and deployed rather than queued.
• Plain language. Where customs jargon is unavoidable, we link to a definition in the FAQ.
• Corrections. If you spot an error, please tell us and we'll fix it. Material corrections are noted on the affected page.

What the site covers

139 HS codes are searchable, 136 of them carry per-market duty and tax rows, 139 carry a detailed guide as well, and rates are held for 20 destination markets. That is a working subset chosen by search demand, not the whole Harmonized System, which runs to more than 5,000 six-digit subheadings. A code can be priced without being written about: those pages show the rate table, say plainly that there is no guide, and stay out of the sitemap.

Priced and sourced are not the same thing, and we would rather say which is which than let one number stand for both. Counted in codes: 119 of the 136 priced codes carry a recorded source and a date behind every figure in their table, and the other 17 still carry at least one figure nobody has traced back to the tariff database that charges it. The first group prints its sources and its dates under the rate table; the second prints a line saying its figures have not been checked yet.

Counted in rows, which is the finer measure and the one that says what is actually outstanding, the table holds 709 duty rows. 674 carry a source and the date they were read. 21 were retrieved from the official schedule and are waiting to be reviewed. 14 have not been traced to a source at all. The three groups are counted apart rather than together: a figure a machine retrieved and nobody has read is not the same claim as one somebody signed for, and neither is the same as a figure with no source behind it.

What we are not

We are not a licensed customs brokerage. We do not file customs declarations on your behalf. We are not affiliated with any government customs authority, the WCO, or any specific freight or logistics company. Nothing on this site is legal or tax advice. See our Terms & Disclaimer for the full picture.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections, partnership ideas, or feedback are all welcome. See our contact page.