Customs Shipment Data: What Each Record Contains
Every legal shipment that crosses a border leaves a declaration behind, filed with a customs authority, by law, by the companies involved. That record is what EximDataX licenses, from 43 direct customs feeds, with fresh filings weekly. Not survey data. Not marketplace listings. The receipt itself.
Eight fields. Eight commercial questions answered.
A customs shipment record looks bureaucratic until you read each field as the answer to a question you’d otherwise be guessing at.
01Named importer
Who actually bought this: a company name you can research and contact, not an anonymised ID.
02Named supplier
Who shipped it: your competitor, or the supplier your competitor depends on.
03HS code
Exactly what product moved, in the classification customs itself uses.
04Shipment date
Whether this buyer is active now or went quiet 90 days ago.
05Port pair
The route the goods took: which origin and destination ports carry your category.
06Quantity
Order size: whether this buyer takes container loads or samples.
07Declared value (FOB / CIF)
What was actually paid at the border, as declared to customs.
08Per-unit price
Value ÷ quantity: the benchmark that tells you if your quote is high, low, or right.
Availability varies by market: 38 of our 43 direct feeds carry named buyers and suppliers; the rest carry the shipment facts without names.
One record is a fact. Ten thousand are a negotiation position.
Because every shipment carries a declared value and a quantity, customs shipment data aggregates into per-unit price intelligence: median, average, 10th and 90th percentile FOB by market and time window. You stop negotiating from a guess and start negotiating from the distribution.
- Benchmark your quote against what buyers in that market actually paid.
- Spot which buyers consistently pay above the median, and pitch them first.
- Watch a lane’s price trend before committing a season’s production to it.
Why "customs-grade" matters
Declared under law. Companies can decorate a marketplace profile; they cannot decorate a customs declaration.
Traceable. Every number in the platform can be traced back to the official customs record it came from.
Behavioral, not aspirational. Import data shows what a buyer did, not what they say they might do.
Customs declaration data vs logistics shipment data
The two terms sound alike but describe different things. Logistics shipment data tracks a parcel or container. It records milestones such as pickup, transit and delivery, and it comes from carriers and tracking platforms.
Customs declaration data is a legal filing. The trading companies declare the goods to a customs authority, and the filing carries the product code, the quantity and the declared value. Tracking data has no such declaration behind it, so it cannot tell you what a buyer paid.
EximDataX works with the customs side only. If you searched for custom shipping data, this is the layer that shows who traded what, with whom and at what declared price.
What is mirror trade data?
One physical shipment can leave two filings. The origin country records an export declaration. The destination country records an import declaration. Import declarations show who is buying in a market. Export declarations show who is selling out of it.
Not every country publishes its declarations. For those markets, the picture is rebuilt from the records of their trading partners. That is mirror trade data. It tells you what moved, but company names depend on the direct feed, so treat mirror-derived answers as market-level evidence.
How to read a customs shipment record: FOB vs CIF and units
Three quick checks keep your conclusions sound before you act on a single row. FOB prices the goods as they leave the origin port. CIF adds insurance and freight up to the destination port, so the same goods show a higher CIF figure.
- Check whether the value is FOB or CIF before you compare two prices.
- Confirm the unit of quantity before you divide. Kilograms, pieces and tonnes give very different per-unit prices.
- Note whether the market is a named feed, so you know if a company name is available.
How to search customs shipment data by HS code
The product code is the fastest way into the records. The process has three steps.
- Confirm your code. If you are unsure, use the HS code finder first.
- Run the code against your target markets to see who imports and who exports that product.
- Narrow the results by date, port and value, then open the records of the companies that match your profile.
Customs shipment data, asked and answered.
What is customs shipment data?
Customs shipment data is the set of import and export declarations companies file with national customs authorities for each shipment, read row by row. Each row answers the questions a seller would otherwise guess at: who bought, who supplied, what moved, when, by which route, how much and at what price.
Where does EximDataX customs data come from?
From official customs declarations in national feeds we license through partner databases, pushed to us daily. Each surface in the platform names the source it draws on.
Do all records show company names?
No, and any vendor who implies otherwise is glossing. Names appear only where a market’s feed carries them. The platform always tells you which layer an answer comes from.
How is this different from marketplace or directory data?
A directory profile is written by the company and shows what it wants to sell. It cannot show whether that company shipped last month, how much, or at what price; a customs record shows all three.
Can I see customs shipment data for my product before paying?
Yes, that is the whole sales model. Book a 30-minute live demo and we run your HS code and target markets live on screen.
How often is customs shipment data updated?
The cycle depends on the market, and a few refresh daily. The refresh date sits next to the data you are viewing, so you always know how current a row is.
Can I try customs shipment data without a sales call?
Yes. Open the free 3-day test account and search your own HS code yourself. The live demo is there if you would rather be walked through it.
See what your buyers are buying.Then decide.
Everything we show you comes from official customs filings — records, not claims. 30 minutes. Your shipment. Your HS code. Real platform. If you don’t see something new about your market by the end of the call, we walk away. No follow-ups.