ImportYeti Scraper — US Customs Importer & Supplier Data

Scrape US import/export trade data from ImportYeti — the search engine for ~70 million US Customs bills of lading. Pull any US importer or foreign supplier by name or product keyword and get clean CRM-ready JSON with company name, country, address, total shipments, last shipment date, and registered trademarks. Built for B2B lead generation, Amazon supplier discovery, competitive supply-chain mapping, and OSINT research.

The underlying data is public: US Customs sea-shipment bills of lading have been disclosable under FOIA since the 1789 Tariff Act. ImportYeti aggregates and indexes them; this Actor calls ImportYeti's public search API and normalises the response into a clean, agent-friendly schema.

100% reliability. This Actor uses ImportYeti's stable JSON search API (no browser, no Cloudflare bypass), which means every run succeeds at the network layer. MCP-ready for Claude / ChatGPT / Gemini agents.

What does ImportYeti Scraper do?

This Actor turns ImportYeti's search results into structured JSON. Run it with a list of company names, a list of importyeti.com profile URLs, or both. For each match it returns one row containing:

• The importer (consignee) or supplier (shipper) name
• Country (full name + ISO code)
• Address as recorded on the most recent customs filing
• Total shipments on file (across all available history)
• Most recent shipment date (ISO 8601)
• Counts of "other addresses" and "other names" linked to the company (DBAs, subsidiaries, typo variants)
• Registered trademarks
• Canonical ImportYeti profile URL + slug
• Source search query + rank in the result set

All data sourced from US Customs filings (CBP), aggregated by ImportYeti.com, and exposed via its public search endpoint.

Why use ImportYeti Scraper

• Build B2B lead lists at scale. Pull every US importer registered in a given product category or trademark family. Each row is shipment-count-ranked — you instantly know who buys the most. Pipe the output into your CRM, then enrich with b2b-lead-finder-enrichment or contact-details-scraper for verified emails and phones.
• Find foreign suppliers behind any brand. Search "Patagonia" or "YETI Coolers" and get every supplier ImportYeti has on file with shipment counts. Filter by country to find the cheapest sourcing lanes.
• Filter by country, type, or shipment volume. Built-in filters: countryCode (US, CN, VN, IN, …), typeFilter (importer-only / supplier-only / both), minShipments (drop dormant companies).
• Monitor competitors. Schedule the Actor weekly with the same searchQueries; diff the output to see new entrants, growing volumes, or country shifts.
• Use it as a Claude / ChatGPT tool. Registered with the Apify MCP server — an AI agent can call it directly: "find the top 50 US importers of lithium batteries from China, ranked by shipment count".
• Cheaper than commercial alternatives. ImportGenius ($149–$399/mo), Volza ($1,500/yr), Panjiva (enterprise quotes) — this Actor returns the same headline data at a tenth of the price per useful row.

How to use ImportYeti Scraper

1. Click Try for free above (or open the Input tab).
2. Choose one of the two modes:
   • Search mode — drop one or more company names or product keywords into searchQueries. The Actor calls the ImportYeti search API and paginates internally until maxResultsPerQuery is reached.
   • Direct URL mode — drop one or more ImportYeti profile URLs (e.g., https://www.importyeti.com/company/patagonia) into startUrls. Each URL is resolved to a single matching record.
3. Optionally narrow the results with countryCode (e.g., "CN" for Chinese suppliers), typeFilter (importer/supplier/both), and minShipments.
4. Click Save & Start. The default residential US proxy configuration is the recommended setting.
5. Open the Output tab to view, export, or download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
searchQueries	string[]	one of	Company names or product keywords. Example: ["Patagonia", "YETI Coolers", "lithium battery"]
startUrls	object[]	one of	ImportYeti /company/... or /supplier/... profile URLs
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	optional	Cap per search query. Default 10, max 500
countryCode	string	optional	ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g., US, CN, VN)
typeFilter	enum	optional	both (default), company (US importers only), supplier (foreign suppliers only)
minShipments	integer	optional	Drop records with fewer than N total shipments. Default 0
proxyConfiguration	object	optional	Defaults to Apify residential US proxies for cleanest IP reputation

Example input:

{
  "searchQueries": ["Patagonia", "YETI Coolers"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 20,
  "countryCode": "US",
  "typeFilter": "company",
  "minShipments": 100
}

Output

Each result row is one importer or supplier record. Simplified example:

{
  "companyName": "Patagonia",
  "companyType": "importer",
  "country": "United States",
  "countryCode": "US",
  "address": "Ventura, Ca 93001, Us",
  "totalShipments": 2702,
  "mostRecentShipment": "2026-01-07",
  "otherAddressesCount": 21,
  "otherNamesCount": 4,
  "trademarks": ["Patagonia"],
  "profileUrl": "https://www.importyeti.com/company/patagonia",
  "slug": "patagonia",
  "sourceQuery": "Patagonia",
  "rank": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-14T09:23:11.000Z"
}

You can download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, RSS, or XML, or pull it through the Apify API.

Data fields

Field	Description
companyName	Legal name from US Customs filings
companyType	importer (US consignee) or supplier (foreign shipper)
country	Country of registration (full name)
countryCode	ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 country code
address	Address from the most recent customs records
totalShipments	Total bill-of-lading count
mostRecentShipment	ISO 8601 date of the most recent shipment
otherAddressesCount	Distinct alternative addresses on file
otherNamesCount	Distinct alternative names (DBAs, typo variants, subsidiaries)
trademarks	Linked brand names
profileUrl	Canonical ImportYeti profile URL
slug	URL slug (useful for deduplication)
sourceQuery	Originating search query, if any
rank	Position in the search-API ranking (1 = top)
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp

How much does it cost to scrape ImportYeti?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for results, with no per-second compute charge.

Event	Price	When charged
Actor start	$0.00005	Once per run
Profile scraped	$0.008	Each importer or supplier record pushed to the dataset

Example run costs:

• 10 importer profiles (single query) → $0.080
• 100 profiles across 5 queries → $0.800
• 1,000 profiles for a market-wide sweep → $8.000

Compared to commercial alternatives — ImportGenius ($149–$399/mo), Volza ($1,500/yr), Panjiva (enterprise quotes) — this Actor is 10–100× cheaper per useful row.

Tips and advanced options

• Use product keywords for discovery. Don't know which importers to target? Use the product name itself — e.g., "lithium battery", "phone case", "cotton sweater". ImportYeti ranks importers by shipment volume in that product category.
• Filter by country to target supply chains. Set countryCode: "CN" and typeFilter: "supplier" to enumerate Chinese suppliers visible in US Customs filings. Use countryCode: "VN" for the China-tariff alternative sourcing wave.
• Filter by minShipments to drop ghost records. minShipments: 10 removes companies with fewer than 10 bills of lading — usually one-off importers, freight forwarders mislabelled as consignees, or stale records.
• Combine with contact enrichment. Pipe companyName and profileUrl from this Actor into contact-details-scraper or bulk-website-contact-extractor to attach verified emails and phones.
• Cluster cross-sell. This Actor pairs well with linkedin-profile-email-scraper (find decision-makers at the importer) and b2b-lead-finder-enrichment (full lead-gen chain).
• Schedule weekly diffs. Schedule the same searchQueries on a 7-day cadence. Compare consecutive runs to detect new entrants, growing volumes, or country shifts.
• Use the Apify MCP server. Add apify--importyeti-scraper to Claude Desktop or any MCP client and ask in plain English — "Find the top 30 US importers with the most shipments under the brand YETI."

FAQ

Where does the data come from? ImportYeti aggregates US Customs sea-shipment bills of lading — public records that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been legally required to disclose since the 1789 Tariff Act. Anyone with a FOIA request can pull them; ImportYeti makes them searchable.

Do I need an ImportYeti account or paid plan? No. This Actor calls ImportYeti's public search API — no account, no cookies, no login.

Why residential proxies? The ImportYeti search API rate-limits per IP. Residential US proxies rotate through a clean pool so long runs (hundreds of queries / thousands of records) don't trip the per-IP cap. For tiny runs (a few queries) you can disable proxies in the input — the actor will still work.

Does this include bill-of-lading-level detail (HS codes, ports, container counts, supplier-by-supplier breakdowns)? No, not in v0.2. That data lives on ImportYeti's profile pages, which are Cloudflare-protected. This Actor focuses on the search-API-accessible fields — sufficient for B2B lead enumeration, brand → supplier mapping, and market-level intelligence. For deeper BOL-level shipment records, contact me about a custom variant.

Does this Actor cover non-US trade? No. ImportYeti is US Customs sea-freight only. For non-US trade data, look at Volza, Panjiva, or country-specific customs datasets.

Will my run hit zero results? If a query has no matches on ImportYeti, the Actor logs an info message and returns no rows for that query. You are not charged a profile-scraped event when no profile is returned.

Why does a search for a common term (e.g., "plastic") stop returning new results after ~140 rows even though the API reports thousands of "totalHits"? ImportYeti's public search API caps the practical depth of returned results at roughly 140 records per query, regardless of the totalHits value it advertises. This is a platform limit, not an actor limit — the Actor stops cleanly when no more results are available and logs an info message explaining the cap. To enumerate beyond the cap, split your search into narrower queries (e.g., "plastic bottle" + "plastic packaging" + "plastic film") and merge the results downstream.

How fresh is the data? ImportYeti's index updates daily from CBP filings. A run today reflects the most recent customs filings indexed by ImportYeti.

Why does the address field look weird sometimes (e.g., "Ventura, Ca 93001, Us")? That's the casing ImportYeti normalises addresses to in their dataset. We return it verbatim so you can match it back against their UI. Downstream you can title-case it as needed.

Is this affiliated with ImportYeti? No. This Actor is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ImportYeti or ImportYeti LLC. ImportYeti®, the ImportYeti logo, and related marks are property of their respective owners.

Legality and disclaimer

The underlying data — US Customs bills of lading — is public record under the US Trade Act and Freedom of Information Act. This Actor calls a publicly available JSON endpoint on ImportYeti.com and returns extracted data. You are responsible for ensuring your use complies with applicable laws and ImportYeti's terms of service in your jurisdiction. We recommend running at reasonable volumes and storing only the data you genuinely need.

Support & feedback

Found a bug? Want a new field, a non-sea-freight trade source, or BOL-level profile detail? Open an issue on the Issues tab — usually fixed within 48 hours. Need a custom variant (higher rate limit, private deployment, webhook-driven feed)? Reach out via my Apify profile.