📊 OEC Economic Complexity Trade Scraper

🚀 Export international trade flows in seconds. Pull bilateral trade data for 231 countries, 5,000+ HS6 products, across 1995-2024, sourced from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) at MIT.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-23 · 📊 13 fields per record · 🌍 231 countries · 🛍️ 5,000+ HS6 products · 📆 1995-2024 (BACI), 1962-2022 (SITC)

The OEC Economic Complexity Trade Scraper queries the OEC public trade catalog (BACI HS6 and SITC4 product classifications) and returns 13 fields per record, including reporter and partner country names and IDs, year, product ID, product name, product breakdown level, raw and formatted trade value in USD, cube name, and dataset annotation. The OEC is one of the most cited open trade-data references in academic and policy research.

The catalog covers 231 countries, 5,000+ HS6 products (Harmonized System 6-digit), the historical SITC4 classification back to 1962, and bilateral flows for any country pair. Trade values run from 1995 to 2024 under BACI HS6, with SITC available 1962 to 2022.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Trade economists, supply-chain analysts, policy researchers, commodity traders, ESG analysts, journalists, sanctions compliance teams, M&A research	Bilateral flow analysis, supply-chain risk, comparative advantage models, sanctions impact, ESG product-origin audits, journalism investigations

---

📋 What the OEC Economic Complexity Trade Scraper does

Five workflows in a single run:

• 🌍 Country totals. Pull total exports for one reporter country in one year. Set productLevel: "none".
• 🤝 Bilateral flows. Specify both reporter and partner to get country-to-country trade values.
• 🛍️ Product breakdown. Switch productLevel to hs4, hs6, or sitc4 to decompose flows by product.
• 🔍 HS code filter. Add a numeric HS4 or HS6 code (e.g. 8542 for integrated circuits) to scope to one product family.
• 📆 Year selector. Any year from 1995 to 2024 (BACI HS6) or 1962 to 2022 (SITC).

Each record carries the year, the canonical OEC country IDs and human names for both reporter and partner, the product ID and name, the breakdown level, the raw trade value in USD, a formatted display value, the cube name, and the OEC dataset annotation.

💡 Why it matters: international trade data is fragmented across UN Comtrade, BACI, ITC Trade Map, and national customs feeds. Each has its own format, codes, and refresh cycle. The OEC unifies the most-cited dataset into a single queryable surface, and this Actor exports it as ready-to-load CSV, Excel, or JSON without writing a single parser.

---

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to pull every U.S. integrated-circuit import in 2022 by partner country.

---

⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
year	integer	2022	1995-2024 (BACI HS6) or 1962-2022 (SITC).
reporter	string	"nausa"	OEC country slug (e.g. nausa = United States, aschn = China).
partner	string	""	Optional partner country slug for bilateral flows.
productLevel	string	"none"	none, hs4, hs6, or sitc4.
hsCode	string	""	Optional numeric HS4 or HS6 code (e.g. 8542).

Example: U.S. integrated-circuit imports from Taiwan in 2022, HS6 breakdown.

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "year": 2022,
    "reporter": "astwn",
    "partner": "nausa",
    "productLevel": "hs6",
    "hsCode": "8542"
}

Example: total Chinese exports for 2023.

{
    "maxItems": 1,
    "year": 2023,
    "reporter": "aschn",
    "productLevel": "none"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: trade values are reported in current USD as recorded in the underlying BACI or SITC dataset. The OEC harmonizes UN Comtrade source data, so values for the most recent year may be subject to revision as customs reports are finalized.

---

📊 Output

Each record contains 13 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
📆 year	number	2022
🆔 reporterId	string	"nausa"
🌍 reporter	string	"United States"
🆔 partnerId	string | null	"aschn"
🌐 partner	string | null	"China"
🆔 productId	string | null	"854231"
🛍️ productName	string | null	"Processors and controllers"
📐 productLevel	string	"hs6"
💵 tradeValueUsd	number | null	47238159132
🏷️ tradeValueUsdFormatted	string | null	"$47,238,159,132"
🧊 cube	string	"trade_i_baci_a_92"
📚 datasetName	string | null	"BACI HS6 (a.k.a. CEPII)"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-23T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

---

✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌍	Global coverage. 231 reporter and partner countries with stable OEC slugs.
🛍️	5,000+ HS6 products. Full Harmonized System 6-digit breakdown, plus SITC4 for historical analysis.
📆	30 years. BACI HS6 from 1995 to 2024, SITC from 1962 to 2022.
🤝	Bilateral or world totals. Specify both countries for bilateral flows, or just the reporter for world exports.
💵	USD values with formatting. Both raw numeric and human-readable formatted string.
⚡	Fast. 100 trade flows in under 20 seconds.
🚫	No authentication. Public OEC catalog. No login or token required.

📊 The trade data underneath every supply-chain strategy, sanctions analysis, and trade-policy decision should be queryable in one call, not stitched together from five sources.

---

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ OEC Trade Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	231 countries, 5k+ HS6	Live per run	year, reporter, partner, product	⚡ 2 min
UN Comtrade direct	Free tier limited	Same	Updated as reported	Many	🐢 Auth, rate limits
ITC Trade Map	Subscription	Same	Periodic	Many	⏳ Manual export
National customs CSVs	Free	One country each	Variable	None	🕒 Days per country

Pick this Actor when you want one harmonized trade-data surface across every country and product, without writing custom parsers per source.

---

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the OEC Economic Complexity Trade Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a year, reporter, optionally a partner, set the productLevel, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor pull the trade flows.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to a downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

---

💼 Business use cases

🚚 Supply Chain & Procurement Source-country concentration risk reports Alternate-supplier discovery by HS code Tariff-impact modelling on import baskets Lead-time and dependency dashboards	📊 Trade & Economic Analysis Comparative-advantage models by country Export-diversification scoring Economic-complexity rankings Trade-policy impact analysis
🛡️ Sanctions & Compliance Pre/post-sanctions trade-flow audits Product-origin verification Cross-border financial-flow proxies Russia, Iran, North Korea exposure analysis	🌱 ESG & Sustainability Carbon-footprint estimates by product origin Critical-mineral supply-chain mapping Deforestation-risk product audits Fair-trade and ethical-sourcing dashboards

---

🔌 Automating OEC Trade Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Annual refreshes are common for trade dashboards, with monthly pulls when partial-year data drops.

---

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia International trade and development economics papers Reproducible datasets for political-economy research Coursework on globalization and comparative advantage Cross-country statistical learning exercises	🎨 Personal and creative Data-visualization side projects on global trade Sankey diagrams of country-to-country flows Personal "world's most-traded product" dashboards Travel-blog content with country-economy context
🤝 Non-profit and civic Investigative journalism on trade and sanctions Civic transparency around national trade dependencies Development-aid prioritization with trade data Fair-trade and ethical-sourcing campaigns	🧪 Experimentation Train trade-flow forecasting models Build agent pipelines that answer trade questions Prototype supply-chain visualization dashboards Test economic-complexity hypotheses

---

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

---

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a year, a reporter country, optionally a partner country, and a product breakdown level. The Actor queries the OEC catalog and emits a clean structured record per trade flow.

🌍 Which countries are supported?

231 countries identified by OEC slugs (e.g. nausa for United States, aschn for China, eudeu for Germany). The full list is in the input schema dropdown.

📆 Which years are covered?

BACI HS6 covers 1995 to 2024. SITC4 covers 1962 to 2022 for longer historical analysis.

🛍️ What product classifications are available?

HS4 (4-digit Harmonized System), HS6 (6-digit Harmonized System with 5,000+ products), and SITC4 (Standard International Trade Classification 4-digit). Use none for country totals without product breakdown.

🔍 Can I filter to one product?

Yes. Set productLevel to hs4 or hs6 and add the numeric hsCode (e.g. 8542 for integrated circuits, 2709 for crude oil).

🤝 How do bilateral flows work?

Set both reporter and partner to country slugs. The Actor returns trade flowing from reporter to partner for the given year and product level.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to refresh trade dashboards annually when new BACI data drops, or quarterly when partial-year revisions are released.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. The OEC catalog is published for open use and built on top of UN Comtrade data, which is publicly available.

💼 Can I use this commercially?

Yes. Supply-chain analytics, trade-policy consulting, ESG dashboards, and sanctions-compliance products are all valid commercial use cases.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails partway?

Apify retries transient errors automatically. The Actor pages through results deterministically, so a re-run with the same input picks up cleanly.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

---

🔌 Integrate with any app

OEC Trade Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe trade data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from repo commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to fire downstream actions when a run finishes. Push a fresh trade-data refresh into your dashboard, or alert your team in Slack when bilateral flows shift.

---

🔗 Recommended Actors

• 📈 Indexmundi Scraper - Global demographic and economic indicators
• 📚 arXiv Scraper - Open-access research papers
• 🚢 ImportYeti Scraper - U.S. import shipment records
• 📨 IETF Datatracker Drafts Scraper - Internet standards lifecycle
• 🌐 Nominatim OSM Scraper - Geocode addresses via OpenStreetMap

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

---

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

---

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, MIT, or any of its contributors. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available OEC trade data is collected.