Falmoran
For importers and freight forwarders

Every figure traceable to a rule.

Falmoran builds TradeOS — a deterministic engine that works out duty, import VAT and tariff classification, shows every rule it applied, and issues a signed certificate your bank can verify without asking you for anything. It is built to refuse rather than guess, because a confident wrong number is the most expensive thing a compliance tool can produce — and it is the only engine we know of that tells you which parts of the tariff it does not hold, on every figure it gives you.

No login, no signup: twenty products a day, or five pasted lists. The claim above is the one thing on this page you can check yourself in thirty seconds — so check it before you read anything else we wrote.

Two real determinations · 19 Aug 2026

This is the whole product.

Not a diagram of one. Both commodities below were run through the engine, and both figures were checked against the authority that publishes them — not against ourselves.

6105.10.00.10 Determined
Men’s knitted cotton shirts · IN → US · 10,000.00 USD
HTSUS.6105100010.GEN19.7%
Additional measuresnone in force
Checked againstUSITC 2026
Duty owed1,970.00

One rule, named, and nothing sitting on top of it. India carries no Section 301 measure, so this figure is complete within the tariff data we hold — which is a different and smaller claim than “correct”, and the only one we make.

0102.29.10.10 Refused
Live bovine animals · GG → GB · 10,000.00 GBP
UK published dutycompound
Surviving 0% rulenot applied
Checked againstUK Tariff
10% + 77 GBP / 100 kg
Duty owedUNDETERMINED

A 0% rule existed for this origin and would have produced a clean zero on a signed certificate. The engine refuses to use it: the duty it is an exception to cannot be read, so no figure is final. The duty is real and it is owed.

1,741 UK commodities are held this way — refused, with the published text kept, rather than dropped.

Watch it think

Every determination carries the reasoning that produced it — the valuation basis, the rules considered, the ones that applied, and anything it could not resolve. Replay the same shipment against the same ruleset and you get the same answer, bit for bit.

determination · HIM-2026-001 · NP→EU

Classifies

Works out the tariff code from what the goods actually are — the ingredients, the processing, the form — and records the reasoning beside the answer.

Calculates

Customs value by jurisdiction, incoterms without double-counting freight, official exchange rates only, duty and import VAT in the correct order.

Proves

Issues an Ed25519-signed certificate over the complete determination. Anyone can check it, forever, with no account and no contact with us.

The part most tools get wrong

Ask it about a product whose description does not settle the question, and it does not quietly pick the likelier answer.

product_name: "pepper"  ·  processing: ground
No code. One question instead.
“Which spice is this? Black and white peppercorns are genus Piper (0904.11/12). Chilli, cayenne, paprika and allspice are genus Capsicum or Pimenta (0904.21/22) — a different subheading at a different duty rate.”
product_name: "Aluminium foil"  ·  unalloyed, unbacked, plain rolled
One question, then a code.
“How thick is it, in millimetres?” — because heading 7606 is exceeding 0.2 mm and 7607 is not exceeding. Answer 0.02 and it returns 7607.11. Answer 0.21 and it is sheet, not foil — so it asks the one thing sheet splits on, whether it is rectangular, and then returns 7606.11. Exactly 0.200 is foil, and 0.2 mm is a real mill gauge rather than a puzzle.
product_name: "Gingerbread biscuits"  ·  70% wheat flour, 20% sugar, 10% ginger
No code. Referred, with the reason.
“Where another substance has been added, Note 1 turns on whether the goods retain the essential character of a spice: a judgement about the goods, not a fact on the invoice. If they do not, mixed condiments and mixed seasonings are heading 2103 and other preparations fall elsewhere. Refer to a broker.”

A biscuit is not a spice mixture however much ginger is in it — and an engine that answered this one would be one that answers every blend, including the ones it should not.
product_name: "Stainless steel coil"  ·  304 grade, cold rolled, 1.2 mm
Recognised, declined, and told where they go.
“This is flat-rolled stainless steel, headings 7219 and 7220, which this engine does not classify — it covers non-alloy flat-rolled steel, headings 7208 to 7212. The alloy headings split on the chemistry certificate rather than on anything an invoice carries. Refer to a broker.”

Note what it does not say. It does not say we have never heard of steel. A broker who is handed the heading finishes this in a minute.

Guessing Piper would be right most of the time. Right most of the time, silently is the worst available property for a customs figure: the wrong entries file themselves, look identical to the correct ones, and turn up at audit with penalties attached.

It says what it has not included

Anti-dumping and countervailing duties routinely add 30–200%. They are in no figure we produce, and every determination says so — including the ones where the screen found nothing. A clean screen is not a clearance.

It declines rather than inventing

No official exchange rate, no answer. No VAT rate supplied for the member state, no VAT figure — just a flagged line naming exactly what is missing.

Ask it what your last four hundred shipments are worth under different rules

Every determination records the exact instant its ruleset was read, and the engine is a pure function of the shipment and the rules at that instant. Nothing else is needed to re-run your entire history as of any date you name — and tell you, in money, what changes and why.

The industry answers this question today with a consultant and three weeks.

Backward — what you overpaid

Re-run last year's entries against today's engine. Where a rule changed, or where our classification got better, the difference is a number with a named rule behind it. Reclaim windows are finite; finding them by hand is why most of them close unused.

Forward — what a change will cost you

A new tariff schedule is published for next quarter. Run your real book against it before it takes effect and get the exposure per corridor, per commodity, per supplier — while there is still time to do something about it.

A machine-learned classifier structurally cannot do this. Its output is a function of model weights, and the model that decided a 2026 entry has been retrained several times by 2029. It can tell you what it thinks today. It cannot reconstruct what it thought then, and it cannot show you the named rule that produced the number. Determinism is not a purity preference here — it is the entire feature.

Three years later, an auditor names a week in March

The compliance officer who filed it has left. Every record survived — nothing in this system is ever deleted — but reassembling that week out of a review queue, a certificate list, a dispute tab and an audit log is a day of billed panic.

Falmoran indexes the same data by day. One date, and you get everything that happened on it: every determination anchored, every classification a broker signed, every document issued, every amendment, every record set aside and by whom. Not that the record still exists — that a human can find it.

Nothing is deleted, ever

Setting a shipment aside removes it from your totals and leaves it on a list with the reason and the person. A record that vanishes with nowhere to look is, for every practical purpose, deleted.

Every figure is anchored

Hashed, versioned by engine and ruleset, immutable. A determination is not recomputed on a later view — the record you saw is the record that stays.

Your data leaves whenever you want

One ZIP: every determination with its payload and hash, the full audit trail, dossier records with each PDF's checksum, and a manifest hashing every file. Open formats. No export fee, no notice period, no conversation.

Stop emailing PDFs and hoping the numbers match

Two companies that trade with each other have never had a shared, trusted copy of the same customs determination. The exporter has one spreadsheet, the importer has another, the broker has a third, and the first anyone knows about the disagreement is when an entry is queried.

A Falmoran network is a private group of companies. A member exposes one specific shipment's determination to the others, keeps the conversation attached to that record, and revokes access the instant the relationship changes.

Six companies in one network. Nobody can see anybody’s records.

Per record, never per company

Sharing is an explicit grant on one shipment, checked on every read. It is not a relaxation of isolation: your tables stay behind your own row-level security policies, untouched.

Your partners do not need a licence

A counterparty gets a free workspace. They can read and answer what you share and nothing else — they cannot run their own determinations, and they cannot see a second thing you did not hand them.

Revocation is immediate

Access is proven on every request, not cached in a session. Withdraw a share and it is gone from their screen mid-session, not at the next login.

It tells you what it does not know

Every tariff engine on the market returns a number, and a number is not an answer. None of them can tell you the difference between “no preference applies to this shipment” and “I was never given preference data for this country”. Both come back as a clean result. The first is a fact. The second is a guess wearing the same clothes.

Falmoran keeps a coverage manifest — which families of customs rule it holds, per jurisdiction — and it is derived from the rules table itself, never asserted by us. Every customer can read it. It is on the screen inside the product and it is on the certificate your bank receives.

Rule familyUnited KingdomEuropean UnionUnited States
Third-country dutyheldthe UK Global Tariff; duties expressed per unit of quantity return UNDETERMINEDheldheld
Tariff preferencenot heldevery UK figure is the third-country rate, so a shipment that qualifies for an agreement is OVERSTATEDpartiala sample, not the schedule — EBA and most FTAs not yet loadedheld
Country-wide additional dutiespartialthe loaded edition, less rows whose rate the engine will not approximatenot heldpartialSection 301 lists 1, 2, 3 and 4A on Chinese-origin goods. Other statutes — 232 metals, 201 safeguards, 338 — and every other origin are NOT held, so no measure is not a clean screen
Anti-dumping & countervailingpartialanti-dumping, countervailing, safeguards and retroactive-registration measures, plus a separately maintained exposure screenpartialplus a separately maintained exposure screenno machine-readable source
Tariff-rate quotaspartialmeasures only; live balances never heldpartialmeasures only; live balances never heldno machine-readable source
Licences & permitsnot heldnot heldnot held
Import VATfrom your payloadfrom your payloaddoes not apply

This grid is a copy, taken 16 August 2026. The live manifest is in the product and on every certificate, and it is the one that governs. If this page and a determination disagree, the determination is right — it read the rules table; this page was typed. “Partial” means we hold some of a family and cannot tell you which shipments fall inside it, so it flags exactly like a gap.

A gap says which way the number is wrong

Not “preference data unavailable”. “The duty shown may be TOO HIGH if the goods clear inside an open quota.” “The duty shown may be TOO LOW, routinely by 30–200%, if an anti-dumping order applies.” Then it names the official register and links it.

A gap flags the shipment, it does not clear it

Where a missing family could have reduced a figure, the affected lines go to a review queue instead of getting a green tick. Only families that could actually move that figure flag it — a queue nobody can clear is a queue nobody reads.

Anti-dumping duty is the clearest case. On a €40,000 Chinese hot-rolled steel line the published third-country rate is 0%. There is also an anti-dumping duty, set per exporter, through a four-character code that appears nowhere on a commercial invoice. An engine that quotes 0% is not wrong about the tariff — it is silent about the part that costs money.

Falmoran holds those measures for the UK and the EU. It records the exposure, names which exporters carry an order, and refuses to state a rate it cannot derive — because that rate depends on which exporter shipped the goods, and no invoice says. On one Chinese steel line the engine loaded nine rules and refused thirty, each refusal naming why. Thirty silent approximations would have looked better and been worth nothing.

When it cannot decide, a licensed human does

A flagged line is assigned to a customs broker you choose. They get their own sign-in and see only the lines you assign them — never your dashboard, your shipments or your figures.

They sign what they actually read

A stamp records the fingerprint of the exact determination shown to them. If the shipment is re-determined afterwards, the stamp is refused. You cannot sign a document that changed after you read it.

A refusal is worth as much as a signature

“I need the mill certificate before I can classify this” is recorded, sent back, and the line stays flagged. The interface does not make signing the easy button and refusing the awkward one.

A correction is an append, never an edit

A broker who spots their own error can withdraw the stamp with a reason. The original stays on the record. Every profession that signs opinions corrects them with a new signed document, not an erasure.

Said plainly, because it matters: cross-company isolation is enforced by the database — row-level security, forced, under a non-superuser role. A broker sits inside one workspace, so their boundary is role gating and disciplined query paths. Both are real. They are not the same mechanism, and we will not tell an auditor that they are.

Are you a customs brokerage?

Your firm gets its own workspace: your licence and its expiry, your people, and one list of every line waiting for you across the clients who invited you — shown only where each client has said yes, and gone the moment they take it back. A public page with your licence and your own record, and a listing in the broker directory. Free for brokerages. Ask us to set it up.

Checked against sources we do not control

Anyone can claim accuracy. These are the numbers with their denominators, and every one is reproducible from the repository.

0/182

US duty rates

Compared against the rates US Customs states in its own published rulings, across 17 chapters. The six differences are all pre-2004 tariff reductions, visible as a decline in date order.

0/7,460

EU tariff data

Every loaded TARIC expression read identically by two independently written parsers. The 100× confusion between per-kg and per-100kg does not occur anywhere in the corpus.

0

Tests, each explaining itself

Including 30 cases where every expected figure was worked out by hand from the rule text before the engine ever ran. You can check any of them on paper.

0/65

Codes a customs officer disagreed with

Sixty-five products taken from published CBP rulings and put through the engine with only the facts the letter states. Eleven came back with the officer's own six digits; the rest were refused with a question rather than answered with a guess. None came back wrong. Where a chapter has thin evidence the coverage page inside the product says so, rather than scoring it zero and calling that a clean sheet.

Grading the classifier against published customs rulings found a real misclassification in our own engine — chilli returned as black pepper, at high confidence, unflagged. It was fixed, and the test that caught it runs on every change. That benchmark stays in the repository precisely because it can embarrass us.

In September 2026 we asked the U.S. International Trade Commission a question about Chapter 99. A nomenclature analyst there replied: “I would suggest reading the entire subdivision carefully. For example, if you read subdivision 40(a) it applies to headings 9903.04.60–9903.04.69. This range would include 9903.04.66.” She was describing a hole in our reader without knowing it. Heading 9903.04.66 cites subdivisions (c) and (h)(iii); it never names (a), the subdivision that establishes the duty treatment for the whole range. We were following citations forward and had never read a subdivision’s own declared scope. It is fixed, and the fix refuses rather than guesses when a range cannot be read. The same analyst noted that interpreting the scope of a provision is CBP’s call, not the Commission’s — which is exactly where this engine stops and a licensed broker starts.

Apparel: where one word costs twenty points of duty

Chapters 61 and 62 carry the highest rates in the tariff — routinely 16%, up to 32% — against an average near 3% across all goods. The engine resolves them from four facts, in this order.

1 · Knitted or woven

Chapter 61 is knitted, Chapter 62 is everything else. This changes the heading, not a digit. If the description does not say, the engine refuses and names the one question to ask — it never assumes the commoner case.

2 · Chief fibre by weight

Section XI Note 2. Fibres are summed per tariff family, so 40% polyester plus 20% nylon is 60% synthetic even though neither reaches half. At exactly 50% there is no chief fibre and a person decides.

3 · Men's or women's

Chapter 61 Note 9 and Chapter 62 Note 8: a garment not identifiable as men's is classified as women's. A real legal default with a duty consequence — applied, and recorded as applied.

4 · Six digits, and no further

The engine stops at the international subheading. The US 8- and 10-digit statistical suffixes turn on details a product description does not carry, and a broker completes them.

The same shirt, one line apart on the spec sheet.

Goods Code US duty
T-shirt, cotton 6109.10.00 16.5%
T-shirt, man-made fibres 6109.90.10 32%
Men's knit shirt, cotton 6105.10 19.7%
Men's knit shirt, man-made 6105.20 32%

Fifteen and a half points on one word. On a $200,000 container that is $31,000 — and the only thing that changed was a percentage nobody checked.

What it does not do yet

A supplier who volunteers the gap is worth more than one who claims everything works. This list is kept current, and it is the first thing we show a customer.

  • Classification scope Confirmed against your own catalogue during onboarding, in writing, before you commit to anything. Whatever the engine cannot classify is refused and referred to a customs broker, with the likely chapter named for the reviewer — never guessed at.
    • Chapter 09 — coffee, tea, maté and spicesAll four and every heading in it: coffee (0901), split on roasting and on decaffeination, with husks and with substitutes containing coffee; tea (0902), split on fermentation and on whether the immediate packing exceeds 3 kg; maté (0903); and the SPICES — pepper (Piper), chilli and paprika (Capsicum/Pimenta), vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, cumin, ginger, saffron, turmeric, and Note 1(b) spice mixtures. Not covered: soluble or instant coffee, tea extracts or herbal infusions — those are headings 2101 and 1211 — nor a mixture reaching across 0901 to 0903 and the spice headings, which turns on essential character: those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 30 — pharmaceutical productsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 3001 to 3006, all 45 six-digit codes: gland extracts and heparin; antisera and blood fractions; immunological products by mixed and by doses; vaccines by human or veterinary; toxins, cultures and cell therapies; medicaments by bulk (3003) or measured doses and retail (3004) and by active ingredient group in the tariff's own order; dressings, sutures, contrast media, dental cements, first-aid kits, contraceptives, medical gels, ostomy appliances, waste pharmaceuticals and trial placebos. Patent status is a Section 232 fact asked separately, never read from a brand. Not covered: dietary supplements or vitamin tablets sold as supplements (2106), single active ingredients or APIs (Chapter 29), cosmetics and sunscreens (33), condoms and gloves (40), test kits and devices (38, 90): those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 33 — essential oils, perfumery and cosmeticsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 3301 to 3307, all 29 six-digit codes: essential oils of orange, lemon, other citrus, peppermint, other mints and all other plants; resinoids; hydrosols and oleoresins; fragrance and flavour mixtures for the food and drink industries or other; perfumes and toilet waters; lip, eye and nail preparations, face powders and other make-up and skin care; shampoos, perm and straightening preparations, hairspray and other hair preparations; toothpaste, dental floss and mouthwash; shaving preparations, deodorants, bath preparations, incense and agarbatti, room fragrances and depilatories. Not covered: soap, body wash or candles, hand sanitizer, medicated preparations, make-up tools, bags or empty bottles, or dry shampoo: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 34 — soap, detergents, lubricants, waxes, polishes and candlesThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 3401 to 3407, all 24 six-digit codes: soap bars for toilet or other use, body wash and liquid hand soap for retail sale, soap in other forms; surface-active agents by charge and washing preparations by retail or bulk; lubricating preparations by petroleum content and textile or leather use; PEG and other waxes; polishes for footwear, furniture, cars, scouring and metal; candles and wax melts; modeling paste and play dough. Not covered: shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, bath bombs, perfume, hand sanitizer, wet wipes, motor oil, raw beeswax or paraffin, candle holders or LED candles: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 36 — explosives, fireworks, matches and fire startersThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 3601 to 3606, all 13 six-digit codes: propellant powders; prepared explosives; safety fuses, detonating cords, percussion caps, detonating caps, igniters and electric detonators; fireworks and sparklers; signal flares and other pyrotechnics; matches; lighter refills of not more than 300 cm3; ferrocerium rods, fire lighters and solid fuel. Not covered: lighters, toy caps, party poppers, magnesium or electric fire starters, stove gas canisters or candles: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 39 — plasticsThe WHOLE CHAPTER. Polymers in primary forms — granules, powders, resins, liquids and dispersions, headings 3901 to 3914 — by the polymer the supplier's data sheet names, with the one property each subheading turns on asked where the line does not state it: specific gravity for polyethylene, expandable for polystyrene, mixed and plasticized for PVC, aqueous dispersion for vinyl acetate, viscosity number for PET; waste, parings and scrap (3915) by polymer; and ARTICLES of plastics, headings 3916 to 3926 WHOLE: profiles, rods and sticks (3916), tubes and pipes (3917), floor coverings and Note 9 wall coverings (3918), self-adhesive sheet and tape (3919), plate, sheet and film both non-cellular (3920) and cellular or reinforced (3921), sanitary ware (3922), articles for conveyance and packing (3923), tableware and household articles (3924), builders' ware (3925) and other articles (3926). Not covered: colour masterbatch (3206), adhesives (3506), sealants (3214) or paints (3208): those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 40 — rubber and articles thereofThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 4001 to 4017, all 80 six-digit codes: natural rubber, latex and synthetic rubbers by type; reclaimed rubber, scrap and crumb; compounded and unvulcanized rubber; rubber thread; sheets and profiles by cellular or not; hoses by reinforcement and fittings; conveyor and transmission belts by reinforcement, type and circumference; tires by new, retreaded or used and by vehicle; inner tubes; condoms and hygienic articles; gloves by medical use; mats, erasers, seals, fenders and other rubber articles; hard rubber. Not covered: the same goods of PVC, polyurethane or silicone (Chapter 39), rubber footwear (64), toys (95) or coated textile gloves (61): those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 42 — leather goods and travel goodsHeading 4202 — trunks, suitcases, briefcases, handbags, wallets and purses, sports bags and rucksacks — resolved from what the article is and what its outer surface is made of; 4203.30, leather belts; saddlery and harness for any animal (4201), which the schedule settles OF ANY MATERIAL so the outer surface does not divide it; and articles of gut, goldbeater's skin, bladders or tendons (4206); and the rest of heading 4203 — leather garments (4203.10), leather gloves split on whether they are specially designed for sport (4203.21 and 4203.29), and other leather clothing accessories (4203.40); and other articles of leather (4205), the residual, given only for goods named in its lines (straps, strops, belting, keyrings, coasters, cords, lanyards) or when the importer confirms the article is none of the things another heading names. Not covered: leather shoelaces, watch straps or straps sold for a bag, which are contested with other headings: those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 43 — furskins and artificial furThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 4301 to 4304, all 12 six-digit codes: raw furskins of mink, lamb, fox and other animals, and pieces; tanned whole skins of mink or other, pieces, and assembled plates; fur apparel and clothing accessories; other fur articles such as pom poms and throws; artificial fur in the sense of Note 5. Not covered: faux or fake fur pile fabrics, 'mink' polyester blankets, mink lashes, sheepskin and shearling, fur hats, fur footwear, gloves, rugs or pillows: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 44 — wood and articles of wood; wood charcoalThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 4401 to 4421, all 128 six-digit codes: fuel wood, chips, pellets, briquettes and sawdust; charcoal by bamboo, shell or wood; logs by treatment, species and 15 cm cross-section; stakes, sleepers and wood wool; lumber over 6 mm and veneer of 6 mm or less by species, with tropical read only from the species Subheading Note 2 names; mouldings and flooring strips; particle board, OSB, MDF by thickness and fiberboard by density; plywood, LVL and blockboard by outer ply; frames, crates, pallets, barrels and tool handles; windows, doors, flooring panels, glulam, CLT and I-joists; kitchenware, ornaments, boxes, hangers, coffins and other articles. Not covered: wooden furniture or kitchen cabinets (Chapter 94), toys (95), baskets and wickerwork (46), cork (45), pencils and brushes (96), raw bamboo canes (14) or laminate flooring: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 45 — corkThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 4501 to 4504, all 7 six-digit codes: raw cork bark; waste, crushed and granulated cork; natural cork blocks and sheets; corks and stoppers of natural or agglomerated cork; other articles of natural cork; agglomerated cork in sheets, tiles and disks, and other articles of agglomerated cork. Natural or agglomerated is asked, never assumed. Not covered: corkscrews, cork-soled footwear, cork-backed placemats of other material, plastic 'corks' or cork bags and wallets: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 46 — basketware, wickerwork and other plaited goodsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 4601 and 4602, all 11 six-digit codes: mats, matting and screens, plaits and plaiting material, and basketwork, wickerwork and articles made to shape, each split on bamboo, rattan, other vegetable material (willow, seagrass, water hyacinth, straw, palm leaf, loofah) or non-vegetable strip (PE 'synthetic rattan', paper strip). 'Wicker' alone never decides the material. Not covered: wicker or rattan furniture, straw hats, rugs of jute or sisal, rope or fabric baskets, wire and moulded plastic baskets, or carved bamboo kitchenware: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 50 — silkThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 5001 to 5007, all 9 six-digit codes: silkworm cocoons; raw silk; silk waste, tops and roving; silk yarn not for retail sale, spun from silk waste or not; silk yarn put up for retail sale and silkworm gut; woven fabrics of noil silk, of 85 percent or more silk, and other silk fabrics. Not covered: finished silk goods (scarves, pillowcases, garments, sleep masks), silk flowers, silk-screen supplies or 'silk' cosmetics: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 57 — carpets and other textile floor coveringsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 5701 to 5705, all 24 six-digit codes: knotted and hand-hooked rugs; kilims, soumaks and similar hand-woven rugs; coir; other woven carpets by pile, made up and fibre; tufted carpets and turf by wool, nylon, other man-made or other fibre; felt by tile area (0.3 m2 and 1 m2); and braided or knitted floor coverings. How a rug is made decides the heading and is asked when the description does not say; a fibre blend is asked, never split. Not covered: seagrass, bamboo or straw mats (Chapter 46), vinyl or rubber mats, sheepskin and cowhide rugs, rug pads, yoga or car mats, or wall tapestries: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapters 61 and 62 — apparelT-shirts, singlets and undershirts, jerseys and pullovers, shirts and blouses, trousers and shorts, dresses, skirts, suits, ensembles and suit-type jackets, overcoats and anoraks, babies' garments, scarves, ties, handkerchiefs, corsetry and gloves; hosiery — socks, panty hose and tights, stockings and knee-highs, and graduated compression hosiery; underwear and nightwear — underpants, briefs and panties, slips and petticoats, nightshirts, nightdresses and pyjamas, bathrobes and dressing gowns; and knitted track suits, ski-suits and swimwear; woven track suits, ski-suits and swimwear (6211); other garments named by no other heading — jumpsuits, coveralls, boiler suits (6114 and 6211); other clothing accessories and parts of garments (6117 and 6217); and garments of coated, laminated or nonwoven fabric (6113 and 6210). In cotton, wool, cashmere, fine animal hair, synthetic, artificial, silk and vegetable fibres, resolved to the six-digit subheading. Not covered: the US 8- and 10-digit statistical suffixes, which are left to a broker; a garment named by no heading and no word this engine reads, which is 'other garments' only after every other heading is ruled out; a garment of coated fabric whose description does not say it is coated, laminated or nonwoven; leg warmers, which fall in 6115 or 6117 on how they are made; and wetsuits, which are 6113, 4015 or 6112 on the essential character of the neoprene.
    • Chapter 63 — made-up textile articlesBlankets (6301), bed, table, toilet and kitchen linen (6302), curtains and blinds (6303), bedspreads, bed nets and other furnishings (6304), sacks and bags for packing (6305), tarpaulins, tents, sails and pneumatic mattresses (6306), other made-up articles (6307) — cleaning cloths (6307.10), lifejackets and lifebelts (6307.20), and 6307.90, the residual, given only for goods its own lines name (cloth face masks, surgical drapes) or when the importer confirms the article is none of the things another heading names — worn clothing in bulk (6309), needlecraft sets put up for retail sale (6308), and rags and worn out cordage (6310), sorted and unsorted. Not covered: a textile article the importer cannot confirm is outside every other heading; that one is referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 64 — footwearThe chapter WHOLE — headings 6401 to 6405, waterproof one-piece footwear, footwear of rubber or plastics, leather uppers, textile uppers and the residual heading; and heading 6406, parts of footwear, which splits once: uppers and parts of uppers other than stiffeners are 6406.10, and outer soles, heels, removable insoles, heel cushions, gaiters and leggings are 6406.90. Not covered: the US 8- and 10-digit statistical suffixes, which are left to a broker; nor shoelaces, which are contested between 6406 and the textile chapters and are referred rather than guessed.
    • Chapter 65 — headgearThe chapter WHOLE — all eight six-digit codes: unfinished felt hat bodies and hoods (6501) and plaited hat shapes (6502); finished plaited hats such as straw and panama (6504); hats and caps of textile fabric, knitted, crocheted or made up, together with hair-nets (6505); safety headgear (6506.10); other headgear of rubber or plastics (6506.91) or of other materials such as leather and fur (6506.99); and parts of headgear — hat bands, linings, foundations, frames, peaks and chin straps (6507). Heading 6505 does not divide at six digits, so a baseball cap, a beanie or a bucket hat resolves from the article alone. Not covered: the US 8- and 10-digit statistical suffixes, which split 6505 by fibre and by braid and are left to a broker; and a bare 'visor', which the schedule prints under BOTH 6506.91 and 6507 and which no product title settles: that one is referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 66 — umbrellas, walking-sticks and whipsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 6601 to 6603, all 6 six-digit codes: garden, patio and beach umbrellas; other umbrellas with or without a telescopic shaft; walking-sticks, seat-sticks, whips and riding-crops; umbrella frames and other parts. A bare 'umbrella' is asked, never guessed. Not covered: umbrella stands and bases, cocktail or toy umbrellas, trekking poles, crutches, gazebos or photography umbrellas: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 67 — feathers, artificial flowers and wigsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 6701 to 6704, all 8 six-digit codes: feathers and feather articles; artificial flowers, plants and fruit by plastics or other material; hair prepared for wig making; wigs, extensions, false eyelashes and beards by synthetic (complete wig or not), human hair or other material. 'Silk' flowers are read as textile, never as plastic. Not covered: artificial Christmas trees or wreaths, feather dusters, feather earrings, down filling, pillows, hair clips, lash glue or natural flowers: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 68 — articles of stone, plaster, cement, asbestos, mica and similar materialsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 6801 to 6815, all 50 six-digit codes: setts, curbstones and flagstones; small stone tiles and coloured chippings; marble, travertine and alabaster, limestone, granite and other stone, each simply cut or sawn or further worked; slate; millstones, grinding wheels of diamond, other abrasives or natural stone, and hand sharpening stones; sandpaper and other coated abrasives by base; mineral wool, vermiculite, expanded clay and perlite; asphalt roofing; wood-wool boards; drywall, gypsum ceiling tiles and plaster articles; concrete blocks, pavers, precast components, planters and engineered quartz; fibre-cement sheets and pipes; asbestos articles; unmounted brake linings and clutch facings; mica; carbon fibre, carbon fabric, carbon-fibre sheet and tube, graphite foil and gaskets; peat pots; unfired magnesia bricks; soapstone crayons. Not covered: glass marbles, marble-look porcelain or vinyl, granite-coated cookware, mounted car brake pads, diamond saw blades, pumice and pebbles, bagged cement, plaster of Paris or grout, soapstone carvings, carbon-fibre bicycles, rods, wallets or car parts, electrodes or power tools: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 69 — ceramic productsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 6901 to 6914, all 30 six-digit codes: goods of diatomite; refractory bricks by MgO or alumina-silica content and other refractory goods (crucibles, kiln shelves) by carbon or alumina; building bricks, flooring blocks, roofing tiles, chimney pots and pipes; floor and wall tiles by water absorption (0.5% and 10%), mosaics and trims; technical ware by porcelain and Mohs 9; sanitary fixtures, tableware and kitchenware, household and toilet articles, ornaments and other articles, each split on porcelain or china. 'Ceramic' alone never decides porcelain; 'Made in China' never does. Not covered: ceramic knives, ceramic-coated cookware, electrical insulators, heaters and hair tools, ceramic fibre, porcelain dolls, lamps, Christmas ornaments, enamelled steel or glass-ceramics: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 70 — glass and glasswareThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7001 to 7020, all 71 six-digit codes: cullet; unworked balls, rods and tubes; cast, drawn and float sheet glass by wiring, tint and coating; worked flat glass; tempered and laminated safety glass by vehicle use; insulating units; mirrors by framed or rear-view; containers for packing, ampoules and closures; lamp envelopes; glassware split into stemware, other drinking glasses, table and kitchen ware and other glassware, each by lead crystal, borosilicate or glass-ceramics; signal and spectacle glass; glass blocks, mosaics; laboratory glassware; beads and microspheres; glass fibre by chopped strand, roving, yarn, mat and fabric, and glass wool; other articles. 'Crystal' never means lead crystal unless stated, and a bare 'glass jar' is asked whether it packs goods. Not covered: imitation jewellery, complete bulbs and lamps, spectacles, optically worked lenses, Christmas ornaments, toy marbles, vacuum flasks, glass furniture or reinforced plastics: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 71 — pearls, precious stones, precious metals, jewelry and coinThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7101 to 7118, all 55 six-digit codes: pearls; natural, synthetic and lab-grown diamonds and other stones by sorted, industrial and worked; stone dust; silver, gold and the platinum metals by form, gold by monetary; clad metal; waste and scrap; jewelry by metal — silver, other precious metal, base metal clad with precious metal, or imitation jewelry of plated base metal or other materials; silversmiths' wares, other articles, articles of pearls or stones, and coin. 'Gold' and 'silver' as colours never decide the metal. Not covered: watches, jewelry boxes, key rings, hair accessories, diamond saw blades, glass 'crystal' beads or silver-plated base-metal tableware: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 72 — iron and steelThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7201 to 7229, sorted by form first and grade second. Pig iron and spiegeleisen (7201) on phosphorus; ferro-alloys (7202) by name, and ferromanganese, ferrosilicon and ferrochromium on their carbon or silicon; direct-reduced and high-purity iron (7203); waste and scrap (7204) by metal and form; granules and powders (7205); ingots, primary forms and semi-finished products (7206, 7207, 7218, 7224) on grade, carbon and cross-section. FLAT-ROLLED steel of every grade at any width: non-alloy (7208 to 7212) on width, thickness, rolling, coils, pickling, carbon and coating; flat-rolled stainless steel (7219, 7220); other alloy (7225, 7226) on electrical and high-speed steel. Bars and rods in coils (7213, 7221, 7227), other bars and rods (7214, 7215, 7222, 7228) on finish, rebar, free-cutting steel and cross-section; angles, shapes and sections (7216) on shape, height and finish; and wire (7217, 7223, 7229) on coating. Not covered: tubes, pipes, wire rope, mesh, fasteners and other articles of iron or steel, which are Chapter 73, nor iron ore (Chapter 26): those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 73 — articles of iron or steelThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7301 to 7326, all 124 six-digit codes: sheet piling and rail track; tubes and pipes by seamless or welded, line pipe or casing, stainless, alloy or nonalloy, cold-drawn and external diameter; pipe fittings; structures, doors, towers and scaffolding; tanks, drums, cans and gas cylinders by capacity; wire rope, barbed wire, mesh and fencing; chain; anchors; nails, screws, bolts, nuts, washers and rivets; pins and needles; springs; stoves, barbecues and heaters by fuel; radiators; kitchenware by stainless, cast iron or enameled; sinks and baths; castings, forgings, wire articles and other articles. Not covered: goods of another metal or material, tools (Chapter 82), locks and mountings (Chapter 83), machines (84) or furniture (94): those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 74 — copper and articles thereofThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7401 to 7419, all 49 six-digit codes: mattes, anodes and cathodes; unwrought refined copper by form and alloys by brass or bronze; scrap, master alloys and powders; bars, rods, wire, plate and foil by refined copper or alloy, wire by 6 mm, plate by coil, foil by 0.15 mm and backing; tubes, pipes and fittings; stranded uninsulated wire; nails, washers, rivets, screws and bolts; household and sanitary ware; castings and other articles. Refined copper is read only from a grade (C10100–C12200, ETP, OFC, DHP) or 99.9%, never from the word 'copper' alone. Not covered: insulated or enamelled wire and cable (8544), valves and taps (8481), door hardware (8302), statuettes and candle holders (8306), jewellery or copper chemicals: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 76 — aluminiumThe MATERIAL forms: unwrought (7601), waste and scrap (7602), powders and flakes (7603), bars, rods and profiles (7604), wire (7605), plate, sheet and strip (7606), foil (7607), tubes and pipes (7608) and the fittings that join them — couplings, elbows and sleeves (7609) — resolved from form, whether it is alloyed, thickness and cross-section. It also covers the named ARTICLES: doors, windows and structures (7610), tanks over 300 litres (7611), casks, drums, cans and collapsible tubes (7612), gas cylinders (7613), bare stranded wire and cable (7614), kitchen, household and sanitary articles (7615), and heading 7616: fasteners (7616.10), cloth, netting and fencing of aluminium wire (7616.91), and other articles (7616.99). 7616.99 is the residual heading, so it is given only for goods it names (ladders, venetian blinds, luggage frames, pipe hangers) or when the importer confirms the goods are none of the things another heading names — never because nothing else matched. Headings 7601 to 7616 are covered WHOLE. Not covered: scaffolding, frames, trays, bottles or heat sinks, which are not settled by name, and it refers a container fitted with machinery, an insulated cable, an electric appliance, and a fitting named without the tube or pipe it fits — a bare "sleeve", "elbow" or "tee" is apparel far more often than heading 7609.
    • Chapter 79 — zincThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 7901 to 7907, all 9 six-digit codes: unwrought zinc not alloyed of 99.99 percent or more, or less, and zinc alloys such as Zamak; waste and scrap; zinc dust, powders and flakes; bars, rods, profiles and wire; plates, sheets, strip and foil; and other articles of zinc such as anodes, tubes and gutters. Purity is read from the goods or asked. Not covered: zinc oxide, zinc supplements and creams, zinc-plated or galvanized steel, zinc-alloy jewelry and hardware, zinc batteries or decorative 'zinc' planters and buckets: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 82 — tools and cutlery of base metalThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 8201 to 8215, all 64 six-digit codes: garden hand tools; handsaws and saw blades by kind; files, pliers, snips and cutters; wrenches and sockets; hammers, chisels, screwdrivers, household tools, torches, vises and clamps; tool sets; drill bits, taps, router bits and other interchangeable tools; machine knives; cermet inserts; hand-cranked food appliances; knives by set, table, fixed or folding blade; razors and blades; scissors; nail clippers and manicure sets; spoons, forks, ladles and utensil sets, plated with precious metal or not. Not covered: power tools, electric shavers and clippers, knife blocks, sharpening stones, toolboxes, or plastic, silicone or wooden utensils: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 83 — miscellaneous articles of base metalThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 8301 to 8311, all 36 six-digit codes: padlocks, vehicle, furniture and other locks, keys and parts; hinges, castors, building, furniture and vehicle fittings, hooks and brackets, door closers; safes and cash boxes; desk trays; binder fittings, staples and clips; bells, statuettes by precious-metal plating, picture frames and metal mirrors; flexible tubing by steel or other metal; eyelets, rivets, buckles and clasps; crown corks and other caps; signs and house numbers; welding electrodes and rods. Not covered: plastic, wooden or glass articles, glass mirrors, electric door bells, illuminated signs, musical gongs, screws, chain, tools or jewelry: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 84 — machinery and computersThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 8401 to 8487, all 538 six-digit codes: reactors, boilers, engines and turbines by output and cylinder capacity; pumps, compressors and fans; air conditioners, refrigerators and heat-treatment plant; filters, scales, sprayers and pressure washers; lifting and handling machinery, cranes, forklifts and earth-moving machines; farm, food, paper, printing, textile, sewing and leather machinery; washing machines and dryers; metal-working machine tools, split where the tariff splits on numerical control; wood, stone and glass working machines; hand power tools; computers and office machines; mineral, plastics, glass and tobacco machinery; vending machines; molds, valves, bearings, gearboxes, seals and 3D printers; and semiconductor equipment. Not covered: goods named only by a heading's residual 'other' line that the importer does not pick, electric domestic appliances (8509, 8516) or welding machines (8515): those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 85 — electrical machineryThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 8501 to 8549: motors, generators and generating sets by output; transformers and converters (8504) on dielectric and kVA; magnets, batteries by chemistry, vacuum cleaners, domestic appliances, shavers, engine electrics, vehicle lights, torches, furnaces and welding machines; heating appliances, the domestic ones confirmed as such; phones and network apparatus; audio and video equipment, storage media, display modules, cameras, radar, GPS and radios; monitors and televisions; alarms and signalling; capacitors and resistors; printed circuits; switchgear on either side of 1,000 V and control panels; lamps and LEDs; tubes; semiconductors and integrated circuits; insulated wire and cable; other machines named by their lines — e-cigarettes, IR remotes; carbon electrodes, insulators and e-waste. Not covered: goods named only by a heading's residual 'other' line that the importer does not pick, light fittings and LED strips (9405), phone cases, or assembled circuit boards named without what they are: those are referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 91 — clocks and watchesThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9101 to 9114, all 48 six-digit codes: watches by precious-metal case, wrist or not, electric or not, display and automatic winding; clocks with watch movements, vehicle clocks, and alarm, wall and other clocks, electric or not; time recorders and timers, time switches; watch and clock movements complete, unassembled, incomplete or rough; watch and clock cases; straps and bracelets by precious, base metal or other; dials, plates and bridges and other parts. 'Gold' alone never decides a precious case. Not covered: smartwatches, fitness trackers, clock radios, watch batteries, watch boxes and winders, or repair tools: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 92 — musical instrumentsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9201 to 9209, all 17 six-digit codes: upright, grand and other pianos; string instruments by whether played with a bow; brass-wind and other wind instruments; percussion; electric instruments by keyboard or other; music boxes, whistles and decoy calls; and strings, parts and accessories by the instrument they serve. An electric guitar or digital piano goes to 9207, an acoustic-electric guitar stays in 9202, and a bare 'guitar', 'keyboard' or 'organ' is asked. Not covered: effects pedals, amplifiers, microphones, cases, stands, picks, electronic tuners, MIDI controllers or toy instruments: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 93 — arms and ammunitionThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9301 to 9307, all 18 six-digit codes: artillery, launchers and other military weapons; revolvers and pistols; muzzle-loading firearms, sporting shotguns and rifles, and flare and blank-firing pistols; air guns, air rifles, paintball markers and truncheons; parts and accessories of pistols, of shotguns and rifles, of military weapons and of air guns; shotgun cartridges, air gun pellets, other cartridges and bullets, and other munitions; swords, bayonets, scabbards and sheaths. Not covered: airsoft, toy or water guns, scopes and sights, holsters and cases, cleaning kits, crossbows and archery, pepper spray, stun guns, knives and machetes, or tools called guns: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 94 — furniture, bedding, lighting and prefabricated buildingsThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9401 to 9406, all 54 six-digit codes: seats by kind and by frame and upholstery; medical, dental and barbers' furniture; other furniture by material and by office, kitchen or bedroom use; mattresses, sleeping bags, duvets, pillows and cushions; lighting by ceiling, table, Christmas string, sign or other, and by LED-only; lamp parts; prefabricated buildings. Not covered: bulbs and LED lamps (8539), torches and flashlights (8513), vehicle lights (8512), bed linen and covers (6302, 6304) or toy furniture (9503): those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 95 — toys, games and sports requisitesThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9503 to 9508, all 39 six-digit codes: toys, dolls, puzzles and scale models; billiards, arcade machines, playing cards, video game consoles and board games; Christmas and party articles; skis, water-sport, golf, table-tennis and racket goods; balls by inflatable or not; skates; exercise and other sports equipment; fishing tackle; fairground rides. Not covered: pet toys, sports clothing and footwear, bags, bicycles, tents or electric scooters: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 96 — miscellaneous manufactured articlesThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9601 to 9620, all 49 six-digit codes: carved bone, horn and shell; brooms and brushes by use (toothbrushes, hair and shaving brushes, makeup and artists' brushes, paint brushes and rollers, machine brushes, mops); sieves and travel sets; buttons by plastics, base metal or other, snap fasteners; zippers by metal or other teeth and parts; pens by ballpoint, marker, fountain, mechanical pencil, set, refill and nib; pencils, crayons and chalk; boards, stamps, ribbons and ink pads; lighters by disposable, refillable, other and parts; smoking pipes; combs and hair clips by plastics or other, hairpins; scent sprayers and makeup sponges; vacuum flasks; mannequins; sanitary pads and diapers; tripods. Only 'vacuum' makes a flask 9617, never 'insulated'. Not covered: electric toothbrushes or shavers, styluses, pencil cases, toner cartridges, lighter fluid, zip ties, push buttons, cotton pads or fabric hair ties: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
    • Chapter 97 — works of art, collectors' pieces and antiquesThe WHOLE CHAPTER, headings 9701 to 9706, all 19 six-digit codes: paintings, drawings and pastels executed entirely by hand, mosaics, and collages, each over 100 years old or not; original engravings, prints and lithographs; original sculpture; used stamps and first-day covers; archaeological, ethnographic and historical pieces; human specimens; extinct or endangered species such as dinosaur fossils; mineral and other natural-history specimens; numismatic collections over 100 years old or not; antiques over 250 years old or not. Age is read only from words that state it, otherwise asked. Not covered: printed reproductions, canvas prints, posters, hand-painted mugs or vases, commercial statues and figurines, paint-by-number kits, bullion coins or 'antique finish' goods: those are refused by name or referred to a broker.
  • Apparel stops at six digitsThe engine resolves the international subheading — knitted or woven, chief fibre by weight, garment, gender. The US 8- and 10-digit statistical suffixes turn on details a product description does not carry, and a broker completes them.
  • EU rate verificationInternally consistent and double-parsed, but not graded against an outside authority — the EU publishes no prose rate corpus to grade against.
  • Country-wide additional dutiesSurcharges that apply to an entire origin — the US Chapter 99 reciprocal tariffs are the current example — are not held and never calculated. They change by executive action, sometimes between one shipment and the next, and a stale rate presented as current is worse than no rate at all. Where one may apply the determination says the figure is the base rate only, routes the shipment to review, and links the official schedule. This gap was found by an outside review of our own output; see the audit log below.
  • Trade remediesScreened, disclosed and flagged — never calculated. Anti-dumping and countervailing duty is set per exporter, through a code that appears on no commercial invoice, so no engine can derive it from a shipment. We hold a partial set for the UK and the EU and none for the US, and the manifest says so per jurisdiction with a link to the official register. Every shipment is also screened against a separately maintained exposure list that carries its own reviewed-on date — but the absence of a warning is never evidence that no measure applies. A figure from a static list would be authoritative and wrong.
  • Tariff-rate quotasA quota is a preference with a running balance, allocated first come first served. We hold UK quota measures and do not hold live balances, so a quota is offered and never applied. The determination says so and names the balance service.
  • Exchange ratesOfficial rates only. For the EU we load the European Commission's monthly customs rates (InforEuro) for the currencies we hold; for everything else no official table is loaded. An invoice in a currency with no official rate is refused rather than converted at a rate nobody published.
  • IntegrationThere is an API and a bulk spreadsheet import. There is no ERP or forwarding-system connector yet. Anyone who tells you integration is a checkbox has not done one.
  • FilingWe produce the determination and the paperwork. Submission to customs is done by a licensed broker, not by us.
  • CorridorsEU, GB and US. Coverage differs by rule family and the engine states which on every shipment — see the table above rather than taking a single word for it.

We had our own engine attacked, and we publish what it found

In August 2026 we handed ten determinations — the full reasoning, the exact rule rows the engine used, and the published tariff text — to an independent adversarial review, with instructions to assume defects existed and to name them. It found four. Here they are, and what we did about each.

This is not a claim that the engine is validated. An AI review is not a licensed broker's signed opinion and we will not present it as one. What it is: evidence that we look, that we publish what we find, and that the corrections are in the product rather than in a backlog.

  • The duty stack had a layer we never modelled Two shipments came back with the correct base rate presented as the amount owed — one at $8,668 marked as settled, one at zero. A country-wide additional duty applied to both origins and appeared nowhere. Fixed: country-wide measures are now a declared coverage family, held by nobody, and any affected shipment says the figure is the base rate only and routes to review — including when the duty is zero, which is the most confident-looking number an engine produces. No rate was loaded from the review: a rate typed in from a report has no source, no version and no in-force dates.
  • A declared code that contradicted the declared goods A shirt declared under the cotton subheading with “60% polyester 40% cotton” in its own description. Chief weight decides that split and the rate differs materially. Both facts were in front of the engine and nothing compared them. Fixed: the engine now detects the contradiction and routes the line to a human. It never re-classifies — rewriting a code is a classification opinion, and those are signed by licensed brokers, not by software.
  • “Red chili pepper” filed as pepper of the genus Piper Chilli is Capsicum — a different subheading entirely. The English word “pepper” covers both, which is exactly why declarations get it wrong. Fixed: same check, same rule — flagged, never re-coded.
  • Zero and “could not work it out” looked identical Totals summed only the lines the engine could determine, so a shipment where nothing was determined displayed as 0.00 — character for character the same as a correctly determined zero rate. Fixed: three states, not two. An undetermined figure is now replaced by the word, never rendered as a numeral, and a base rate is shown as a base rate rather than a total.
  • Two findings we did not act on, and will not The review noted that the engine refuses to complete a US national tariff code from a product description, and refuses to compute EU import VAT without a member state. Both refusals are correct. A system that guesses is unsafe; we would rather be told we are cautious than be quietly wrong.

One more, for completeness: the review's first report named a missing rule record as its headline finding. It was a bug in our own audit tooling, not in the engine — a step name containing a slash was being split into a rule that did not exist. We fixed it, wrote a test per failure mode, and logged it in the same place as everything else. A vendor who only publishes the findings that make them look good is publishing marketing.

The full log — every finding, its category, what we did, and the ones we rejected with reasons — ships with the product and is handed to every customer. Ask for it before you buy, not after.

What it costs, before you have to ask

Everyone in this category writes “contact us for pricing”, which means “we will work out what you can afford”. Here are the numbers, and you can compute your own bill before you ever talk to us.

The short version. Three kinds of customer, three simple answers. Every seat is free on every plan — your whole team and guest customs brokers, no per-user fee. The detailed arithmetic further down is there so you can check your own invoice, not because you need it to decide.

Importers & forwarders

$750 / month, from
  • 200 shipments included. Then $3.50 each — you move to a bigger plan only when it is cheaper for you.
  • Unlimited people, no per-user fee.
  • $4,000 onboarding, once: half when you sign, half when you get your report.

Customs brokers

Free
  • Your own firm workspace and a free listing in the broker directory.
  • Earn 15% of each client’s monthly plan for their first 12 months when you bring them (first 200 clients). Never on onboarding or connection fees.
  • 10 paying clients: Partner badge, first in the directory. 25: Premier — after the 12 months, 8% for as long as each client stays.
  • Clients are told you receive a referral fee; their price does not change.

Connecting your systems

$0 for most customers
  • Work in Falmoran or upload a spreadsheet: included.
  • Your developers use our API: included, with 8 hours of our help.
  • We build a file connection (SFTP or email): $3,200 once.
  • We build into CargoWise, Descartes or your ERP: $3,000 to study it (taken off the build if you go ahead), then a fixed price, plus $500 a month while it runs.
Founding offer — 5 of 5 places left. The first five companies to sign — on their own or through their broker — get 40% off the monthly fee for the first two months, and keep the price they sign at for as long as they stay: when the published price goes up, theirs does not. Plus a direct line to the person building the engine.

And the $4,000 onboarding is waived — you still get the full replay of your past shipments and the written report, free. After the first five, onboarding is paid in two halves: $2,000 when you sign and $2,000 when we deliver the report. There is no annual commitment: month to month, cancel with thirty days' notice.
What we ask in return

A monthly product call for the founding period, where you tell us what is wrong with it — and, if you are willing, let us look at the lines the engine got stuck on, anonymised. A real edge case from your catalogue is worth more to us than the discount costs.

A conversation about a reference or case study — afterwards. If it has worked for you, and subject to your approval of anything we write. We are not asking you to endorse software you have not used yet.

This is a limit on how many companies get the offer, not on how many people you put in — every plan has unlimited people.

Essential

$750 / month
200 shipments included
$3.50 per shipment above that
  • Unlimited people
  • Unlimited guest customs brokers
  • Trade network and shared disputes
  • Bulk import, replay, timeline, certificates
  • Every chapter and corridor we hold

Starter

$2,400 / month
750 shipments included
$3.00 per shipment above that
  • Everything in Essential
  • More volume before the per-shipment rate applies

Growth

$3,600 / month
1,750 shipments included
$1.90 per shipment above that
  • Everything in Starter
  • Priority support

Scale

$5,200 / month
4,000 shipments included
$1.20 per shipment above that
  • Everything in Growth
  • Dedicated onboarding for new corridors
  • Named contact
  • 10,001–40,000 — $1.05 each
  • Above 40,000 — $0.90 each, no ceiling

You are always charged the cheapest of the four — the cheapest plan for the month you actually had. The plans are not walls you fall over: go one shipment past 200 and you pay $753.50, not $2,400.

Show the month-by-month arithmetic, every threshold

The plans are not walls you fall over. Go one shipment past 200 and you stay on Essential and pay $3.50 for that one shipment — $753.50, not $2,400. Go one past 750 and you pay $3 for it: $2,403, not $3,600. We move you up only at the point where the bigger plan is genuinely cheaper for you: Starter wins at 672 shipments, Growth at 1,151 and Scale at 2,593, and at each of those the two prices are identical to the cent. Across every month from one shipment to five thousand, one extra shipment never costs more than $3.50.

Your monthPlan you are billed onBillPer shipment
200Essential$750$3.75
201Essential$753.50$3.75
500Essential$1,800$3.60
671Essential$2,398.50$3.57
672Starter$2,400$3.57
750Starter$2,400$3.20
751Starter$2,403$3.20
1,150Starter$3,600$3.13
1,151Growth$3,600$3.13
1,751Growth$3,602$2.06
2,592Growth$5,200$2.01
2,593Scale$5,200$2.01

Onboarding: $4,000, once — $2,000 on signing, $2,000 when the validation report is delivered. Bounded, and here is the boundary — so neither of us discovers it afterwards.

Included in the $4,000Limit
Historical validation — your own past shipments re-run through the engine, with a written line-by-line report of where our answer differs from what you filed up to 3 months or 5,000 shipment lines, whichever comes first
Your own file layout mapped to the importer, however your columns are named—
One administrator account created for your company—
Two training sessions—
Thirty days of priority support—
Historical validation beyond the capseparately scoped and quoted before any work starts

Your team is yours to run. We create one administrator account for your company and hand it over. From there your administrator adds their own people, invites their own customs brokers and assigns each person the lanes they are responsible for — without asking us, waiting for us, or paying us to do it. Unlimited people on every plan, so there is nothing to ration.

You are not charged to load your own products. Bulk Import takes thousands of rows in one pass and your administrator runs it. We map your column names to it once, and after that adding products is something you do, not something you buy. There is no per-product fee and no catalogue limit.

And we do not charge per lane. Your admin decides who covers which lanes, in a screen, in seconds. On our side there is nothing to set up at all: the engine determines against whatever rule coverage we hold, and Rule Coverage is a page you can open and read before you sign. A per-corridor fee would be a charge for work nobody does.

What the fee is not. It does not buy chapters or corridors being built for you. We do not build coverage for one customer: anything we add, every customer gets, on the same day, at no charge. So the fee is for work that is genuinely yours — your history, your file layout, your people — and never for work we would have done anyway.

That is also why the fee does not shrink as our coverage grows. The eleventh customer pays the same as the first and gets more, because the onboarding work is the same size and the product underneath it is bigger.

Licences and permits are not part of this. We hold no import licence, permit or agency-filing data for any jurisdiction, the manifest reports it as not held on every determination, and loading it is not included. Saying so before you pay is cheaper for both of us than you discovering it afterwards.

Most customers connect nothing at all — their people work in Falmoran, or they drop a spreadsheet in. That path is included and costs nothing extra. The four options below only matter if you want us wired into CargoWise, Descartes or an ERP.

If you want us connected to your own systems — the four shapes and what each costs

Connecting your own systems is priced separately, because it is the one thing that is not the same size for everybody. Onboarding is: the eleventh customer's history takes about as long as the first's. Connecting to a CargoWise instance is not, so folding it into one fee would mean either charging a small forwarder for work they will never need or under-quoting a month of engineering. Four shapes, and most customers are the first one.

How your data reaches usWhat it costs
Your people work in Falmoran. Bulk import, Products, the broker portal, certificates. Nothing to connect. Included
Your system calls our API. Your developers build against it. Keys, documentation and a sandbox are on every plan — we do not charge for access to an API that already exists. Included, with 8 hours of our engineering time supporting your build
We build the connection. You drop a file on SFTP or send it by email; we pick it up, determine it and put the results back. Nothing is built on your side. $3,200 once
We build into your trade software. CargoWise, Descartes, an ERP. Field mapping, duplicate handling, retries, malformed data, outages, secret rotation, monitoring. $3,000 scoping, credited in full against the build — then a fixed price, plus $500 / month while it runs

What the $3,200 buys is up to five weeks of testing, not three hundred lines of code. Writing the connection is the easy part. Finding out that your commodity code column is called tariff_no, that 05/06/2026 means June in your system and May in ours, that weights arrive in pounds, that the last row of every export is empty, and that the same shipment occasionally arrives twice — that is the work, and the only way to find it is to run your real files rather than a tidy sample. We keep going until the surprises stop.

The five weeks start when your first real file arrives, not when you sign. Almost every integration that runs late runs late because it is waiting on data, and a clock that starts before there is anything to work on measures the wrong thing for both of us.

Why the last one is scoped before it is priced. We have not seen your instance, and a build at that depth brings in specialist engineers under contract. Quoting it sight-unseen means one of us is wrong about the number, and that is the same quote-first-discover-later problem this page exists to avoid. The scoping week produces a fixed price you can accept or decline, and if you go ahead you do not pay for it twice.

And why it carries a monthly line. A built integration is not finished when it ships. Your schema changes, your vendor upgrades, a field is deprecated, a credential rotates — and keeping the connection working through all of that is ongoing work, so it is charged as ongoing work rather than quietly absorbed until it stops being maintained.

The honest boundary. We load rules for any chapter — the engine determines duty from a declared code on any commodity. What stays limited is classification: deriving a code from a product description works for a defined set of chapters, and everywhere else you declare the code and we do the rest. We tell you exactly which ones cover your goods during onboarding, in writing, rather than publishing a number here that is out of date by the time you read it. We would rather tell you that now than have you find it in week three.

If you run more than 4,000 shipments a month — the volume rates

Above 4,000 the rate steps down, and each block is charged at its own rate. Reaching a lower band does not re-price the shipments below it.

Shipments in the monthRate for those ones
1 – 4,000covered by the $5,200 plan
4,001 – 10,000$1.20 each
10,001 – 40,000$1.05 each
40,001 and above$0.90 each

A month of 50,000 shipments, worked through: $5,200 covers the first 4,000; shipments 4,001–10,000 cost $1.20 each ($7,200); shipments 10,001–40,000 cost $1.05 each ($31,500); shipments 40,001–50,000 cost $0.90 each ($9,000). Total $52,900. Published, so you can check your own invoice before you ever speak to us.

Two different numbers, and it is worth being clear which is which. $0.90 is the rate on the last block — what your eighty-thousandth shipment costs. Your average across the whole month is higher, because the earlier blocks were charged at their own rates: at 80,000 shipments the bill is $79,900, which averages $1.00. The average can never fall as low as the cheapest block, and any supplier who implies otherwise is quoting you a rate you will not actually pay.

The average only ever falls. $3.20 each at 750 shipments, $2.06 at 1,750, $1.30 at 4,000, $1.24 at 10,000, $1.10 at 40,000, $1.00 at 80,000, $0.95 at 150,000. And there is no cliff at any boundary: the 751st shipment costs $3.00, the 10,001st costs $1.05 — never a jump to a new tier. A threshold you can sit just under is a threshold people manage instead of crossing, and we would rather you used the software.

Month to month, no annual commitment. Annual prepayment is available and is two months free, but it is never a condition. The first five customers keep their opening price permanently.

Verify a certificate

Were you sent a Falmoran certificate? Check it yourself. No account, no sign-up, and we do not record who you are — asking a verifier to register would defeat the entire purpose of issuing a proof.

The signature is standard Ed25519 over the JSON-canonical form of the payload, and the public keys are published. A twenty-line script does the same check offline, without contacting us at all.

Talk to us

Forwarders, brokers and importers — tell us the corridor and commodity you work in. We will tell you plainly whether the engine covers it.

Thank you — we will reply from a real person, not a sequence.