ImportRules

Every tool on this site is free

The calculators run in your browser and are free without limit; what you type never leaves your device. The checkers that consult official registers — the sanctions screen, VAT (VIES), company lookup, geo/IP and the deep search — are free to try: one check per tool per day, no account, nothing stored. A free account lifts that to ten a day per tool; Tools Pro removes the daily limit. Every tool in the strip at the foot of this page is listed here, with what it does and what it deliberately does not do; the guides and country pages are on every page.

The tools answer the standard cases. They do not classify a specific product, do not replace a customs agent, and name what they leave out. Reference material, not legal advice.

Which tool do I need?

Checkers

Answer seven questions about your product and see every regime that lands on it; GPSR, REACH, EPR, CBAM, waste shipments, sanctions; each with the article it rests on. Runs entirely in the browser; the result appears without an email address.
Triage, not clearance: it names the regimes and what they require, and says explicitly what it does not decide (classification, food, cosmetics, medical devices). Checked: 4 September 2026.
Screen any name against 24 sanctions lists: EU consolidated list, EU Regulation 833/2014 (Russia trade measures), France: Registre national des gels (DG Trésor), Netherlands national terrorist list (Sanctieregeling terrorisme 2007), Poland: national sanctions list (MSWiA), UN Security Council, Australian Sanctions List (DFAT), Canadian autonomous sanctions, India: UAPA schedules (Ministry of Home Affairs), OFAC SDN (United States), Swiss list (SECO), UK Sanctions List (FCDO), Ukrainian national sanctions (NSDC / SDFM), US Capta List (OFAC), US CMIC list: Chinese military-industrial companies (OFAC), US Denied Persons List (Bureau of Industry and Security), US Entity List (Bureau of Industry and Security), US FBI wanted list (opsporing, not sanctions), US ITAR Debarred (State Department), US Military End User List (Bureau of Industry and Security), US Non-SDN Menu-Based Sanctions List (OFAC), US Palestinian Legislative Council list (OFAC), US Sectoral Sanctions (OFAC SSI) and US Unverified List (Bureau of Industry and Security). 76,576 listings across 223,754 recorded spellings, Cyrillic included; a party that appears on several lists is counted once per list, so the number of distinct parties is lower. Free, with the honest note of what each list does and does not mean for you. Which list a party sits on decides who is bound, not whether you are: an EU listing binds anyone in the Union, nationals of a member state, companies incorporated under the law of a member state, and any legal person for business done wholly or partly in the Union (Regulation (EU) 269/2014 Article 17; Regulation (EU) 833/2014 Article 13). Without that Union nexus the EU list does not bind you and your own regime is the binding one; the UK's under SAMLA 2018, Switzerland's under the SECO ordinances. And a hit is a name match, not a designation: confirm the identity (date of birth, address, registration number) before you treat a listing as your counterparty's. Already traded with a listed party? What to do now is the crisis page; all the sanctions lists, country by country explains which lists exist and which ones the check searches.
Server-side check against the consolidated lists. Only the name you screen is sent; nothing is stored. The list count and both figures above are taken from the live list status when this page is built, not typed by hand. Lists last fetched 12 October 2026, 06:44 UTC; all 24 are retrieved in one run and nothing is published if a single list fails. Two of them are pinned to a document version rather than a feed: the 833/2014 trade annexes to the EUR-Lex consolidated text of 24 July 2026, and the Ukrainian register to decree 747/2026 of 20 August 2026. Live status: /api/lijststand. Checked: 12 October 2026.
Before you pay a new supplier: validate their VAT number against the EU VIES register and screen the company name against the same 24 sanctions lists, in one flow. Honest about what VIES does and does not prove.
Uses the official VIES endpoint; the EORI number has its own check on /eori/. Checked: 4 September 2026.

EORI number check structure + official handoff

Type any EORI number and see whether its structure can be right: the issuing country, the EU character-and-length rule, and the GB and XI variants that mean the United Kingdom since Brexit. A format verdict in your browser; the live registered name stays with the official EU and UK checkers, one click away -- a structure check is honest about not being a registry.
Structure per the Commission's published EORI rule (country code + up to 15 alphanumerics); GB/XI lengths per HMRC. No data leaves your device. Checked: 2 October 2026.

SVHC substance check material triage

Tick what your product is made of and get the substance groups that belong to that material: phthalates in soft PVC, PFAS in textile finishes, formaldehyde in leather, and what to type on the official Candidate List. Plus the three duties that switch on above 0.1% weight by weight -- Article 33 information, the 45-day consumer answer, and the SCIP notification.
Deliberately no copy of the ECHA list: its terms of use forbid republishing the database, and a copy stales as the list grows. The live list is one click; this triage tells you what to search for. Checked: 2 October 2026.
Describe what you ship and see which of the ten dual-use categories it could touch: machine tools, chips, sensors, lasers, drones, cryptography. Built for importers -- returns, repairs, samples and e-mailed software are exports too. Flags the catch-all (unlisted items can still be controlled on end-use) and destinations under EU sanctions.
Keyword triage against the common category names of Regulation (EU) 2021/821; the legal text is Annex I in EUR-Lex and the binding answer comes from the national licensing authority. Checked: 2 October 2026.
Where does that address actually sit? Type an IP address or a domain name and see whether it resolves into a sanctioned jurisdiction. Built for software and digital-service providers; a geographic signal, deliberately not a verdict.
Server-side geolocation against a local DB-IP Country Lite database, refreshed monthly, attribution on the page. Honest about what it cannot see: VPNs, proxies, and the occupied Ukrainian territories that country-level data reports as Ukraine. Checked: 27 September 2026.

EUDR check Annex I + risk tier

Does the deforestation rule hit your product? Pick the product family and the country of production: in scope or borderline, the country's risk tier under the 2025 benchmarking (140 low, 4 high, the rest standard), what that tier obliges, and the dates it starts to bite.
Country benchmarking read from Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1093 itself, not typed by hand; waste and residue streams (UCO, POME, tallow, acid oils) get the honest borderline answer with the CN question named. Checked: 27 September 2026.

GPSR checklist 15 checks

The fifteen GPSR checks; Responsible Person, labelling, technical file, marketplace fields; each with the article it rests on. Tick them off in the browser (progress is saved on your device) or print the page.
Nothing is uploaded; the checkboxes use local storage on your own device. Checked: 4 September 2026.

Company & counterparty

Type a company name and look it up across Europe at once, through the global LEI index and the Norwegian register; free, no login. You get the legal name, country, whether it is still active, its registration number, and a link straight to the home register; with an optional country field (any language, or UAE, DIFC, BVI) that points you at the right register to verify.
Live data from GLEIF and Brønnøysund. Honest about the limit: a small national-only firm without an LEI sits only in its home register, and the tool points you there. Checked: 19 September 2026.

Company registers worldwide 292 jurisdictions

Every country in the world plus every UAE free zone as its own jurisdiction: 31 European rows with what a certified extract costs and whether accounts and APIs are free, and the official register for everywhere else, links opened at the source. Typing works in any language: Irak, VAE, Viêt Nam, BVI, DIFC.
Each country verified at the official source; only confirmed amounts appear as a figure. Checked: 19 September 2026.
The countries with no online company register at all, conflict states, closed economies, OHADA countries and small territories; and the six steps that replace the check: documents from the counterparty, the issuing body, sanctions screening, the bank channel, the group route, payment structure.
Generated from the same data as the register tool, so the list cannot drift. Checked: 19 September 2026.

Calculators

Weight, distance and mode against the GLEC and DEFRA emission factors: sea, road, rail, air. Shows the CO₂e and what switching from air to sea would save on your own lane.
Runs in the browser; the factor table is on the page with its sources. Checked: 4 September 2026.
Customs value, duty, anti-dumping and VAT over value plus duties; the arithmetic in one place, including the inc-to-excl conversion. You bring the TARIC rate; the tool never guesses one.
Deliberately no built-in tariff table: a wrong rate silently embedded in a calculator is worse than a rate you look up and enter. Checked: 4 September 2026.

CBAM cost calculator default vs. real

Tonnage, embedded emissions and your own certificate-price assumption, multiplied out: what the punitive default values cost against what verified supplier data costs, per tonne and per shipment-year. The gap between the two is the number for the price negotiation.
The price field is an input, not advice; certificates follow the EU emission allowance auction average. Under 50 tonnes of CBAM goods per importer per year the whole regime falls away, and the calculator says so. Checked: 26 September 2026.
The standard rate of all 27 member states with an incl/excl calculator. Distance sellers: you charge the destination rate under OSS; the page shows which is which.
Rates stated per country with the change history that matters. Checked: 4 September 2026.
The binding tariff information is the only classification decision that pins your code EU-wide for three years. The page's calculator turns shipments, value and the duty difference between two candidate codes into the amount at stake per year -- the number that says whether applying is worth your while. Applying itself is currently free.
Fees checked 2 October 2026: no charge at application or issuance; the customs-reform proposal to introduce fees is not law. Database of every issued BTI is linked, not copied. Checked: 2 October 2026.

Reference tools

Compliance calendar machine-readable

Every date that matters; GPSR, EPR, CBAM, waste shipments, EUDR, PPWR, the battery passport; with what changes, who it affects and the legal source. Also published as free JSON with attribution.
Each entry carries the date it was checked. Quoted freely by newsletters and (increasingly) by AI answer engines. Checked: 4 September 2026.
All eleven rules with the exact moment risk transfers and a worked example each; plus the customs-transit layer most guides skip: T1, T2, T2L and how NCTS fits around the commercial terms.
The transit section is what importers actually get wrong; it is treated as first-class, not a footnote. Checked: 4 September 2026.
Pick the country the goods originate in and see whether there is an agreement with the EU, what state it is in, what proof you have to hold to claim the lower rate, and, where one is set, the date that answer changes. Where no date is set, the tool says so instead of leaving the line out. Customs unions and unilateral schemes are named as such, because they are not the same thing as a free trade agreement.
It does not give you a duty rate and it does not decide whether your product qualifies; that is settled by the origin rule for its heading, so you need the goods code first. Countries outside the list are on the Commission's Access2Markets, linked from the page. Checked: 5 September 2026.

HS, CN and TARIC guide what the code decides

What rides on the goods code; duty, CBAM scope, EPR category, restrictions; and how to get a Binding Tariff Information so the answer is yours, not your agent's guess.
Classification is the most expensive thing to get wrong in importing; the page explains why before the how. Checked: 4 September 2026.
Which directives sit behind the mark, the importer duties every CE act shares, why a "CE certificate" proves nothing; and the four dates between now and 2030 that redraw the landscape, from CRA reporting to digital CE for toys.
The sectorless CE answer for the question every importer types first. Checked: 4 September 2026.

RoHS & WEEE guide both regimes

Ten restricted substances on one side, per-country take-back registration on the other; with the exemption expiries of 2027, the ECHA takeover, and the WEEE revision expected this year.
The two electronics regimes that ride along with CE, separated because they are constantly confused. Checked: 4 September 2026.

Glossary 24 terms

Responsible Person, Only Representative, EORI, VIES, TARIC, BTI, IOSS, OSS, EPR, CBAM de minimis, Annex VII; each defined in two sentences, the second of which is the one that matters.
Written for the moment someone meets the term for the first time in a marketplace email. Checked: 4 September 2026.

The question bank 1000 questions

1000 buyer questions in English, in the phrasings buyers actually use, with a translated core in sixteen more languages. Searchable from the bar at the top of any page; the same index the search box uses, free, no login.
The count is read from the built question hub, so it cannot drift from what is published. Checked: 4 September 2026.

What it costs, and why everything else is free

What it costs the honest price list

Everything on this page is free and stays free. What costs money sits on one page: the dated screening record at €29, name watch at €9 per month, portfolio monitoring at €100, and the provider products for compliance services.
No account needed for anything free. Checked: 12 September 2026.

Because the questions these tools answer are the ones every importer asks first; and the ones answer engines get wrong when they average forum threads instead of reading the regulation. Free, sourced tools are how this site becomes the reference that gets cited.

What is not free: listing your service with providers when you help importers comply, and the visibility reporting for compliance firms. The tools themselves stay free.

Missing a tool you need? Say so; the backlog is built from what visitors ask for.