US Importers Finder: ImportYeti Alternative for US Customs Data on the Apify Store →

How to find US importers of your product from US customs records

A tutorial for exporters — India, Vietnam, Turkey, Bangladesh — who want named US buyers, not a country report.

The problem

You know the US imports your product. You do not know who. The usual route is a trade-data subscription ($1,000+ a year) or evenings on ImportYeti: search "cotton t-shirts", open company after company, read the goods on its bills of lading, check where its suppliers are, decide if it is worth an e-mail. About 8 minutes per company — 13 hours for 100 — and next month you do it again, because new buyers appear.

Step by step

  1. Open US Importers Finder on the Apify Store and click Try it. The form opens on a free demo: six sample importers of cotton t-shirts. Press Start — in seconds you get a ranked sheet (docs/img/shortlist.svg).
  2. Type your product in "Your product" — the words your buyers' bills of lading use ("cotton t-shirts", "basmati rice", "ceramic tiles") — and optionally the HS code (6109, 1006, 6907).
  3. Pick Your country. Every importer gets an origin share: the part of its supplier shipments that already comes from your country. Above 0 % = it already buys there (pitch: be its next supplier). 0 % = it buys only from your rivals' countries (pitch: a second source).
  4. Leave AI assessment on. The AI reads each importer's goods text, quotes it in a fit reason, names the company type (brand, retailer, distributor, manufacturer — forwarders are dropped) and writes a two-sentence pitch angle from the importer's own facts. It never invents a price: US bills of lading carry none.
  5. Press Start. The Actor runs an ImportYeti scraper on your Apify account (zen-studio, falling back once to memo23 or scrapesage if it fails), filters to active importers (an arrival in 6 months, 3+ shipments in 12 months) and ranks them. Open the Shortlist view, then Outreach (docs/img/outreach.svg) for how to reach each one.
  6. Export to CSV / Excel or connect Google Sheets.

What a run costs

The form's default search reads 30 importer profiles: about $0.22 for the ImportYeti scan on your account. About one in four qualifies — ≈ 7 importers. Your first 25 qualified importers are free; after that $0.005 each (rules) or $0.01 with the AI plus ≈ $0.004 tokens: $0.25 rules only or $0.31 with AI for that run, ≈ $0.033 / $0.042 per importer all in.

Automate it

Schedule the search weekly (the run saves it as a task — open it and click Schedule) with your e-mail in "E-mail me the new US importers". Only new importers are delivered and charged; the digest says how many already buy from your country. From code:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("<your-apify-username>/us-importer-finder-ai").call(run_input={
    "sourceMode": "actor", "products": ["cotton t-shirts"], "hsCodes": ["6109"], "originCountry": "IN",
    "maxQualified": 50, "maxDiscoveryChargeUsd": 0.5})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["name"], item["score"], item["originSharePct"], item["pitchAngle"])

US Importers Finder: ImportYeti Alternative for US Customs Data on the Apify Store →