ImportYeti alternatives — and what bills of lading can’t tell you
ImportYeti is genuinely free and genuinely good: it opened up tens of millions of US customs bill-of-lading records that used to sit behind expensive subscriptions. The reason to reach for an alternative usually isn’t that ImportYeti is bad — it’s that shipment records answer exactly one question (who ships what to whom, into the US, by sea), and vetting a Chinese supplier needs answers to several others.
The realistic options
| Tool | Data behind it | Cost | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| ImportYeti | US customs bills of lading (ocean freight, 2015 onward), obtained by FOIA request | Free, donation-supported | Finding which suppliers ship to a given US company; gauging a supplier’s US shipment history |
| Panjiva (S&P Global) | Customs and trade data from the US plus multiple other countries | Paid, enterprise pricing | Cross-border trade analytics at scale, inside the S&P Global ecosystem |
| ImportGenius | US import/export records plus several other countries | Paid subscription | Monitoring specific companies’ shipment activity over time |
| FactoryBase | China’s public business registry (USCC records) cross-checked against 5,000+ factory websites | Free | Verifying who a Chinese supplier legally is, and finding the factory’s own website |
FactoryBase (this site) is listed last on purpose: it is not a shipment-records tool. It sits in this table because half the “ImportYeti alternative” searches are really asking a different question — see below.
Where bill-of-lading data goes blind
- Only US ocean imports. Air freight and shipments to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America never appear. A factory whose customers are mostly in the EU can look dormant in US records while running at full capacity.
- Forwarders mask the factory. Consolidated (LCL) shipments routinely record the freight forwarder or consolidator as the shipper. The company you are trying to vet may be invisible behind a logistics company’s name.
- Manifest names are chaos. The same factory shows up under a literal translation, a brand name, a typo, and a Hong Kong trading arm — free-text names with no registry ID attached, so aggregating “one supplier” is guesswork.
- Shipments prove boxes moved — not legitimacy. A shipment history doesn’t tell you the company’s registered legal name, whether it is registered as a manufacturer or a reseller, or whether the website asking for your deposit actually belongs to it.
The registry-data route
Those blind spots are exactly what China’s public business registry covers. Every registered company has one legal Chinese name and one 18-character Unified Social Credit Code (USCC), and the registration states whether it is a manufacturer or a trading company. FactoryBase profiles 5,000+ Chinese export suppliers — built mainly from Canton Fair exhibitor records and cross-checked against the registry — with the USCC, registration type, and the factory’s own website on every profile, free. What we don’t have is shipment histories: that is ImportYeti’s ground, and we link buyers there rather than pretend otherwise.
A workflow that uses both
- Find the supplier and gauge their US shipment history on ImportYeti.
- Resolve the messy manifest name to the registered Chinese legal name and USCC with the name lookup.
- Validate the USCC and walk the pre-deposit checklist on the supplier check page — and wire only to a bank account held in the registered name.
Common questions
Is ImportYeti actually free?
Yes. ImportYeti gives free access to US customs bill-of-lading records and is supported by voluntary donations. FactoryBase is not affiliated with ImportYeti in any way — we recommend it whenever the question is about US shipment history, because for that question it is the best free tool available.
Why does the supplier name on a bill of lading look wrong or inconsistent?
Manifest names are free text. Consolidated (LCL) shipments often record the freight forwarder or consolidator as the shipper rather than the factory, and the same factory can appear under a literal translation, a brand name, a typo, and a separately incorporated Hong Kong trading arm at once. Before treating two records as the same supplier — or as different suppliers — resolve each name back to one registered Chinese legal name and 18-character USCC.
Does ImportYeti show a factory’s European or air-freight shipments?
No. The underlying dataset is US customs bills of lading, which cover ocean freight imported into the United States. Air freight and shipments to Europe, the Middle East, or anywhere else do not appear, so a factory that exports mainly outside the US can look inactive there while being a large, busy exporter.
Is FactoryBase a replacement for ImportYeti?
No, and it is not trying to be. ImportYeti answers "who ships what to whom, into the US" from customs records; FactoryBase answers "who is this Chinese company, legally" from the public business registry — registered legal name, USCC, factory-versus-trader registration, and the company’s own website. Both are free; due diligence on a Chinese supplier usually needs both answers.
FactoryBase is an independent directory — suppliers can’t pay to change what their record says. Check a supplier · Name lookup · How profiles are built · Browse the archive