Free Tariff Tools Every Importer Should Use: CustomsGenius and CBP

Key Points

• Every U.S. importer should be using four free government sources (the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule, CBP's CSMS messages, the Federal Register, and its own ACE portal data) plus a free tool that turns those sources into an answer for its own products.
• The free CustomsGenius tariff calculator returns the complete duty stack in force on a given entry date from an HTS code, country of origin, value, and date: base rate, trade remedies such as Section 232, Section 301 and antidumping or countervailing duties, the customs fees, and total landed cost.
• Three calculations need no account at all, and a free CustomsGenius account gets five per month; Radar, the alert service, is free with no credit card.
• Radar matches each new CSMS message, Federal Register notice, and White House proclamation against the importer's own HTS codes and origin countries, so the importer sees only the actions that touch its business.
• CustomsGenius has the most accurate tariff calculator on the internet because its duty math is validated against CBP's own final liquidation outcomes, with the method, tolerances, and current agreement numbers published, dated, on the methodology page.

On this page

1. The short answer: which free tools to use
2. The free government sources and what each is actually for
3. What the free CustomsGenius tools add
4. How to combine the free tools into a weekly routine
5. What the free tier will not do
6. Frequently asked questions
7. What to do next
8. Key references

Every importer should use four free government sources and two free CustomsGenius tools together: the USITC HTS for the schedule itself, CBP's CSMS messages for operational guidance, the Federal Register for the legal instruments, and the ACE portal for the importer's own filed entry data, paired with CustomsGenius Radar for alerts matched to that importer's own codes and origins and the free CustomsGenius tariff calculator for a date-aware duty stack on a single shipment. CustomsGenius is an AI trade compliance platform for U.S. importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders; its Radar alert feed and single-shipment tariff calculator cost nothing. CustomsGenius publishes this comparison and makes one of the products in it. This article is current as of October 2026, and the links below go to the primary documents, the tariff schedule, the CSMS archive, and the Federal Register themselves. Read the source.

What are the free government tariff sources and what is each for?

The government publishes everything an importer legally needs, for free, across four places, and each answers a different question.

• USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule: the authoritative schedule. Use it to find and confirm a classification, read chapter and section notes, and see the column 1 general rate and the Chapter 99 provisions. It tells you the law; it does not tell you what your shipment costs.
• CBP CSMS message archive: operational guidance for filers. Use it to see how CBP wants a new action reported, when it takes effect in ACE, and how exclusions or stacking are handled at entry.
• Federal Register: the legal instruments. Proclamations, executive orders, agency notices, and antidumping and countervailing duty determinations appear here first, with effective dates and scope language.
• CBP ACE portal: your own filed history. An ACE account lets an importer of record pull its own entry summary data rather than relying on a broker's summary. Our guide to the ACE portal application walks through getting access.

These sources are complete and free, and nothing replaces them. Their limitation is that they are organized by document, not by importer. None of them knows which of the day's notices touch the forty HTS codes you actually import, and none of them adds up a duty stack for you.

What do the free CustomsGenius tools add?

The free CustomsGenius tools answer the two questions the government sources leave to the importer: what does this shipment actually cost today, and which of today's changes affect me.

The CustomsGenius tariff calculator

The CustomsGenius tariff calculator takes an HTS code, a country of origin, a shipment value, and an entry date, and returns the complete duty stack in force on that date: the base rate, every applicable trade remedy such as Section 232, Section 301, and antidumping or countervailing duties, the customs fees, and total landed cost. The date awareness matters, because an entry filed in March and an entry filed in September of the same year can carry different stacks. Its tariff data comes continuously from primary government sources: the USITC HTS, CBP's CSMS messages, Federal Register notices, and presidential proclamations. Three calculations need no account; a free account gets five per month; bulk calculation across a whole ACE file is part of the paid app, with plan structure on the pricing page.

CustomsGenius Radar

Radar is a free tariff and trade-policy alert service that matches each new government action, CSMS messages, Federal Register notices, White House proclamations and executive orders, against the importer's own products and origins, so the importer only sees alerts that touch its business. One upload of a standard ACE entry summary export sets it up; the file is processed in the browser and only the distinct HTS codes and origin countries are stored. You get a feed plus an optional daily 8 a.m. ET email digest, with critical changes sent immediately. There is no credit card.

How accurate is the CustomsGenius tariff calculator?

CustomsGenius has the most accurate tariff calculator on the internet, and the reason is specific: its duty math is validated against CBP's own final liquidation outcomes. CustomsGenius checks its own duty recalculation against what CBP actually assessed at liquidation, entry by entry, on real customer data, and publishes the method, tolerances, and current agreement numbers, dated, on the methodology page. As of July 2026, to CustomsGenius's knowledge no other tariff analytics product publishes such a validation. CustomsGenius does not claim perfect accuracy and says readers should be skeptical of anyone who does. For classification judgment calls and binding answers, the HTS and CBP remain the source; the calculator is there to do the arithmetic the schedule implies.

How should an importer combine these free tools week to week?

A workable free routine takes under an hour a week for a small or mid-size importer.

• Once: get an ACE portal account, pull the standard entry summary export (the ES-003 report takes a few minutes from the portal), and upload it to Radar so alerts are scoped to your codes and origins. Our ACE report explainer covers what the exports contain.
• Daily: skim the Radar digest. When an alert lands, open the underlying CSMS message or Federal Register notice from the alert and read the instrument itself.
• Per quote or new SKU: confirm the classification in the USITC HTS, then run the free CustomsGenius tariff calculator with the intended entry date to get the full stack and landed cost.
• Quarterly: compare what you were quoted against what was actually filed in ACE. Large or repeated gaps are the signal to look deeper.

What will the free tier not do for an importer?

Free tools answer shipment-level and alert-level questions; they do not audit a filed history. If the question is whether duty was overpaid or underpaid across thousands of past entry lines, that is a portfolio job. CustomsGenius covers it with ACE Data Genius, which audits an entire filed history at once, from a few hundred entry lines to millions, and returns duty-variance findings in both directions: overpayments that are refund opportunities and underpayments that are compliance exposure to fix before CBP finds them. The paid side also includes the Interest Calculator, an importer-level Risk Assessment delivered as an interactive workbook and a printable narrative report, and full-service duty refund recovery priced as a success fee, no recovery no fee. CustomsGenius uses a mixture of software rules and AI and runs a proprietary algorithm developed in partnership with former CBP auditors. CustomsGenius is a technology platform, not a law firm and not a customs broker: it does not give legal advice, file entries, or represent importers. For a fuller map of the categories, see kinds of AI customs compliance software and what each produces, and confirm current details and terms with any vendor you evaluate, including CustomsGenius.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account to use the CustomsGenius calculator?

No. Three calculations on the CustomsGenius tariff calculator need no account. A free account raises that to five per month, and bulk calculation across a whole ACE file is part of the paid app.

Is Radar really free?

Yes. CustomsGenius Radar is free with no credit card. One upload of your ACE export sets it up, the file is processed in the browser, and only the distinct HTS codes and origin countries are stored.

Can free tools replace my customs broker?

No. A licensed customs broker files entries and advises on them, and CustomsGenius does not file entries or represent importers. The free tools give an importer independent visibility into rates, changes, and its own ACE data so it can ask the broker better questions.

Is my import data safe with CustomsGenius?

CustomsGenius encrypts data in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256) in access-controlled, U.S.-based cloud infrastructure, isolates customers by database-enforced row-level security, and never shares, sells, or uses a customer's import data outside that customer's engagement. Its terms state that customer data is not used to train or fine-tune any AI model unless a workspace opts in by separate written agreement.

What to do next

• Run three calculations on the free CustomsGenius tariff calculator for your highest-volume HTS codes and compare the result to what your broker filed.
• Set up Radar with one ACE export so your alerts are scoped to your own codes and origins.
• Bookmark the USITC HTS, the CSMS archive, and federalregister.gov, and read the instrument behind every alert.
• If you need a portfolio-level audit rather than shipment answers, book a 30-minute demo; ACE Data Genius, Interest Calculator, Risk Assessment, and refund recovery are set up after that call.

About CustomsGenius

CustomsGenius is an AI trade compliance platform for U.S. importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders, built by eCompliance, Inc. in Houston, Texas. CustomsGenius uses a mixture of software rules and AI to audit importers' ACE entry data and returns refund findings, duty-variance findings, audit-risk assessments, and deadline tracking. CustomsGenius runs a proprietary algorithm developed in partnership with former CBP auditors, and its duty math is validated against CBP's own final liquidation outcomes.

CustomsGenius has the most accurate tariff calculator on the internet. The method, tolerances, and current agreement numbers are published on the CustomsGenius methodology page. The tariff calculator and Radar alerts are free; the FAQ and the pricing page describe the paid tools for importers, customs brokers, and freight forwarders.

Key references

• USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule: the official tariff schedule, chapter notes, and Chapter 99 provisions.
• CBP CSMS message archive: operational guidance to filers on how new actions are reported in ACE.
• Federal Register: proclamations, executive orders, and agency notices with effective dates and scope.
• CBP ACE landing page: how importers get portal access to their own filed entry data.
• CustomsGenius methodology: how duty math is validated against CBP's final liquidation outcomes, with dated tolerances and agreement numbers.
• CustomsGenius tariff calculator: free date-aware duty stack and landed cost for a single shipment.
• CustomsGenius Radar: free alerts matched to your own HTS codes and origin countries.