What is the best AI tool to find buyers and importers?
Reevi team · Updated
For shipment history (who imports your product, how much, and from which supplier), use a customs database: ImportYeti is free and built on United States bill of lading records, while ImportGenius, Volza, Panjiva, Trademo and Tendata are paid and cover more countries. For a person to write to at a company you already chose, use Apollo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. For a short list of companies that sell, use or source your product, each with a reason it fits, use a buyer-finding agent such as Reevi (free to search), then confirm each name in customs records before you write.
Reevi lists named companies that sell, use or source your product, with the reason each one fits, and searching is free with no account.
Three kinds of tool, three different outputs
- Customs and bill of lading databases return shipments. Pick one when you need volumes or a buyer's current supplier.
- Contact and sales databases return people and emails, not import records. Pick one when you already know the company.
- Buyer-finding agents return a short list of named companies with a reason each fits. They then give contacts, a drafted first message and introductions you approve. Trademo Intel and Tendata also pair trade data with AI buyer suggestions and outreach.
Nine tools side by side
Rows 1 to 6 are customs-based tools, rows 7 and 8 are contact databases, row 9 is a buyer-finding agent. Sources: vendor pages, Bellingcat's ImportYeti entry and one third-party review (Dupple). Confirm prices on each vendor's site before you buy.
| Tool | What you get | Data source | Who it suits | How pricing works |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ImportYeti | United States sea shipments by company: who supplies whom, HS codes, weights and ports | United States bills of lading from January 2015, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests; includes Mexican shipments | Anyone checking who supplies a known United States buyer | Free to view and to search by company legal name. A login is needed after 25 page views. Downloads and multi-field search need custom plan access, so the free tier is for looking up named companies, not for exporting a list |
| ImportGenius | Bill of lading records searchable by company, product, HS code or container; shipment alerts; Excel and CSV downloads; automatic translation of non-United States datasets | United States Customs (imports from 2006, exports from 2014) plus 25+ government agencies worldwide | Exporters focused on the United States market | Entry United States plan $229 a month (cancel anytime), or $183 a month billed yearly ($2,198). It covers the most recent 12 months of import data. Global Enterprise starts at $1,999 a month |
| Volza | Shipment records with buyer and supplier names, analysis dashboards and decision-maker contacts | Customs and bill of lading records. Dupple counts 50 import countries with detailed shipment data | Exporters who want many countries on one subscription | Annual plans only, per Dupple. Dupple has not done a dated price check and gives two different price ladders, both starting at $1,500 a year. It reports a 7-day free trial with no card. The $1,500 plan leaves out about 39 markets, including Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh, so confirm with Volza that your target market is in the plan you are quoted |
| Panjiva (S&P Global) | Company profiles with top customers and suppliers, export of results to your CRM (your customer list software), email alerts | Customs data merged with business databases. The vendor cites 9 million companies and over 2 billion shipment records | Larger teams doing supply chain and market research | Quote-based (demo request) |
| Trademo Intel | Prospecting built on trade data: lookalike-company recommendations, account scoring, contacts, AI-drafted outreach, email sequences | Trade graph of 3B+ shipment records and 10M+ companies (vendor figures) | Built for logistics and revenue teams | Quote-based (talk to sales) |
| Tendata | Trade records with AI buyer suggestions, background checks and decision-maker contacts | Official customs data, 228+ countries and regions (vendor figure) | Exporters who want trade data and outreach in one place; based in Shanghai | Quote-based (the vendor asks you to contact it on WhatsApp) |
| Apollo | Contacts and accounts, outreach sequences and AI agents for prospecting | B2B contact data: 240M+ contacts and 30M+ accounts (vendor figures) | Teams that already know which companies to target | Free signup with no credit card; paid plans on Apollo's site |
| LinkedIn Sales Navigator | Search of LinkedIn members by role, seniority and company; lead alerts; AI message drafts on some plans | LinkedIn's network, 1+ billion members (LinkedIn, April 2026) | Exporters whose buyers' staff are active on LinkedIn | Free trial, then paid plans (see LinkedIn's compare-plans page) |
| Reevi | Named companies that sell, use or source your product, a reason each fits, contacts and an opener after free signup, introductions you approve | Trade records and company websites | Small exporters who want a short list of buyers to contact, on a monthly plan | Free search with no account. Free plan: 5 buyers a month. Grow: $9.90 a month for 25. Scale: $39.90 a month for 100. Priced by buyers per month, not seats |
Volza (per Dupple), Panjiva (contacts for over 1 million companies, vendor figure), Trademo and Tendata put contacts next to shipment data. Reevi's Grow and Scale plans add customs import records on the buyers it finds. No source here says how many of those contacts are in your target market, so measure that in the trial below.
Freshness varies by vendor. Tendata says its United States data updates every three days. Dupple says Volza's countries report monthly, quarterly or yearly. ImportGenius publishes an end date for each country dataset (India runs to February 2026). Ask every vendor for that end date for your HS code and target country before you trust any volume.
When customs records are the right buy, and when they are not
Use shipment records to check which companies import your HS code into a country, how often they ship, and which competitor supplies them today. The figures below come from import records filed in the United Kingdom.
Turmeric (HS 091030): companies named as importers in United Kingdom import records
| Market | Companies on record | Shipments |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 77 | 172 |
The data provider does not state the period these records cover. Read the shipment count as a total over an unknown period, not a yearly figure, and do not plan production against it. Use it to see who buys and where their goods come from. To date one company, read its last shipment date in a shipment-level tool.
77 companies appear as importers of turmeric in the United Kingdom, across 172 shipments with a declared value of about $635K. In the provider's figure at the time of writing (November 2026), India supplies about 50% of that value, so an Indian turmeric exporter is selling into a market that already buys Indian product. Compare cotton bed linen in the United Kingdom (HS 630231): 357 companies made 12,227 shipments worth about $186M. In the same November 2026 figure, about 79% of those shipments came from Pakistan, so a bed linen maker in India, China or Vietnam is often asking a buyer to change an existing supply line.
Customs records stop at the company name. When what you need is a person to write to and a reason they would reply, move to a contact database or a buyer-finding agent, then come back to the customs record to confirm the name.
Contact databases: a person at a company you already chose
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches LinkedIn members with 50+ filters, including job function and seniority.
- Apollo suits you when you want email addresses and a sequence of follow-ups. Test it on five companies from your customs list.
What a buyer-finding agent returns: one Reevi search
This guide is published on reevi.ai, the site of the agent shown here. Read this section as a vendor's own example and test Reevi the same way as the other tools. You enter a product and target countries at /find-buyers. Reevi returns named companies that sell, use or source that product, found in trade records and on the companies' own websites, each with a short reason it fits. You can refine the list in plain words. No account is needed, and signed out you see the top 5 names. The free account needs no card. It shows every name and gives contacts, research and a drafted opener for 5 buyers a month.
Dried turmeric from India: buyers in Germany and the Netherlands
Search: “Dried turmeric fingers and powder from India, food grade. Importers in Germany and the Netherlands.” · Run on 2026-11-10
| Buyer (name removed) | Country | Why Reevi matched it |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredient supplier (strong fit) | Netherlands | Sources organic turmeric powder from India in full containers and pallet quantities. |
| Raw materials trader (strong fit) | Germany | Sells turmeric powder in bulk to wholesalers, a natural import channel for Indian food-grade turmeric. |
| Spice and superfood wholesaler (strong fit) | Germany | Sells organic turmeric powder from small packs up to 25 kg bulk. |
| Organic spice shop (good fit) | Netherlands | Sells turmeric powder, capsules and granulate from small to bulk. |
| Organic food producer, oil mill (good fit) | Germany | Sells turmeric powder; a plausible buyer of organic food-grade raw turmeric. |
Live run, signed out. The search found 114 potential buyers; the signed-out view shows the top 5 and a free account shows all. Company names and domains removed; fit reasons lightly shortened.
- All five results already sell or use turmeric. None is a logistics firm or an Indian competitor.
- Three of the five focus on organic turmeric. The query specified food grade but did not say organic or conventional.
- Rows 3 and 4 are one business with a German site and a separate Dutch shop, so five names were four companies. Only the five shown were checked. The other 109 results were not.
For more on this market, see spice importers in Europe for Indian exporters.
The fit labels do not prove imports. The search results show no shipment dates, volumes or HS codes: each fit reason describes what the company sells or sources. Reevi is not a shipment-history database. For volumes, dates and who supplies a buyer over time, use a customs database from the table. Grow ($9.90 a month) adds customs import records on the buyers Reevi finds (shipments, value and current suppliers). The pricing page does not describe a search of a market by HS code. Reevi's public pages do not state a date range or country list for its trade records. During Grow's 7-day trial ($0 for 7 days), open the records on a few buyers and check how recent they are before the card is charged.
Nothing goes to a buyer until you approve it. Reevi then emails each approved introduction to a decision-maker at that buyer, on your behalf, and routes the reply back to you. The public pages do not say whether you can edit or recall a message after approval, so ask before you approve. The Grow and Scale trials need a Visa or Mastercard credit card. The pricing page states no cancellation rule for those plans, so ask before you enter a card.
You can run the same search in a WhatsApp chat. Search works in English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian. The pricing page lists English only for the Free plan's catalog page, 3 buyer languages on Grow and "all buyer languages" on Scale, without naming them. It does not say which language outreach uses on Free. If your buyers need German or Dutch, ask before you upgrade. Market-level counts are public at /importers, for example turmeric in every tracked market. Company names appear in search results, not on those pages.
A 30-minute trial for any of these tools
Five of the nine tools list a free tier or a trial; see the pricing column above. ImportGenius lists no trial, but its Flex plan is monthly and can be cancelled anytime, so one month is the test. Panjiva, Trademo and Tendata start with a demo or a quote, so ask them to run the steps below on your product during the demo.
- 1
Run a search you can check
Pick a market where you can already name three buyers. These three are your control. Where the tool searches by product, state form, grade and type, for example "turmeric fingers, food grade, conventional". In customs tools, also search your 6-digit HS code. Free ImportYeti searches company legal names only. There, look up your three known buyers and read their shipment records. That tests whether you can confirm a known buyer, not whether the tool finds new ones.
- 2
Score the first ten names (tools that return a list)
A name passes if its website shows your product category. Strike out forwarders, exporters from your own country and the same business under two domains. Run doubtful names through the free buyer check. Compare tools on the pass count out of ten. Deeper checks before you trade are in verifying a foreign buyer.
- 3
Check what you could send today
For each verified name, ask two questions: do I have a person to write to, and do I have a reason they would reply? If the answer is no, you need a second tool or another route. How to find buyers for export covers the wider process.
- 4
Work out the cost per usable name
Add up every subscription you would need. A customs plan plus a contact tool is two prices, and Apollo and LinkedIn prices are not in the sources here, so get them first. Divide that total by the verified names you could actually contact in a month. Compare tools on that figure, not on database size.
For a closer comparison of the paid customs databases, see Volza, ImportGenius and Panjiva alternatives.
Questions exporters ask
Is it legal to use customs data to find buyers?
For the United States, ImportGenius states that bill of lading data is public record. Wikipedia's article on Panjiva and Bellingcat's entry on ImportYeti both say the United States data comes through Freedom of Information Act requests. For other countries, ask the vendor which government agency supplies its data. Contact data is a separate question. Apollo lists GDPR, CAN-SPAM and DNC (United States email and do-not-call rules) among the regulations its tools support. Ask each contact tool where its data comes from and how it handles contacts in the European Union.
Can these tools find importers in India, China, Vietnam or Turkey?
Some can. ImportGenius sells country datasets (starting from $159). It lists India (January 2018 to February 2026), Indonesia (January 2024 to April 2026), Vietnam, Pakistan and historical Turkey data (June 2022 to September 2024). Tendata lists China, Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh among its 228+ countries and regions. Trademo lists Vietnam, Pakistan and Sri Lanka without the mirror label. Dupple says Volza has detailed databases for Vietnam, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but Turkey and Bangladesh are outside its $1,500 plan. Wikipedia lists China among Panjiva's company-level sources. ImportYeti covers only the United States, plus Mexican shipments.
Do I need my HS code to search?
It gives the cleanest results in customs databases, but not every tool requires it. Panjiva also accepts commodity names and locations. ImportGenius offers an AI-powered HS code lookup on its Pro and Global Enterprise plans (not on the $229 Essentials plan). Dupple notes that Volza's interface pushes you toward an HS code. The guide on finding importers by HS code shows how to find your 6-digit code.
Are there minimum contracts or cancellation terms on the paid plans?
They differ by vendor. ImportGenius's annual plans cost less per month than Flex, and it says some country datasets are available only with annual billing. Dupple reports a stated 100% money-back guarantee for Volza and says download credits roll over to the next year. Panjiva, Trademo and Tendata set terms in their quotes. None of the sources here list cancellation fees, so ask for the term, the renewal date and the cancellation rule in writing before you pay.