Harmonova
Customs chaos, harmonised.
The most intelligent customs database on planet Earth
NEWMission control
LIVEFabric x-ray · classification scanner
Two percent of fabric.
Triple the duty bill.
US customs classifies a garment by the fibre that weighs the most. Cross 50% and the HS code jumps headings and the duty rate moves with it. Drag the blend and watch the same jacket get a different bill.
Classify to the full 10 digits and prove the split, or customs defaults to the higher man-made-fibre rate. Harmonova reads the composition and lands the right code.
The database 01
One of the most complete trade databases anywhere
Over 63,000 tariff lines ingested from the official government feeds, then kept current every day. Not a scrape, not an average. The actual schedules.
Why we built Harmonova
Global trade runs on one code. Most tools still get it wrong.
Customs classification is a multi-trillion-dollar problem hiding in plain sight. Here is the case, and every number is traced to a primary authority or a named report.
The scale
$34.65T
Global trade in goods and services in 2025. Every shipment of goods needs an HS code, and the code sets the duty.
WTO · World Trade Statistics 2025The scope
98%
of world merchandise trade is classified with HS codes, maintained by the WCO and used by 200+ countries.
World Customs OrganizationThe leak
10-digit
A 6-digit HS code is shared by 200+ countries, but duty is set at the full 10-digit national line. Stop at six and you pay the wrong rate.
World Customs OrganizationThe penalty
4×
US Customs can charge up to four times the duty for gross-negligent classification, and the full value of the goods for fraud.
19 U.S.C. § 1592The friction
94%
of surveyed cross-border businesses face shipping delays from incorrect classification or documentation.
Avalara · Cross-Border Ecommerce 2023/24The complexity
73%
of product categories now fall into tariff-sensitive classifications, after the 2025 tariff changes.
ePost Global, 2025 · 15.6M shipmentsThe cost
€2B
Undervaluation and false classification cost EU customs an estimated two billion euros in duty in a single case.
OLAF · EU Court of Justice, C-213/19Why not just AI
A language model pattern-matches; it does not read the tariff schedule. Harmonova self-verifies every code against the official source, so the answer holds up in an audit.
Who it's for 02
Harmonova for
Stop manual HS lookups. Harmonova surfaces the right classification for every line so you file with confidence.
Learn moreThe legacy problem 03
Customs software still runs like it's 1989.
Slow. Manual. Expensive.
- ✕6-week customs-broker onboarding
- ✕Expensive, outdated legacy tooling
- ✕HS classification by spreadsheet
- ✕Same processing power as a Nokia 3310
- ✕PDFs older than your interns
Open. Instant. Defensible.
const result = await harmonova.classify({
product: "Cotton t-shirt, men's, knit",
destination: "US",
});- ✓MIT-licensed HS database (US/UK/EU)
- ✓AI classification in under 200ms
- ✓Real-time tariff updates, synced daily
- ✓Audit-defensible, with a source on every line
- ✓Built like Stripe, priced like Hugging Face
Why Harmonova 04
The customs engine, drawn to spec.
Nine things legacy customs tools can't do. Open, fast, and self-verifying.
Sourced, not guessed
Every HS code maps to the official schedule it came from: USITC, EU TARIC, UK Trade Tariff.
AI classification, sub-200ms
Product description to HS-6 plus full HTS-10, with a confidence score and the reasoning behind it.
Origin-aware duty stack
Section 301, Section 122, IEEPA, FTAs. The right stack for the right country, effective-dated.
FTA preference engine
AUSFTA, USMCA, UK FTAs and more, surfaced automatically when your origin qualifies.
Live tariff intelligence
Re-checked against the official feeds every day. When a measure terminates, the engine knows.
Audit-defensible
Reasoning, sources, confidence. Every quote is reproducible and ready for a tax-authority review.
Self-verifying engine
Independent reconciliation against USITC, plus a reference-basket gate that catches drift before you do.
Open + API-native
MIT-licensed database with REST + MCP. One endpoint classifies, resolves duty, and returns a source for every number.
De-minimis aware
Tracks each market's de-minimis, including the 2025 US suspension, so low-value shipments are quoted right.
AlternateWireframe illustration set
The customs engine, drawn to spec.
Nine things legacy customs tools can't do. Open, fast, and self-verifying.
Sourced, not guessed
Every HS code maps to the official schedule it came from: USITC, EU TARIC, UK Trade Tariff.
AI classification, sub-200ms
Product description to HS-6 plus full HTS-10, with a confidence score and the reasoning behind it.
Origin-aware duty stack
Section 301, Section 122, IEEPA, FTAs. The right stack for the right country, effective-dated.
FTA preference engine
AUSFTA, USMCA, UK FTAs and more, surfaced automatically when your origin qualifies.
Live tariff intelligence
Re-checked against the official feeds every day. When a measure terminates, the engine knows.
Audit-defensible
Reasoning, sources, confidence. Every quote is reproducible and ready for a tax-authority review.
Self-verifying engine
Independent reconciliation against USITC, plus a reference-basket gate that catches drift before you do.
Open + API-native
MIT-licensed database with REST + MCP. One endpoint classifies, resolves duty, and returns a source for every number.
De-minimis aware
Tracks each market's de-minimis, including the 2025 US suspension, so low-value shipments are quoted right.
Why we built it 05
Customs data deserved better.
Harmonova was built by a founder with over a decade in ecommerce and logistics, who got tired of how complex customs and HS classification had become, and how poor the underlying data quality was. Customs deserved accurate, compliant data you could actually trust. So we built it.
“Customs should be the easy part. The data just had to be right, and sourced, so people could trust it.”
How the database is built
Built from the official feeds, kept current.
Five principles behind the database. Global coverage at the 6-digit level, full national depth where it matters, and a source on every line.
- 01
Every 6-digit heading on Earth
The full WCO Harmonized System 2022 foundation. Every country covered at the international 6-digit level, so no product falls outside the map.
0 WCO headings - 02
Full 10-digit depth where it matters
Complete national schedules for the US (USITC HTS plus every Section 301 list), the EU (TARIC), and the UK (Trade Tariff), pulled directly from official government sources. Every line linked to its source.
0 US23,000+ EU16,000+ UK - 03
A source link on every line
Each code carries the official schedule entry it was pulled from. No scraped approximations, no averaged rates pretending to be law.
- 04
Re-synced daily
Tracked against the official feeds every day. When a measure terminates or a rate changes, the engine knows. When IEEPA tariffs were struck down, a database that is not kept current silently over-charges importers. Ours does not.
- 05
A receipt on every lookup
Each result returns the code, the rate, the source, and a confidence score. Reproducible and audit-defensible.
How we read your store
From product feed to code.
The two platforms that run most of the ecommerce web, Shopify and WooCommerce, both expose a structured product feed by default: a products.json endpoint on Shopify (on by default, and not something a standard store can switch off) and a public Store API plus JSON-LD on WooCommerce. So the engine reads a live catalog from nothing but a URL, takes the product name, SKU, fabric composition, and country of origin where available, and maps each item to its HS and HTS code with a confidence score. The only storefronts it cannot read on sight are the thin slice that are headless, password-protected, or behind bot protection, and those connect directly through a private app token or an export.
The outcome
Your data and commercial invoices, solved.
Harmonova plugs into your store, ERP, or WMS and enriches every product with accurate customs data, through Shopify metafields or your ERP and WMS customs fields. So when you ship globally, your data and commercial invoices are finally complete. No more customs hold-ups. No more missing information.
Shopify metafields
Customs data written straight onto each product as structured metafields.
ERP and WMS fields
HS codes, COO, and composition mapped into your existing customs fields.
Commercial-invoice ready
Every shipment leaves with complete, accurate customs information.
Stay compliant
Install the app, stay ready.
Connect Harmonova to your store and we keep your catalog's customs data updated and compliant as trade rules change around the world. You are always ready to ship globally.
- Cotton knit teeupdated ✓
- Leather walletupdated ✓
- Stainless bottleupdated ✓
NewHow it works · the live pipeline
Watch a product become customs-ready.
Built from official data into one database, synced daily. Then, at runtime, a product comes in, gets classified against that database, routed by confidence, and written back with a source on every line. High-confidence maps go straight through; anything uncertain waits for a human.
A scan, an upload, or an API call.
HS-6 plus the full HTS-10, with a confidence score.
High confidence writes back; uncertain holds for review.
Shopify, ERP, or export, with a source on every line.
High confidenceAnything uncertain is surfaced in the console for a human.
Needs a humanBuilt on the official WCO, USITC, EU TARIC and UK Trade Tariff data. Classification by Claude, grounded in the sourced database, with a confidence score and a source on every line.
Ask Harmonova 06
A customs copilot, on call.
Ask Harmonova anything about customs. Classify a product, explain a duty, check an FTA, or find the official source behind a rate. You get a clear answer with the schedule entry it came from, every time.
- ✓Classify a product to its HS and HTS code
- ✓Explain how a duty stacks for a given origin
- ✓Check whether an FTA preference applies
- ✓Trace any rate back to its official source
What's the HS code for a cotton t-shirt into the US? 👕
For a men's knit cotton t-shirt, the heading is 6109.10.00. MFN duty is 16.5%, and goods of China origin also carry a Section 301 measure.
The principle 07
Most customs tools guess.
We show you the receipts.
Every code has a receipt
Most tools hand you a guess from a black-box model. Click any Harmonova result and you see the exact government schedule entry behind it, with a link back to the official source.
Real data, not vibes
The database tracks the official feeds directly and tells you plainly when a value is verified against the schedule versus estimated from the listing.
Open about what we know
Country of origin known? We use it. Composition known? It sharpens the code. Unknown? We say 'estimated' and default conservatively, never a false certainty.
Mapped to official sources
Why teams trust it 08
Customs chaos, harmonised.
Open by default
The open-source HS database. MIT-licensed, US, UK and EU, traceable to every official source.
01
Audit-grade
Every quote is reproducible with its reasoning, source, and confidence. Built for a tax-authority review.
02
Unlocks HS complexity
Turns 5,635 WCO headings and full US, UK and EU schedules into one clean answer.
03
Always current
Re-synced against the official feeds every day, so terminations and new measures flow through automatically.
04Under the hood 09
Built to be audited, not taken on faith.
If you are bringing Harmonova in past a security review or a technical evaluation, here is exactly what it is, what it runs on, and why a language model on its own cannot replace it.
THE STACK
Open source, top to bottom
Purpose-built from a blank page, not bolted onto a decades-old tax suite. A TypeScript API over Postgres, deployed on Fly, where one clean schema unifies the WCO base and the national schedules and every line carries its source. The database, the classifier, and the source links live in one MIT-licensed repository you can read, self-host, or fork. No black box to take on faith.
THE DATA PIPELINE
Parsed from the source, synced daily
The database is sourced, not generated. Governments publish their tariff schedules as official data, files and live feeds built for software, not web pages built for people. We pull from those directly (the WCO Harmonized System, the USITC HTS data export, EU TARIC, the UK Trade Tariff feed), parse them line by line into one normalised schema, and re-pull every day. That is the opposite of scraping: no guessing data out of a rendered page, and a model never writes a tariff code, it only maps your product to one.
THE CLASSIFIER
Grounded, not guessing
Classification runs on Anthropic's Claude at temperature 0, wrapped in a deterministic category guard and a curated alias layer that catch the cross-chapter mistakes a raw model makes. Every output is schema-validated, and it never invents a code that is not in the database.
SECURITY & PRIVACY
Built to pass a review
Postgres over enforced TLS, scoped API keys, rate limiting, and standard hardening. Catalog data sent for classification is not used to train models, and you can self-host the entire stack if your policy requires it.
The question every technical buyer asks
“Can't anyone just build this with AI?”
Honestly? With months of work, maybe. But you would not be building an AI. You would be building a database.
Harmonova is not a model that guesses. It is a real, open, MIT-licensed customs database, built from the ground up, with every one of 63,000+ tariff lines linked back to the official government schedule it came from. That is months of mapping, auditing and daily syncing, not a weekend of prompting.
A language model pattern-matches. Ask a chatbot for an HS code and it hands you a confident answer that fails an audit, because it never read the tariff schedule. Plenty is possible with AI; a defensible classification is not, without the verified, sourced data and the customs judgment underneath it, which comes from a founder with over a decade in logistics, ecommerce and operations.
The moat was never the model. It is the work, the sourced data, and the expertise behind every answer. We already did it, so your team does not have to.
How it is different from the incumbents
The established customs and tax suites (the Zonos and Avalara tier) are closed, priced for the enterprise, and rarely show you where a given rate came from. Harmonova is open-source and MIT-licensed, API-native and built for a developer to drop in, and every single line traces back to its official government source. You are not trusting a vendor's black box. You are trusting the published schedule, with a link to prove it.
One API for the truth about every product.
Classify a catalog, resolve duty for any destination, and get a source for every number. The same engine powers live landed-cost quotes today.