# ImportYeti Alternative Scraper (`devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper`) Actor

Search US import/export trade profiles by company name or product keyword — one row per matched importer or supplier with shipment volume, most-recent activity, country, address, and linked trademarks. No login, no ImportYeti/Panjiva subscription.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [DevilScrapes](https://apify.com/devilscrapes) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation
- **Stats:** 3 total users, 1 monthly users, 89.2% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

<div align="center">
  <img src="https://apify.com/.actor/icon.svg" width="160" alt="Devil Scrapes mark" />

## ImportYeti Alternative Scraper

**💰 $5.20 / 1 000 results**  ·  pay only for results  ·  no credit card to try

*We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean.* 😈

Search US import/export trade profiles by company name or product keyword — one row per matched importer or supplier with shipment volume, most-recent activity, country, address, and linked trademarks. No login, no ImportYeti/Panjiva subscription.

</div>

***

### 🎯 What this scrapes

importyeti.com aggregates US Customs bill-of-lading filings (public record under the US Trade Act and FOIA) into free-to-browse importer/supplier trade profiles — the same underlying data ImportYeti, Panjiva, and ImportGenius charge $99-$399+/mo to access. This Actor wraps importyeti.com's keyless JSON search endpoint directly, writing one structured row per matched company: shipment counts, most-recent activity, country, address, and linked trademarks.

Give it company names or product keywords (`searchQueries`) or direct ImportYeti profile URLs (`profileUrls`) and it resolves each one to a matched importer or supplier row, deduplicated by URL slug so the same company matched twice is only pushed and charged once.

### 🔥 What we handle for you

- 🛡️ **Browser fingerprint rotation** — `curl-cffi` impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so importyeti.com sees a browser, not Python.
- 🌐 **Residential proxy by default** via Apify Proxy — the site challenges requests from flagged datacenter IPs, so this is the first Actor in our fleet where RESIDENTIAL ships on by default, not opt-in.
- 🔁 **Retries with exponential backoff** on `408 / 429 / 5xx` — up to 5 attempts, `Retry-After` honoured.
- 🧱 **Fresh session + profile rotation on every block** — a bot-check or `403`/`429` mints a new proxy session and browser fingerprint before retrying.
- 🧊 **Clean, typed dataset rows** — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, deduplicated by slug, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
- 💰 **Pay-Per-Event pricing** — you pay only for results that hit your dataset. No data, no charge (beyond the small `actor-start` warm-up fee).

### 💡 Use cases

- **Sales prospecting** — build a list of US importers already shipping a competitor's product category, ranked by shipment volume.
- **Sourcing research** — find foreign suppliers already shipping into the US for a given product, without cold-emailing trade shows.
- **Competitive intel** — track how often a competitor's known importer or supplier appears in fresh filings.
- **M\&A / supply-chain diligence** — sanity-check a target company's declared trade volume and country exposure in minutes.

### ⚙️ How to use it

1. Click **Try for free** at the top of the page.
2. Enter one or more `searchQueries` (company names or product keywords) and/or `profileUrls` — at least one is required.
3. Optionally narrow with `companyTypeFilter`, `countryCode`, or `minShipments`.
4. Click **Start**. Matched rows stream into the run's dataset as they're found.
5. Export from **Storage → Dataset** as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

### 📥 Input

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|:--:|---|---|
| `searchQueries` | `array` | no\* | — | Company names or product keywords to search, ≤50 items. |
| `profileUrls` | `array` | no\* | — | Direct ImportYeti profile URLs to resolve one-for-one, ≤200 items. |
| `companyTypeFilter` | `string` | no | `"any"` | Restrict to `"importer"` or `"supplier"` rows. |
| `countryCode` | `string` | no | — | ISO-3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. `"CN"`. |
| `minShipments` | `integer` | no | — | Drop rows with fewer total shipments on file. |
| `maxResultsPerQuery` | `integer` | no | `10` | Cap matched rows per `searchQueries` entry, 1-100. |
| `proxyConfiguration` | `object` | no | RESIDENTIAL on | Apify Proxy config. Defaults to `{"useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]}`. |

\* At least one of `searchQueries` / `profileUrls` is required.

#### Example input

```json
{
  "searchQueries": ["Patagonia"],
  "profileUrls": ["https://www.importyeti.com/company/patagonia"],
  "companyTypeFilter": "any",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 2,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}
```

### 📤 Output

Every row is one matched importer or supplier profile, deduplicated by `slug` within a run.

| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `company_name` | `string` | Legal name from US Customs filings. |
| `company_type` | `string` | `"importer"` (US consignee) or `"supplier"` (foreign shipper). |
| `country` | `string \| null` | Country of registration, full name. |
| `country_code` | `string \| null` | ISO-3166-1 alpha-2. |
| `address` | `string \| null` | Address from most recent customs record. |
| `total_shipments` | `integer \| null` | Total bill-of-lading count on file. |
| `most_recent_shipment_date` | `string \| null` | ISO `YYYY-MM-DD`. |
| `other_addresses_count` | `integer \| null` | Distinct alternative addresses on file. |
| `other_names_count` | `integer \| null` | Distinct alternative names (DBAs, subsidiaries, typo variants). |
| `trademarks` | `array` | Linked brand names — empty array when none. |
| `profile_url` | `string` | Canonical `importyeti.com/company\|supplier/{slug}` URL. |
| `slug` | `string` | URL slug — dedup key. |
| `source_query` | `string \| null` | Which `searchQueries` entry matched, if search mode. |
| `rank` | `integer \| null` | Position in the search-API ranking (1 = top). |
| `scraped_at` | `string` | ISO-8601 UTC timestamp when this row was recorded. |

#### Example output

```json
{
  "company_name": "Patagonia, Inc.",
  "company_type": "importer",
  "country": "United States",
  "country_code": "US",
  "address": "259 W Santa Clara St, Ventura, CA 93001",
  "total_shipments": 4218,
  "most_recent_shipment_date": "2026-06-30",
  "other_addresses_count": 6,
  "other_names_count": 3,
  "trademarks": ["Patagonia"],
  "profile_url": "https://www.importyeti.com/company/patagonia",
  "slug": "patagonia",
  "source_query": "Patagonia",
  "rank": 1,
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-19T12:00:00+00:00"
}
```

### 💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

| Event | USD | What it is |
|---|---:|---|
| `actor-start` | $0.20 | One-off warm-up charge per run |
| `result-row` | $0.005 | Per matched company/supplier row written to the dataset |

Example: 1 000 rows ≈ **$5.20** (1 000 × $0.005 + one $0.20 start charge). No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

### 🚧 Limitations

v1 output is company/supplier **trade-profile rollups** (shipment counts, most-recent activity, country, address, trademarks) — not full per-shipment bill-of-lading line items (individual date/HS-code/weight/port per shipment), which live behind the site's login/bot-gated profile pages. Non-US customs data (India/Zauba, China, etc.) is out of scope; a separate Actor would cover that. Account/login-gated features (saved searches, CSV bulk export, alerts) are not part of v1.

### ❓ FAQ

**Does this include full shipment-level bill-of-lading detail (HS code, weight, port)?**

Not in v1. Per-shipment line items live behind the site's login/bot-gated profile pages; v1 ships company/supplier trade-profile rollups (shipment counts, most-recent activity, country, trademarks) via the confirmed keyless search endpoint. Per-shipment detail is a flagged roadmap item.

**Do I need an ImportYeti, Panjiva, or ImportGenius account?**

No. This Actor uses importyeti.com's public, keyless search endpoint directly — no login, no subscription.

**Why does this default to a residential proxy?**

The site challenges requests from flagged datacenter IPs. We default `proxyConfiguration` to Apify's RESIDENTIAL group so runs clear the check without you tuning anything.

**What happens if a search query or profile URL doesn't match?**

That entry is recorded as a failed outcome and the run continues with the rest — we never silently return an empty dataset with a green status.

### 💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an
issue on the Actor's **Issues** tab on Apify Console — we ship
fixes weekly and we read every report.

***

<div align="center">

Built by **[Devil Scrapes](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes)** 😈 — a small fleet of
opinionated public-data Actors. Honest pricing, real engineering, zero fine print.

</div>

# Actor input Schema

## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):

Company names or product keywords to search. One of Search queries / Profile URLs is required.

## `profileUrls` (type: `array`):

Direct ImportYeti profile URLs to resolve one-for-one, e.g. https://www.importyeti.com/company/patagonia or https://www.importyeti.com/supplier/foo-bar.

## `companyTypeFilter` (type: `string`):

Restrict matches to importer (US consignee) or supplier (foreign shipper) rows.

## `countryCode` (type: `string`):

Restrict supplier/importer country — ISO-3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. CN.

## `minShipments` (type: `integer`):

Drop rows with fewer total shipments on file.

## `maxResultsPerQuery` (type: `integer`):

Cap matched rows per Search queries entry.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Mandatory-by-default RESIDENTIAL proxy — importyeti.com confirmed Cloudflare managed-challenges from datacenter IPs on every probed path.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchQueries": [
    "Patagonia"
  ],
  "companyTypeFilter": "any",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `datasetItems` (type: `string`):

All dataset items as JSON.

## `datasetItemsCsv` (type: `string`):

Same data exported to CSV.

## `datasetView` (type: `string`):

Open the run dataset in the Console.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchQueries": [
        "Patagonia"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ]
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "searchQueries": ["Patagonia"],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": True,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchQueries": [
    "Patagonia"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ]
  }
}' |
apify call devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,devilscrapes/importyeti-alternative-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/aRSJp7tCe8cbazsX3/builds/vRiXgZdFpv04SSR0d/openapi.json