SimplyDuty vs customs-compliance.ai: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison for 2026

SimplyDuty has been the go-to tariff lookup tool for small importers and customs brokers for years. It does the job it was designed for: give it a product, get back a duty rate. Fast, cheap, no implementation required.

The problem is that job description has quietly expanded. In 2026, "tariff classification" is not a lookup problem. It is a reasoning problem. Products do not arrive with clean HS codes attached. They arrive as free-text descriptions on purchase orders — "reinforced polypropylene bags for industrial packaging, food-grade lined" — and someone has to figure out the right 8- or 10-digit code across multiple jurisdictions, each with its own heading structure, each updated on a rolling schedule. Rule-based lookup handles the easy 60%. The hard 40% is where duty errors, compliance failures, and landed cost miscalculations live.

AI classification tools — including customs-compliance.ai, which Phlo Systems builds — are designed for that hard 40%. This post compares SimplyDuty and customs-compliance.ai honestly, including the cases where SimplyDuty is the right choice.

At a glance

	SimplyDuty	customs-compliance.ai
Pricing	£29–£129/month	Free / £14 / £39 / £99/month
Free tier	Trial only	50 classifications/month
Country coverage	~130 countries	51 countries (deep)
Classification method	Rule-based lookup + manual search	3-stage AI (cache → embedding → LLM re-rank)
HS code depth	6-digit HS (mostly)	National-level (8–10 digit)
Commodity codes	Not disclosed	~588K loaded
API access	On higher tiers	Enterprise tier (£99/mo)
ERP integration	No	Xero, Acumatica
Landed cost calculation	Basic	Full (Business tier and above)
Tariff change monitoring	No	Daily, automated
Powered by	Proprietary rule engine	Anthropic Claude

Pricing

SimplyDuty publishes three tiers:

• Starter (£29/month): Single user, basic duty lookups, limited countries.
• Professional (£69/month): More countries, additional duty types (anti-dumping, excise), basic API access.
• Business (£129/month): Full country set, bulk lookups, team access, full API.

customs-compliance.ai publishes four tiers:

• Free: 50 classifications per month. No card required. Covers the full 51-country set.
• Pro (£14/month): 500 classifications per month. Enough for an active small importer or a broker handling 1–2 accounts.
• Business (£39/month): Unlimited lookups, landed cost calculation, priority processing.
• Enterprise (£99/month): API access, ERP connectors (Xero, Acumatica), bulk classification, dedicated support.

The headline comparison: SimplyDuty's mid-tier (£69) costs more than customs-compliance.ai's Business tier (£39). For price-sensitive SMEs or customs brokers trialling a new tool, the entry point matters. Both tools offer more functionality as you move up, but the cost curve for AI classification has compressed significantly in the last 18 months.

One caveat: SimplyDuty's pricing reflects a mature product with a long feature backlog and stable maintenance costs. Newer AI tools sometimes raise prices as they scale. The numbers above are correct as of April 2026.

Classification approach

This is where the tools diverge most fundamentally.

SimplyDuty works like an enhanced tariff schedule database. You enter a product description or HS code, and the system returns the matching tariff rates from its stored data. The search is keyword-based with some matching logic. It works reliably when your product description aligns with the terminology used in official tariff headings. It struggles when descriptions are idiomatic, technical, or ambiguous — which is often.

customs-compliance.ai runs a three-stage process:

1. Cache lookup. If the exact query has been classified before, return the cached result immediately. This handles high-frequency, low-variation lookups at near-zero compute cost.
2. Embedding search. If no cache hit, the product description is encoded as a vector embedding and compared against ~588K commodity codes using pgvector similarity search. This surfaces the most semantically relevant candidates even when the exact words do not match.
3. LLM re-ranking. The top candidates from the embedding search are passed to Anthropic Claude, which reads the product description, the candidate headings, and the relevant chapter notes, then returns a ranked classification with a confidence score and written justification.

The practical difference: for a query like "thermal fleece-lined gloves, cut-resistant liner, EN388 rated, size L, for oil and gas sector," a keyword system might return results for "gloves" broadly. The AI system reasons about the protective equipment chapter, the EN388 certification, the liner construction, and the likely end-use context, and it returns chapter 39 or chapter 61 with an explanation you can show a compliance auditor.

Classification justification is not optional for customs brokers working under Rule 6. It is a professional and legal requirement. SimplyDuty does not generate it. customs-compliance.ai generates it by default for every lookup.

For importers self-classifying rather than using a broker, justification still matters. HMRC's Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) and CDS platforms both expect that an importer can demonstrate how they arrived at a commodity code. A printable AI justification is not a legal shield, but it is evidence of reasonable due diligence — which is exactly what post-clearance audits look for.

Country coverage

SimplyDuty covers roughly 130 countries at basic level. That breadth is genuinely useful for importers dealing with a wide range of source markets who need a quick rate check without caring about precision.

customs-compliance.ai covers 51 countries, loaded deeply. The current country set includes GB, IN, ZA, NA, BR, US, CN, EU-27 (all 27 member states), SA, AE, OM, MX, TH, AU, AR, CL, UY, MU, PH, AO, and DO. "Loaded deeply" means national-level codes (8–10 digit), full MFN rate tables, preferential rates, and applicable trade agreements — approximately 865K MFN rates and 653K preferential rates in total.

The honest framing: if you trade with 80 countries and need a quick duty estimate on each, SimplyDuty's breadth is more useful. If you trade heavily with the UK, India, South Africa, the US, Brazil, or any of the major Gulf or EU markets, customs-compliance.ai's depth will give you more reliable results and fewer classification errors.

Most SME importers have 5–10 key source and destination markets. For them, depth almost always matters more than breadth.

Depth also matters when preferential rates are involved. Knowing the MFN rate for a product is useful. Knowing whether a UK-origin product qualifies for a preferential rate under DCTS when importing into India — and what the applicable rate actually is — requires the full commodity code, the relevant rules of origin, and the applicable agreement text. That is the difference between knowing a headline figure and knowing whether you are paying the right amount.

Features customs-compliance.ai has that SimplyDuty does not

Landed cost calculation. Available on the Business tier (£39/month). Enter the product classification, origin country, shipping cost, insurance, and declared value, and the system returns a full landed cost breakdown: customs duty, VAT, applicable excise, preferential rate adjustments. This replaces the spreadsheet most import teams currently maintain manually.

ERP connectors. The Enterprise tier includes native connectors for Xero and Acumatica. Classification results flow directly into your accounting or ERP system, reducing manual data entry and associated errors. Customers like Torq Commodities (oils and metals) and Sunbeth Energies use this to keep their import duty entries reconciled automatically.

Opportunity intelligence. A 7-rule engine monitors tariff schedule updates daily across all 51 countries and surfaces changes that may create opportunities — new preferential rates, expiring anti-dumping duties, reclassification guidance from customs authorities. If you import from India into the UK and a new UK-India trade agreement modifies preferential duty rates on your commodity codes, the system flags it. SimplyDuty does not monitor or alert on tariff changes.

Daily tariff source monitoring. Tariff schedules are not static. HMRC updates UK trade tariff chapters on a rolling basis. The EU publishes Combined Nomenclature amendments. customs-compliance.ai syncs against official tariff sources on a daily cycle. You are always classifying against current rates, not data from the last quarterly update.

AI-generated classification justification. Every lookup returns a written explanation of why the code was chosen, including the relevant chapter and heading notes considered. This is useful for internal audit trails and essential for customs brokers who need to demonstrate due diligence.

Features SimplyDuty has that customs-compliance.ai does not

Be honest about this section, because buyers deserve it.

Broader country coverage at base level. 130 countries versus 51. If your supplier base includes markets not yet in customs-compliance.ai's dataset — Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan — SimplyDuty may be your only option for rate data today.

Simpler UI for pure lookup workflows. SimplyDuty's interface is designed for fast, focused lookups. If your use case is "give me the rate for HS 7208.10 importing to Germany," SimplyDuty is faster to operate. customs-compliance.ai's three-stage AI process adds reasoning capability, but it also adds latency and interface complexity that not every user needs.

Longer track record. SimplyDuty has been operating for several years with a stable customer base. For risk-averse procurement teams, that matters. customs-compliance.ai has paying customers today — including Omni, Konexus, and Torq Commodities — but it does not have SimplyDuty's tenure.

No usage tiers for simple lookups. SimplyDuty's Business plan is effectively unlimited for standard lookups. customs-compliance.ai's unlimited tier starts at £39/month (Business), which is comparable, but users on Pro (500/month) may hit limits during high-volume periods.

Which to choose

Choose SimplyDuty if:

• You need basic duty rates for more than 51 countries and your source markets are outside customs-compliance.ai's current coverage (e.g., Vietnam, Pakistan, Turkey).
• Your classification work is high-volume, low-complexity — standard HS codes for well-defined product categories that appear verbatim in tariff schedules.
• You want a tool with years of proven track record and do not need AI-generated justification.
• You are an occasional user (fewer than 50 lookups a month) and find customs-compliance.ai's free tier insufficient in country coverage for your markets.

Choose customs-compliance.ai if:

• Your team regularly classifies products with ambiguous descriptions that keyword search returns poor results for.
• You need classification justification for audit, compliance, or Rule 6 due diligence purposes.
• You trade heavily within the 51 countries already loaded — especially GB, EU, US, IN, ZA, AE, BR.
• You want landed cost calculations integrated with tariff classification, rather than running a separate spreadsheet.
• You use Xero or Acumatica and want duty calculations to flow into your accounting system without manual retyping.
• You want proactive alerts when tariff schedules change in your key markets.
• You are evaluating cost: at £14/month (Pro) or £39/month (Business), it is priced below most per-seat SaaS tools your team already uses.

The borderline case

Some customs brokers and mid-size importers run both tools. SimplyDuty for fast checks in out-of-coverage markets; customs-compliance.ai for the classifications that require reasoning, justification, or landed cost. At combined cost of ~£100–£150/month for a small team, the overlap is deliberate rather than wasteful.

The question to ask: where are your classification errors coming from? If they come from wrong rates on obscure markets, SimplyDuty improving its data is the fix. If they come from ambiguous product descriptions being misclassified, no database tool will solve that — reasoning matters.

How both tools compare to the alternatives

Neither SimplyDuty nor customs-compliance.ai is the only option in this space. For context:

• HMRC Trade Tariff (UK): Free, official, accurate for GB, but manual and covers one jurisdiction. No AI, no landed cost, no monitoring.
• Descartes CustomsInfo: The enterprise incumbent. Excellent depth and breadth, but pricing starts at €200/month and scales with modules and users — typically £50,000+/year for a mid-market team. Justified for large customs agencies; hard to justify for SMEs.
• Flexport: Classification is part of a broader freight forwarding platform. Useful if Flexport is already your forwarder. Not a standalone classification tool.

For the typical SME importer or boutique customs broker — say, 1–10 users, 5–20 key trade lanes, regular classification work on varied product descriptions — the realistic comparison is SimplyDuty versus customs-compliance.ai. Descartes is over-engineered for most SME budgets; HMRC's tool is under-powered; Flexport bundles classification into a product most SMEs do not use.

Disclosure and where to go next

This post was written by Phlo Systems. We build customs-compliance.ai. We have tried to be accurate about where customs-compliance.ai falls short — including the country coverage gap and SimplyDuty's simpler UX for pure lookup tasks — because misleading buyers is a worse outcome than losing a comparison.

If you are evaluating tariff classification tools for 2026, you can try customs-compliance.ai free (50 classifications per month, no card required) at customs-compliance.ai. If you want to see a side-by-side demo against your actual product descriptions and trade lanes — including a landed cost walkthrough — request a comparison demo here.

If SimplyDuty is the better fit for your workflow, we have tried to say so clearly above.