Regulations vary by country, product category, and HS code. What's freely shippable today may be restricted tomorrow. Getting it wrong means returns, seized shipments, compliance penalties, and lost customer trust.
Import and export regulations differ by country and product type. Manual review of government trade databases doesn't scale—and outdated data is just as bad as no data at all.
A single restricted item reaching the border creates delays, fines, and return shipment costs—far exceeding the cost of checking before it ships.
Zonos Restrict Zonos AI evaluates items against an expansive, continuously updated dataset of import and export restrictions from around the world. Submit an item with its name, HS code, description, and origin/destination countries—and get back a clear restriction result with an AI confidence score in milliseconds.
Every applicable restriction comes back tagged with one of five categories—dangerous goods, documentation, permits, cost-related measures, or restricted measures—so your team and your systems instantly understand the nature of the rule without parsing raw regulatory text.
Submit the item's name, description, HS code, ship-from country, and ship-to country. Optional inputs like materials, category, and brand narrow the results further.
Restrict matches the item against a comprehensive dataset of government import and export regulations, filtered by HS code and destination.
Semantic search and the Zonos AI restriction model refine the initial matches, filtering out restrictions that don't apply to the specific item—dramatically reducing false positives.
Each applicable restriction is returned with its category, a human-readable summary, and a confidence score—ready for your system to act on.
One call returns both import and export restrictions.
Most restriction tools rely on a single signal—the HS code—and return broad, unrefined lists with a high rate of false positives. Restrict Zonos AI layers semantic search, a purpose-trained AI model, and real-world feedback on top of the regulatory dataset, delivering matches that are roughly 80x more accurate than HS-code-only matching, with confidence scores your systems can act on.
Restrictions based solely on HS codes create a lot of noise. Our AI models filter the initial match set down to restrictions that are genuinely relevant to the item's description, materials, and category—not just its HS code heading.
After filtering, Restrict assigns a confidence score to each legitimate restriction, indicating how likely it is to apply to this specific item. Less-likely matches can be investigated if needed.
As Restrict processes more shipments, the pipeline learns from real-world outcomes—getting more accurate over time for the item types your business ships most.
Use Restrict on its own as a standalone item-restriction API — or as one of five AI-powered checks inside Greenlight, our all-in-one export readiness API.
Block restricted items from being listed or purchased for destinations where they cannot legally or practically ship—protecting revenue and avoiding costly returns.
Validate shipper-provided item data against restriction rules before accepting a shipment—reducing liability and downstream clearance failures.
Screen items against import and export restrictions before packages enter or leave the postal network, catching prohibited goods before they create compliance incidents.
Zonos Restrict Zonos AI gives merchants, carriers, and forwarders the AI-powered compliance layer they need to ship with confidence—across every product, every destination, every time.
Know which items can ship before they reach the border.
Zonos Restrict Zonos AI tells you exactly which restrictions apply to any item shipping to any destination, instantly. Try it below for free, up to 3 uses.
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