By the Digital Empire Regulatory Research Team (EntryProof Analysis Team) · Published August 24, 2026 · Last updated September 14, 2026
Editorial policy at /editorial-policy.
The customs-broker channel is not really a "EntryProof competitor" in the way a rival SaaS is. For most small and mid-size importers, "my broker handles it" is the entire compliance department. The honest framing: a broker files what you hand it, and the importer of record remains responsible for the accuracy of what was handed over. EntryProof is the layer above — the independent second set of eyes that catches the CPSC certificate gap before the CF-28 does.
"The broker channel" is the licensed U.S. customs brokerage industry operating under 19 CFR Part 111. Named examples, stated only from each company's own filings or releases: Flexport, a technology-forward customs brokerage and freight forwarder that bundles brokerage with freight and an integrated software platform; C.H. Robinson, which in its FY2025 Form 10-K describes itself as "a business existing, in various legal forms, since 1905," trades publicly as CHRW on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, and reported total revenues of $16,232,763 thousand — $16.2 billion — for fiscal year 2025 (10-K checked September 14, 2026); and KGH Customs Services, whose acquisition by A.P. Moller - Maersk was announced July 6, 2020 and completed September 2, 2020 per Maersk's own newsroom. We deliberately publish no ranking, no revenue estimate, and no funding or valuation figure that we cannot source to the company itself.
It is not an independent audit function on the importer's own data, and it structurally cannot be a complete one: a single broker only sees the entries it filed, and none of the entries the importer's other brokers filed. An importer running DTC entries through one broker, Amazon FBA through another and wholesale through a third has no single party with the whole picture. We make no claim here about the contract terms or service scope of any particular broker — those differ by engagement, and your own engagement letter is the authority on yours.
This page previously carried a table of per-entry, per-PGA-line, bond and disbursement fee ranges. We could not source any of those figures to a broker's own published schedule, so we removed the table rather than republish estimates as if they were observed fees. Broker fees are quoted per customer; ask your own broker for its current schedule. On our own side, the EntryProof readiness check is free, with paid tiers above it, and it does not file entries or replace a licensed broker.
A broker transacts customs business on your behalf and files entries. EntryProof audits the data you are about to give a broker (or already gave a broker) against the CPSC eFiling requirements under 16 CFR Part 1110. One executes the filing; the other verifies its inputs. Neither replaces the other.
Every formal commercial entry into the United States requires a licensed customs broker as filer of record. That is legal reality, not preference. Any question that reduces to "who signs the CBP Form 3461" or "who transmits entry data to ACE" has exactly one answer: a licensed broker. Flexport, C.H. Robinson, or one of several dozen national brokers — the choice among brokers is real, but the choice between broker and no-broker is not a choice.
When the importer needs to know, before handing a shipment to their broker, whether the CPSC certificate coverage on the product line is complete — is there a valid Children's Product Certificate on file for each SKU in the entry, does the age-grading data match, is there a CPSC-accepted third-party lab record referenced correctly, is the manufacturer contact block filled in per 16 CFR Part 1110. That readiness question is upstream of the broker's filing. Errors here surface downstream as CBP CF-28 requests for information, CF-29 notices of action, and (in the worst cases) Section 15 penalty exposure.
An importer selling on Shopify DTC, Amazon (with Amazon as importer of record for some FBA lanes), wholesale, and TikTok Shop can easily have three or four different brokers filing on their behalf across those channels. No single broker sees the full entry stream, because each broker only files what it files. EntryProof sits above that fragmentation and reconciles across all channels — a single view of every CPSC-relevant entry and every certificate on file, regardless of which broker touched which shipment.
The 2025-26 tariff environment — Section 232 aluminum/steel derivative expansions, IEEPA-based country adjustments, rolling 301 modifications — has meaningfully increased entry complexity. We previously characterised broker response times here on the strength of forum threads. That claim is gone: we have no source for it, and an unsourced claim about the service levels of an identifiable industry has no business on this page. What remains is the part we can stand behind — entry complexity has increased, the importer of record carries responsibility for the accuracy of its entry data either way, and an independent readiness check is a control the importer owns rather than one it delegates.
This is a hypothetical scenario, not a real customer case. Consider a $5M/yr children's apparel importer using two brokers: one for containerized ocean freight from China, another for air-freighted small parcels via Vietnam. The importer maintains 40 SKUs, of which 35 are children's products requiring a CPC. A supplier substitutes a slightly different fabric on 8 SKUs in a spring production run. The importer's ocean broker files the entry with the existing CPC references, not knowing the fabric change invalidated the earlier third-party testing under CPSIA. Two months later a CBP CF-28 arrives requesting substantiation. EntryProof run on the pre-shipment packing list would have flagged the substrate change as needing a CPSIA re-test before the entry filed; the broker had no signal to catch it because the broker never sees the supplier substitution.
EntryProof is a data preparation and readiness-assessment tool for the CPSC Product Registry. EntryProof is NOT a customs broker, NOT a testing laboratory, and NOT a legal-advice service. Compliance decisions remain the responsibility of the importer. EntryProof does not guarantee that any classification, packet, or filing will be accepted by CPSC or CBP.
EntryProof is not affiliated with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Amazon, Shein, Temu, or TikTok Shop. Flexport, C.H. Robinson, and KGH/Maersk are the registered trademarks of their respective owners, referenced here in a nominative-fair-use capacity for the sole purpose of comparing product and service capabilities.
A licensed U.S. customs broker under 19 CFR Part 111 transacts customs business on behalf of the importer of record. That includes transmitting entry data (including CPSC Product Registry certificate references, where required under 16 CFR Part 1110) to CBP via the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Practically, the broker files what the importer hands them — General Certificates of Conformity (GCC), Children's Product Certificates (CPC), age-grading data, and product identifiers. The broker is legally required for formal entries; the software that helps the importer prepare and audit what they hand the broker is optional.
We do not publish a figure. Broker fees are quoted per customer and we have no primary source we can cite for a representative range, so we have removed the numbers that previously appeared here rather than repeat an estimate. Ask your own broker for its current fee schedule.
No. EntryProof is not a licensed customs broker under 19 CFR Part 111, does not transact customs business, and does not file entries. A licensed broker is legally required to file formal entries for commercial importers. EntryProof is the readiness layer above the broker — it helps the importer verify that the certificates, product identifiers, and CPSIA-testing references they are about to hand the broker are complete and internally consistent before the broker files them.
Because for many SMB importers, the practical mental model is "my broker handles compliance" — full stop. The question EntryProof has to answer is not "which is better, a broker or software" (both are needed) but "does an audit layer above the broker pay for itself." The point that does not depend on any claim about brokers is a legal one: the importer of record is responsible for the accuracy of the data in its entries, and a CBP CF-28 or CF-29 goes to the importer.
Under Section 20 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (15 U.S.C. § 2069), civil penalties for knowing violations can reach $120,000 per violation and up to $17.15 million for a related series of violations (current caps set by Federal Register notice 2021-26082, 86 FR 68244, effective Jan 1 2022; next statutory adjustment due Dec 1 2026).
Named examples, each stated only from that company's own filings or releases: Flexport, a technology-forward customs brokerage and freight forwarder (flexport.com); C.H. Robinson, which describes itself as "a business existing, in various legal forms, since 1905" and is publicly traded as CHRW on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, reporting $16,232,763 thousand -- $16.2 billion -- in total revenues for fiscal year 2025 in its FY2025 Form 10-K; and KGH Customs Services, whose acquisition by A.P. Moller - Maersk was announced July 6, 2020 and completed September 2, 2020 per Maersk's own newsroom. The competitive picture is the entire licensed-broker industry, not a single named vendor.
We make no claim about what any individual broker does or does not offer; check your own engagement letter. The structural point is simply that a broker only sees the entries it files, so no single broker has visibility into an importer's cross-broker, cross-channel entry stream -- DTC via one broker, Amazon FBA via another, wholesale via a third.