Orion Markets vs ImportGenius: what each covers and who it suits

ImportGenius and Orion Markets both work with foreign trade shipment data, but they are built for different jobs. ImportGenius is a search tool for shipment records: its core is US sea import data from bills of lading, going back to 2006, and its website lists more than 25 countries in total. Orion Markets covers 14 countries, mainly in the EAEU and Central Asia, Latin America and Asia, and does not show individual records: it turns the data into company profiles, market reports, a ranking of export markets and lists of buyers and suppliers. If your work starts with US imports, ImportGenius covers them and Orion Markets does not.

The facts about ImportGenius below come from its official website, importgenius.com, as viewed on 22 October 2026. Services change their coverage and terms, so check the current version on their site before you decide.

Side by side

What ImportGenius is built for

ImportGenius gives you access to shipment records and lets you search them by company, product or HS code. The HS code is the international product code used in foreign trade. Its central dataset is US sea imports: the site says the bill-of-lading data comes from US Customs and Border Protection and includes all available details of each bill of lading for shipments entering US ports. On its pricing page it also lists datasets for Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa, each with its own period.

According to the site, you can:

• search records and download rows, within the limits of your plan;
• see a company's customers and trade patterns in the Genius Company Profiler;
• get an email when a company you follow has new shipments;
• on Enterprise plans, connect the data to your CRM or ERP through an API and order custom research from their team.

What Orion Markets is built for

Orion Markets starts from a business question rather than a search box. It works with foreign trade shipment data of 14 countries and shows the results as ready answers:

• Company profiles: what a company imports and exports, from which countries, with which partners and how it changes over time;
• market reports in Analyze markets by product and more than 4,300 ready reports in Ready-made research: market size, importers and suppliers with their shares, prices per kilogram, countries of origin, seasons;
• Find new export markets: a ranking of countries for your product, based on your cost, demand, competition, duties and restrictions;
• shortlists in Find suppliers and Find buyers: the foreign companies that already ship or buy your product;
• monitoring of companies, markets and countries, with alerts when something significant changes.

You do not see individual shipments on Orion Markets, and you cannot download raw rows. If you want to build your own analysis from records, this is a limitation; if you want the answer without building it, it saves time.

Where the coverage overlaps

The two services overlap more than one might expect. The ImportGenius pricing page lists datasets for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia (up to March 2025), Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, Pakistan and the Philippines, which are also among Orion Markets' 14 countries. For Vietnam, ImportGenius lists shipments between Vietnam and China. Some of these datasets are available only through their sales team. Periods differ between the two services, so for each country you care about, compare how far back the data goes and how recent the latest month is.

When to choose ImportGenius

• Your market is the United States. US imports and exports are its core, and Orion Markets does not cover the US.
• You want the records themselves. If you need to read individual shipments, build your own tables or load rows into a CRM, a record-level service fits that work.
• You need long history. US import data from 2006 allows comparisons over many years.
• Your countries are outside Orion's list. For example India, Turkey, Ecuador, Peru, Indonesia, Sri Lanka or Ukraine, which appear on the ImportGenius list.
• You want custom research. Enterprise plans include a research and data science team.

When Orion Markets fits better

• Your markets are among the 14 countries, for example Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Mexico, Colombia, Vietnam, Bangladesh or Pakistan, and you need ready figures rather than raw data.
• You are choosing where to export. Find new export markets compares your price with the market and accounts for duties, including trade remedies, and restrictions.
• You need a list of buyers or suppliers for one product. The lists show who already trades the product and in which markets.
• Your team works in other languages. The interface is available in 20 languages, including Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Kazakh and Uzbek.
• You want to see the data before paying. Free registration opens full sample profiles and reports.

Orion Markets' limits to keep in mind

• 14 countries with shipment-level data, against more than 25 on ImportGenius. There is no data for the United States or the European Union.
• For most countries the data starts in 2025 or 2026, and for some recently added countries there is only one month so far. Since July 2025, data for Russia covers only trade with Kazakhstan. Current periods are on the data coverage page.
• A company outside the 14 countries is visible only through its trade with them.
• No individual shipment records and no raw downloads.

How to compare them on your own product

1. Take a product and a company you know well, and check whether each service shows what you know to be true.
2. For each target country, check direction (import, export or both), first and last month of data.
3. Check what you get without paying: a demo, a trial, free sample reports.
4. Check what the price includes: countries, users, searches, downloads, monitoring, API.
5. Check how company names are cleaned: one importer written in several ways should still be one company.

To see Orion Markets' data in practice, open a free sample report in Ready-made research. How to choose between data sources in general is covered in Where to get foreign trade data for a country.

ImportGenius is a trademark of its owner. Orion Markets is not affiliated with it; the comparison is based on information on its official website as of 22 October 2026.