What does 'customs clearance' mean on tracking, and how long does it take?
Customs clearance on a tracking page means the customs authority of the destination country now holds the parcel and is deciding whether it may enter and what duty or tax is owed on it. It is a routine checkpoint rather than a problem, and every item that crosses a customs border passes through it. Most postal parcels are released on their electronic declaration alone within 1 to 3 days, while 5 to 10 days is normal for an item pulled aside for assessment or physical inspection. Those ranges are observed estimates rather than published service standards, because clearance time is not something customs administrations commit to.
Who inspects the parcel, and at which facility
Clearance is performed by a government agency, not by the postal operator or courier whose tracking page shows the words. Inbound postal items are sorted at an inward office of exchange: in the United States that means one of the Postal Service International Service Centers, and in Canada it means one of the 3 customs mail centres operated by the Canada Border Services Agency inside Canada Post facilities in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The post presents the mail, and the agency decides what happens to it.
All mail originating outside the customs territory of the United States (i.e., outside the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) is subject to customs examination.
USPS International Mail Manual, section 711.1, April 2026 edition
Where duty is assessed, the decision travels back to the post on paper as well as by data. In United States mail, a dutiable item is returned to the Postal Service in an orange Treasury Department envelope containing CBP Form 3419ALT, Mail Entry. In Canada the assessment is attached to the item on Form E14, the CBSA Postal Import Form, and the amounts are collected at the door together with a Canada Post handling fee of CAD 9.95 per dutiable item (CBSA, Paying duty and taxes on imported goods). The equivalent United States fee is set in Notice 123, and the manual states it is "not refundable by the U.S. Postal Service even though the U.S. Customs Service may later refund the duty paid by the addressee" (USPS International Mail Manual, chapter 7).
The advance data that settles most parcels before they land
Most parcels are risk assessed before the aircraft carrying them lands. Under Universal Postal Union standards the sending post transmits an ITMATT message, the electronic equivalent of the CN 23 customs declaration, ideally at the moment the item is accepted over the counter, and the receiving post passes that data to its customs administration as a CUSITM message. Customs can therefore score an item on its description, declared value, origin and sender several days before it physically arrives.
This is why 2 parcels posted on the same day behave differently. One is cleared on data alone and never produces a customs event that a recipient notices; the other is flagged in advance and waits for a human. The quality of the declaration is usually what separates them, because a CN 22 or CN 23 that says "gift" or "sample" instead of naming the goods, their material and their value gives an officer nothing to assess.
Prepaid arrangements are read from the same data. A consignment carrying a valid Import One Stop Shop number for the European Union, or a registered vendor number for Australia, tells the destination system that the tax was already collected at checkout, and that is the difference between a parcel that walks through and one that stops for a payment demand.
The stages behind the status, and the scan that produces each one
A parcel passes 5 recorded stages between arrival in the destination country and handover to domestic delivery. Operators word them differently, but the underlying events come from the same UPU EMSEVT V3 standard, so the sequence is the same whether the tracking page is American, Canadian or Australian.
| Stage | Typical tracking wording | UPU event | What has actually happened | Typical duration (estimate) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Arrival in the destination country | Arrived at inward office of exchange, Processed through facility | EMD | The item is on destination soil and inside the postal facility, not yet with customs | Same day to 1 day |
| 2. Presentation to customs | Customs clearance processing, Presented to import customs | EDB | The declaration has been handed to the customs authority for a decision | A few hours to 2 days |
| 3. Assessment or inspection | Held by import customs, Held at customs, Awaiting payment | EME | Customs wants duty, paperwork or a physical look before it will release the item | 3 to 7 days, longer while a charge is unpaid |
| 4. Release | Customs clearance completed, Released from customs | EDC | Customs has finished and the item is back in the hands of the post | Same day to 2 days |
| 5. Handover to domestic delivery | Departed inward office of exchange, In transit to destination | EMF | The item has left the border facility and is in the domestic network | 1 to 5 days |
Only stage 3 is optional. A parcel cleared on its declaration moves from the presentation event straight to the release event with nothing in between, which is why many recipients see a single customs line followed by a delivery scan. After stage 5 the item behaves like any domestic package and the tracking reverts to in transit wording.
How long each stage takes, and what changes it
The customs stage measured from presentation to release commonly runs 1 to 3 days for postal items cleared on their declaration and 5 to 10 days for items routed to assessment or inspection. Four factors account for most of the spread.
- The channel. Express carriers file entries for their own shipments in bulk before the aircraft lands and frequently clear within 24 hours. Postal items depend on a handover between 2 organizations and are slower by design.
- Whether money is owed. A charge turns an automated decision into a transaction with the recipient, adding the notification, the payment and the re-presentation to the timeline. This is the largest single source of multi-week customs stages.
- The commodity. Food, plants, medicines, cosmetics, batteries and radio equipment attract second-agency checks that customs cannot conclude alone, and those queues run in days rather than hours.
- Volume. Border facilities work to fixed capacity, so November and December backlogs push the same parcel from the 1 to 3 day band into the 5 to 10 day band without anything being wrong with it.
None of these figures include the international flight or the domestic delivery that follows. For an end to end view of a cross-border postal timeline, see how long international first class mail takes.
The duty and tax rules that decide whether a parcel stops
Thresholds are set nationally, and 3 of the 5 markets below have changed theirs since 2021. The figures are the position as of July 2026.
| Destination | Customs duty threshold | Import tax on low value goods | In force since | Normally collected by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | None. The 800 USD de minimis exemption is suspended for all countries | Duty applies at every value, postal items included | 29 August 2025 | The delivering post or a broker, at or before delivery |
| European Union | A flat customs duty of 3 EUR per item on distance sales up to 150 EUR, replacing the former duty relief | VAT from the first cent, with no exempt band | VAT 1 July 2021, flat duty 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028 | The seller through IOSS, otherwise the carrier |
| United Kingdom | 135 GBP | VAT on all goods except gifts worth 39 GBP or less | 1 January 2021 | The seller at or below 135 GBP, otherwise the delivery company |
| Canada | CAD 20, or CAD 60 for a gift between individuals | GST or HST above the same thresholds | Postal Imports Remission Order | Canada Post at delivery, plus its CAD 9.95 fee |
| Australia | An import entry threshold of 1,000 AUD | GST charged by the seller at or below 1,000 AUD | 1 July 2018 | The seller at checkout, or the Australian Border Force above the threshold |
The United States change is the one that most often contradicts older advice. Duty free treatment for goods valued at 800 USD or less ended for all countries on 29 August 2025 under Executive Order 14324 (CBP, Suspension of Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment). Customs and Border Protection then made the suspension indefinite in an interim final rule published on 24 June 2026 and effective on 24 July 2026, which also created a postal informal entry process for mail valued at 2,500 USD or less. A low value parcel to a United States address is now a dutiable import, which is why clearance now touches consignments that used to pass without an assessment.
The European Union is moving the same way on a slower clock.
The Commission welcomes the political agreement reached by EU Member States today within the Council to remove the 150 EUR customs duty relief threshold.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, 13 November 2025
The interim measure is a flat duty of 3 EUR charged per item rather than per parcel, on distance sales valued up to 150 EUR, running from 1 July 2026 until 1 July 2028 (European Commission, removal of the 150 EUR threshold). United Kingdom rules are unchanged since 2021: VAT is due on everything except gifts worth 39 GBP or less, and customs duty starts above 135 GBP (GOV.UK, Tax and customs for goods sent from abroad).
Why the tracking line goes quiet during clearance
Customs authorities do not scan parcels for tracking purposes, so a gap of 5 to 10 days with no event at all is normal at this point in the journey. The events a recipient reads are produced by the postal operator when it hands an item over and when it takes it back, and nothing in between those 2 moments generates a message. Scanning practice at border facilities is also imperfect.
Package data showed missing, delayed, simultaneous, and non-sequential scans.
United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, report 21-197-R22, 2 June 2022
That audit reviewed 543 packages at International Service Centers and found customers receiving "processed through" messages while their packages were still sitting at the facility (USPS OIG, International Mail Operations and Performance Data). A stale last line is therefore weak evidence about where a parcel is. Cross-border items also change reporting system at the border, which is a second reason the feed thins out and a common cause of tracking events from a different postal service appearing part way through a journey.
What a clearance event does not tell you
"Customs clearance completed" is a permission, not a movement, and a gap of 1 to 2 days between that event and the next physical scan is normal. The release is recorded when the decision is taken, and the parcel still has to be re-sorted, loaded and dispatched into the domestic network afterwards.
Three further readings are wrong often enough to be worth naming. A completed clearance does not mean no money is owed, because in postal channels the charge is frequently collected at the door rather than before release. It does not mean the parcel was opened, since the majority of decisions are taken on data alone. And it carries no delivery estimate, because the remaining time depends on the domestic leg, which in a large country can be another 2 to 5 days.
How clearance differs by carrier and by marketplace
Express carriers and postal operators run 2 different clearance models. FedEx, UPS and DHL Express act as the importer's broker, file the entry themselves, advance the duty and bill it afterwards, which is why their shipments often show clearance completed within 24 hours of landing. USPS, Canada Post and Australia Post present mail to the national authority and wait for a decision, then collect any charge from the addressee at delivery, which adds a notification cycle to the timeline.
Marketplaces sit on top of both models. AliExpress, Temu, Shein and eBay collect destination tax at checkout for consignments inside the relevant threshold: 150 EUR under the Import One Stop Shop in the European Union, 135 GBP in the United Kingdom and 1,000 AUD in Australia. A parcel bought that way should clear without a payment demand, and a demand that arrives anyway usually means the tax number was missing from the declaration rather than that the buyer owes the tax twice. Shipments marked DDP, delivered duty paid, work the same way through the seller's own broker.
When a clearance stage stops being routine
Two signals separate a normal wait from a stuck parcel: no new event for more than 10 days after a presentation to customs scan, and an unanswered request for payment or documents. The second is the more urgent, because holding time is finite. GOV.UK guidance states that delivery companies "normally hold your parcel for about 3 weeks" before returning it to the sender, and other markets apply comparable storage limits.
Responsibility splits along a clean line. The recipient handles the duty payment and any request for identity or licence documents, because the goods are being imported in their name. The sender is the party that can open a formal inquiry with the postal operator, since the contract of carriage is theirs. Where a parcel is genuinely detained rather than merely queued, the reasons behind the detention, the paperwork required and the possible outcomes are a separate subject with their own rules.
What customs clearance is confused with
5 adjacent statuses get read as customs holds when only 1 of them is a hold. The table below separates them.
| Status | What it means | Is the parcel stopped |
|---|---|---|
| Electronic information submitted, Awaiting item | The declaration data arrived before the parcel did, often 1 to 5 days ahead | No, the item may not even have left the origin country |
| In transit, Processed through facility | The item is moving inside a postal network, before or after the border | No |
| Customs clearance, Presented to import customs | The declaration is with the authority and awaiting a decision | Not yet, this is the queue rather than a hold |
| Held by import customs, Held at customs | An officer has intervened and wants payment, documents or an inspection | Yes, and action by the recipient is usually needed |
| Customs clearance completed, Released from customs | The decision is made and the item is back with the post | No, expect movement within 1 to 2 days |
The most useful habit at this stage is to read the whole event history rather than the last line, because the presentation event and the release event together show how long a parcel has actually been in the customs queue. A number that has produced no destination-country event at all is a different problem from one stalled at the border, and the format of the number itself often reveals which network should be reporting: see what a tracking number looks like. One caution is worth keeping throughout: genuine duty demands come from the delivering postal operator or carrier through its own notice or account, never through an unsolicited text message linking to a payment page.