You can establish whether a supplier is a real, trading company in about twenty minutes, mostly for free, before you send a quotation request or a deposit. Work in order of cost: the email domain, the domain's registration date, the company registration in its home country, the address on satellite view, a phone call to the switchboard. Then the check that settles it, which is whether an export shipment record exists under that legal name, for how many distinct buyers, and how recently. That is how to check if supplier is legit without commissioning an audit.
The short version
- A free email address behind a claim of twenty years of manufacturing is the cheapest red flag there is. Check the domain first.
- Every serious exporting country publishes a free company register. Read it before the brochure.
- A badge is not an audit. Alibaba's Gold Supplier tier is a paid membership; only Verified Supplier includes a third-party on-site assessment.
- The most conclusive single check is the shipment record: distinct buyers, destination markets and the date of the last shipment.
- No record where decades of exports were claimed is not proof of fraud. It is a question the supplier now has to answer.
How do you check if a supplier is legit?
Check five free things in order: the email domain, the domain's age, the company registration number in its home country, the address on satellite view, and a phone call answered in the company's name. Then check whether an export shipment record exists under that exact legal name.
How to check if supplier is legit: seven checks, cheapest first
Run these in sequence and stop as soon as one fails badly. Each step costs more effort than the last, so there is no reason to reach step six if step one already broke.
- The email domain. Does the address use the company's own domain? A Gmail, 163.com or QQ address for a twenty-year manufacturer needs an explanation.
- Domain age. Run the website through ICANN's registration data lookup. Registrant contact details are usually redacted; the creation date, registrar and status codes are not. A domain created eleven weeks ago under a claim of "established 2004" ends the conversation.
- Company registration. Ask for the registration number and check it on the home country's register. The legal name there must match the quotation exactly.
- The address on a map. Drop the registered address into satellite and street view. A stamping plant looks like a stamping plant. A residential tower, a serviced office or an empty plot is a different business from the one described to you.
- A phone call answered in the company's name. Call the landline on the register or website during local hours. Ask for a person by name, then ask for accounts. WhatsApp-only contact is weak evidence of a company.
- References you actually contact. Two buyers, in two countries, for the product you intend to buy. Then confirm those buyers really import it.
- The export shipment record. Does a record exist under the legal name, how many distinct buyers does it show, which markets, and when was the last shipment?
Is this supplier real? Read the register before the brochure
A website tells you what someone wants you to believe. A register tells you what was filed with a government. For most sourcing markets it is free and takes two minutes.
China. Every registered entity has an 18-character Unified Social Credit Code, printed at the top of the business licence as 统一社会信用代码. Ask for a licence photo and check the code on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at gsxt.gov.cn, which returns registration status and whether the company is flagged for abnormal operations. It is Chinese-language with a sliding CAPTCHA, so budget a few minutes. A supplier who will not send a licence photo has answered a different question.
India. Ask for three numbers. The CIN or LLPIN, checkable against MCA's company master data. The GSTIN, which the GST portal's Search Taxpayer tool confirms with registration status. And the 10-digit Importer Exporter Code, which DGFT's View Any IEC service returns free, without a login: enter the IEC plus the first three characters of the firm name for the firm name, registered address, date of issue and current status.
United Kingdom. Companies House is free, searchable by company name, number or officer, and gives you the filed documents themselves. Most of Europe runs an equivalent.
What matters is not which portal you used, but whether the legal name, number and address there match the paperwork you were sent. Any gap is what you ask about.
The strongest single check: does an export shipment record exist?
Registration proves a company was formed. It says nothing about whether it exports. The shipment record does, and it is the hardest part of a supplier's story to fabricate.
A website costs two hundred dollars and a weekend. Three years of shipments to nine buyers in four countries cannot be created retroactively.
Four things to look at. Existence: any shipment history under that exact legal name? Distinct buyers: one buyer across three years usually means an agent, or a trading arm living off a single account. Markets: "we export to Germany" reads differently when every recorded shipment went to one consignee in a free zone. Recency and trend: a full order book and a last shipment fourteen months ago are not the same company.
Coverage is uneven, so be honest with yourself about it. US inward vessel manifest data is legally public, but an importer or consignee can file for confidential treatment of its name and address under 19 CFR 103.31(d), so a real buyer can simply be absent. For India, TradeVerify works from mirrored licensed trade data. And a genuine factory that ships through an agent looks thin under its own name, so ask who the exporter of record is and check that name too.
Absence of a record is not proof of fraud. It is proof that the export history you were told about does not appear where export history appears.
Supplier red flags that should stop the order
None is conclusive alone. Two together, on a first order with money up front, is enough to slow down.
| Red flag | What it usually means | Cheapest way to test it |
|---|---|---|
| Price well below every other quote you hold | Deposit bait, a substituted grade, or a price no factory can hold | Ask in writing which grade the price assumes, plus the mill or test certificate |
| Free email domain, or a lookalike of the real one | No company mail system, or impersonation of a supplier you already use | Compare the sending domain character by character with the website |
| Urgency: "price valid today", "another buyer is paying now" | Compressing the window in which you would verify anything | Say you will confirm after verification. A real exporter holds or requotes |
| Refuses a video call or a walk along the production line | There may be no line. The "factory" is an office, or a listing | Ask for an unscheduled call: gate signage, licence on camera, machines running |
| Company name differs across quotation, licence, bank details and bill of lading | You are contracting with one entity and paying another | Put all four names side by side before the first payment |
| Bank beneficiary is an individual, or a company in a third country | Payment redirection, or a structure you were not told about | Beneficiary must equal the invoiced entity. Confirm changes by phone on an old number |
| Claims decades of exports, no shipment record | The export history is a sales story rather than a fact | Ask which years and markets, then compare against the record |
How to check if supplier is legit when the documents look perfect
Good forgeries exist, and a competent scam sends tidy paperwork. What forgers get wrong is consistency across documents never meant to be read together.
Line up the names on the proforma invoice, the commercial invoice, the packing list, the certificate of origin, the bill of lading and the bank details. The shipper on the bill of lading is the entity that actually shipped the goods. If that is a name you have never seen, ask why before the balance payment.
Treat marketplace badges as commercial products, because they are. Alibaba's Gold Supplier tier is a paid membership; the Verified Supplier tier is the one that includes a third-party on-site assessment by SGS or TÜV Rheinland. Paid presence on a platform is evidence of paying for presence on a platform.
Two more tells. A supplier who quotes CIF but cannot name the port of discharge, or who quietly becomes EXW after the deposit, does not handle exports routinely. And a telegraphic transfer to a new beneficiary is final in practice: if verification is incomplete, an LC, or a staged split with the balance against a copy bill of lading, leaves you holding something. Everything about how to check if a supplier is legitimate is cheaper before the wire than after.
How TradeVerify helps
TradeVerify covers the one step buyers cannot do alone: checking the trade record. Coverage is 15.7M+ companies across 240+ markets.
- Run the name. Enter the company on the TradeVerify supplier check and see whether an exporter by that name appears in the trade record at all. Free.
- Read the TradeScore report. Export history, distinct buyer count, destination markets, activity recency, shipment trend and red-flag screens in one place. The sample verification report shows the full output before you order one.
- Use it as one input, not a verdict. The record evidences trade activity. It does not audit a factory, test product quality, or confirm the person emailing you works there. Keep the registry check and the video call. Our method is set out on the about page.
- If you are the supplier being checked, claim your company profile and get document-verified so buyers stop guessing: see verification for suppliers.
Done in this order, you lose fewer deposits and stop walking away from good suppliers with bad websites.