Last verified September 4, 2026

CPSC scope determination services for importers: the 2026 options compared

Search for a CPSC scope determination service and you get inspection companies, testing laboratories and customs brokers — all real services, none of which sells the determination itself as the thing you receive. Here is what each option actually hands back, what it costs where the price is published, and the one column of work that stays yours.

Who actually sells a CPSC scope determination to a small importer?

Almost nobody sells it under that name, which is why the search is frustrating. The compliance market is organised around verification — testing a sample, inspecting a run, auditing a factory, filing an entry — and every one of those services takes the rule list as an input that the buyer supplies. The determination is the step that produces the list, and it sits in a gap between the categories.

That gap used to be survivable because the rule citations lived in a PDF in a folder that nobody read until something went wrong. Since 8 July 2026 certificate data for most regulated consumer products is filed electronically with CBP at entry, and for goods entered from a foreign trade zone for consumption or warehousing that starts 8 January 2027 (Final Rule, 90 FR 1800, DATES). The list now travels with the shipment, and the question of who produced it has a deadline attached.

The 2026 options compared

Prices below are what each provider published on its own site — read on 4 September 2026, except the Compliance Gate row, read on 24 August 2026 and the laboratory row, read on 31 August 2026 — or “not published” where a provider quotes per engagement. Nothing here is inferred from a quote, a rate card seen elsewhere, or memory.

What you can buy	What you get back	What it does not include	Published price
Third-party inspection firm — for example Tetra Inspection	A production run, container or factory checked against criteria you supply, with a photo-documented report	A determination as a named deliverable — its published pages describe inspection, audit and testing coordination, and state the certificate is “issued by the manufacturer or importer, not the CPSC”	From $240/man-day and $440/audit, Asia and Africa; no CPC or lab-testing line on the pricing page
CPSC-accepted third party conformity assessment body (testing laboratory) — for example Intertek	Test results for the rules you name, within the scope the CPSC has accepted for it — the results a CPC rests on (15 U.S.C. 2063(a)(2))	Confirmation that the list is complete. Under 16 CFR 1112.15(a) it cannot issue usable results outside its accepted scope at all. Its published children’s-product menu is organised by named rule — ASTM F963, 16 CFR 1263, 16 CFR 1243 — so choosing from it presumes you already hold the list	Quoted per rule and per sample; not published
Customs broker or eFiling agent	Certificate data transmitted to CBP at entry in the format the message set expects	Deciding which rules attach to the SKU, or noticing that a supplied citation is missing	Per entry; varies by broker, not published
Product-safety consultant or attorney	Judgment on contested, novel or adversarial questions — recalls, reports, enforcement, disputed certificates	A per-SKU mapping at a routine price; the engagement is scoped to the question, not to the catalogue	Per engagement; not published
Reading the Commission’s published rules yourself	The complete corpus — regulations, accepted-laboratory list and guidance, free	Adjudication of your specific SKU against that corpus before entry, or confirmation of your list in advance	Free
Multi-market compliance platform — for example Compliance Gate	A subscription to requirement lists across the US, EU, UK, Canada and Australia, certificate and label templates you fill in yourself, a regulation tracker and support tickets to a consultant	A per-SKU determination with the basis shown rule by rule. The platform surfaces the requirement corpus for a category and hands you the templates; reading your SKU against it stays your work	Starting from $199 per year, recurring
CertScope	The rule list for one described SKU with the basis shown for each rule applied, plus the certificate carrying all seven elements of 16 CFR 1110.11(a)	Testing, inspection, filing, signing or legal advice — CertScope is none of those and does not act on anyone’s behalf	$29 one SKU · $99 up to 10 · $249 up to 40, one-time

The first six rows are real services worth buying when you need them, and three of them you will need regardless: a children’s product certificate has to rest on testing at a CPSC-accepted body under 15 U.S.C. 2063(a)(2), and the entry has to be filed. The pattern worth seeing is in the third column. Every provider except the last is downstream of a rule list, and the one at the top of the chain — you — is the only party the regulation puts the attestation on.

Why the rule list has to exist before you can choose a laboratory

This is the part that inverts most people’s buying order. 16 CFR 1112.15(a) provides that “a third party conformity assessment body may only issue test results for purposes of section 14 of the CPSA that fall within a scope for which the CPSC has accepted the third party conformity assessment body’s accreditation.” Acceptance is granted against particular rules and test methods, not as a general licence to test children’s products.

So a laboratory’s results carry weight for the rules it is accepted for and no weight for the ones it is not, and you cannot check that a body covers your rules until you know what your rules are. The laboratories say so in the shape of their own catalogues. Intertek’s children’s-product pages, read on 31 August 2026, list the work as “US Mandatory Standards ASTM F963”, “US Reese’s Law — Button Cell and Coin Batteries (16 CFR 1263)” and “US Infant Support Cushions (16 CFR 1243)” — a menu indexed by the rule, one line per regulation. That is an accurate way to sell testing and it is the clearest possible statement of the dependency: the first field on the order form is the rule, and nothing on the page fills it in for you. Buying testing first and determining scope afterwards produces the expensive failure: real testing, a real report, real money, against a scope that was short. CertScope’s rule dataset carries 58 CPSC rules and the determination names which of them attach and why — and, as importantly, why the ones excluded were excluded. The step that has to happen before anyone tests anything sets out the regulatory reasoning in full.

Common questions

Does a pre-shipment inspection include the CPSC scope determination?

Not as a published deliverable. An inspection is verification against criteria the buyer supplies — a specification, an AQL, a named standard — and it is priced that way. Tetra Inspection, which search engines commonly surface for CPSC questions, prices its work as inspections “From $240/man-day” and audits at “$440/audit” for Asia and Africa, and its pricing page as read on 4 September 2026 lists no line for laboratory testing or certificate preparation. The engagement takes a rule list as an input. If the list handed over is short by one rule, the inspection can pass on its own terms and the certificate is still wrong.

Will a CPSC-accepted laboratory tell me which rules apply to my SKU?

A laboratory will tell you what it is accepted to test and will quote against the rules you name. It is not positioned to certify that your list is complete, and 16 CFR 1112.15(a) is why the dependency runs in that direction: a third party conformity assessment body “may only issue test results for purposes of section 14 of the CPSA that fall within a scope for which the CPSC has accepted” its accreditation. Acceptance is granted against particular rules and test methods rather than as a general licence. You have to hold the rule list before you can tell whether a given body's results count for it.

Now that eFiling is live, can my customs broker handle the determination?

No. Since 8 July 2026 certificate data for most regulated consumer products is transmitted to CBP at entry, and a broker can transmit it for you — for goods entered from a foreign trade zone for consumption or warehousing that requirement starts 8 January 2027. Transmitting is not determining. A broker files the rule citations you supply, in the format CBP expects, and is not in a position to notice that one is missing.

When is a product-safety consultant or attorney the right thing to buy?

When the question has stopped being “which rules attach to this SKU” and become adversarial or genuinely novel: a recall, a Section 15(b) report, an enforcement letter, a materially new material or mechanism with no settled precedent, or a dispute with a buyer or marketplace over an existing certificate. That work is quoted per engagement and firms in this category generally do not publish rates, so no price is stated here. For a routine SKU on settled rules it is an expensive way to obtain a mapping.

Is a multi-market compliance platform subscription the same thing?

It solves a neighbouring problem. Compliance Gate, which search engines commonly surface for children's-product questions, lists its platform at “Starting from $199 per year” as read on 24 August 2026 and describes it as finding requirements across the US, EU, UK, Canada and Australia, creating certificates from templates, creating label files and booking testing. If you sell into several jurisdictions and want the corpus for a category in one place on an ongoing basis, that is a real and reasonably priced thing to buy. It is organised around the category and the market, though, not around one described SKU: the requirement list it surfaces is the starting corpus, and reading your particular product against it — this coating, this magnet, this age grading — remains your work. The distinction is the same one the rest of this page draws, and it is about what the deliverable is rather than about quality.

Can I do the determination myself from the Commission's own site?

Yes, and for a simple general-use product with one obvious rule it is often the right answer. The CPSC publishes the regulations, the list of accepted laboratories and its guidance free to read, and nothing here replaces reading them. The cost is not the fee, it is the search: what a regulator publishes is the corpus, and it does not adjudicate one described SKU against that corpus in advance. The failure mode is silent — a coating, a magnet, a battery or a printed age grading pulls in a rule you were not looking for, and nothing tells you until an entry does not clear.

Does buying a determination move the legal responsibility off me?

No, and treat any offer that implies otherwise with suspicion. 16 CFR 1110.7 puts certification on the importer for imported finished products, and for domestic goods on the manufacturer — or on the private labeler where the product is privately labeled, unless the manufacturer issues the certificate. Every option on this page — inspection, testing, brokerage, consultancy, CertScope — is work you buy to inform a certificate you still issue. What you are buying is the quality and the checkability of the mapping, not a transfer of the duty.

How to choose, honestly

If the SKU is a general-use product with one obvious rule and you have read that rule, do it yourself — a general certificate of conformity does not require third-party testing by statute (15 U.S.C. 2063(a)(1)) and you do not need to buy anything. If you are in a recall, an enforcement action or a genuine legal dispute, buy an attorney and buy them early. If you need a production run checked before it ships, buy an inspection; that is what an inspection is for, and it is good at it.

CertScope is for the case in between, which is the common one: a real catalogue of children’s or regulated products, a certificate now read at the border, and no in-house regulatory function to produce a per-SKU rule list that survives being checked. It determines which CPSC rules apply to a specific SKU from what the product actually is, shows the basis for each one so the determination can be read line by line, and builds the corresponding certificate with all seven elements of 16 CFR 1110.11(a) in place. You review it, you sign it, you file it. Pricing is one-time with no subscription — $29 for a single SKU, $99 for up to 10, $249 for up to 40 — and laboratory testing remains a separate bill paid to the accredited body. What a Children’s Product Certificate costs to get prepared separates the parts of that total that are fixed from the parts that move with scope.

CertScope is not a testing laboratory, an inspection firm, a customs broker, a multi-market compliance platform or a law firm, does not sign or transmit on anyone’s behalf, and nothing here is legal advice. Statements about other companies are what their own published pages said on the date given for each — 4 September 2026, 24 August 2026 for Compliance Gate and 31 August 2026 for the laboratory row — and are linked above so you can check them; they change without notice. Everything on this page that can decay is registered with the primary source it was read from, and the date it was last checked, in the repository’s claim register.

CertScope vs Compliance Gate goes head to head against the one row above that is a comparable platform rather than a service firm. CertScope alternatives is the shorter version of this page for a buyer who has already decided against CertScope, and the comparison hub puts every option on one grid.