"Customs clearance" appears on a tracking page in a dozen forms: on its own, with "export" or "import" in front of it, with "awaiting", "in progress", "completed" or "released" after it, as DHL's "clearance event", as SHEIN's "customs release" and "CBP release", and in French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Each scan says where the parcel is in the border process without saying what the process is. This page is the hub for that family: what customs clearance is, the scans in the order they appear, how long each stage normally takes where that is known, who pays the duties, and the one stage where you have to do something.
Short answer: Customs clearance is the check a parcel from outside the customs area gets before it can be delivered; the European Commission defines clearance "for release for free circulation" as "the documented permission granted by the national customs authority in the EU to allow the goods to be used or consumed in the EU", and U.S. Customs and Border Protection describes the same step as an official who will "assess the proper duty, and release it for delivery." Every international parcel is cleared twice: once on the export side, which clears it to leave, and once on the import side in your country, which is the clearance that decides delivery and any charges. Most parcels clear in a day or two. The only time you must act is when the carrier asks for a payment or a document.
What customs clearance is
A customs border is a checkpoint between the sender's country and yours. At it, customs decides whether the parcel can enter and what it owes. That decision needs paperwork: a value, a product classification and a declaration of who pays. The retailer or its forwarder files the declaration; the customs authority checks it, assesses any duty and tax, and releases the parcel. The EU's customs authority states that goods below the duty threshold "are also subject to customs clearance", so a clearance scan does not mean a bill is coming; it means the parcel is going through the check every parcel gets.
Two things follow. First, the shopper is not the declarant: on a SHEIN order, the status "Your package is awaiting customs clearance, and SHEIN will be in charge of the entire process" says exactly that, and on AliExpress and Temu orders the shipper-side paperwork handles the entry. Second, the words "customs" and "completed" arrive early, on the export side, long before the clearance that matters. That is the most common misreading on a cross-border tracking page.
The customs scans, in order
| Order | Scan | Which side | What it records | What comes next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customs declaration completed / export customs declaration completed | Export | The declaration for the export step has been lodged with customs and accepted. Paperwork, not release | The export clearance, then the departure scans |
| 2 | Export customs clearance completed / export clearance success / clearance processing completed - export | Export | The customs authority of the origin country has accepted the export declaration and cleared the parcel to leave | Airport or "in transit" scans, then a long quiet stretch |
| 3 | Awaiting customs clearance / consignment information reported to customs / prepared for customs clearance | Import | The parcel is in the destination country and queued for the customs check | The review |
| 4 | In customs / customs clearance in progress / customs is actively reviewing submitted documents / clearance event | Import | The entry is being checked; a few days is routine. On DHL, "clearance event" records any customs processing step and is usually routine | Release, or a request for payment or a document |
| 5 | Held at customs / customs hold | Import | The parcel is retained for inspection, for a missing document, or pending payment of duties and tax | A request from the carrier, or release once it is resolved |
| 6 | Customs clearance completed / clearance processing completed - import / cleared from customs / customs released / customs release / CBP release | Import | The destination country's customs has finished with the parcel and released it for delivery | Handover to the local carrier, arrival at a local facility, out for delivery |
| 7 | Tax paid | Import | Import charges have been settled | Nothing |
The export and import scans are the two most confused, because both contain "customs clearance completed". The rule: if the scan has "export" in it, or arrives before the flight, it is the origin side and the parcel still has to fly, land and clear import customs. "Customs clearance completed" without "export", after the arrival in your country, is the release that starts the delivery leg. The full reading of each export wording is in export customs clearance completed meaning and customs declaration completed meaning; the import release is in customs clearance completed meaning, with the "clearance processing completed" import and export variants in clearance processing completed meaning, DHL's wording in clearance event on DHL tracking and SHEIN's in customs release on SHEIN.
How long customs clearance takes
Customs clearance usually takes anywhere from a few hours to two or three business days for a normal parcel, and most clear within 24 to 48 hours. It takes longer, sometimes one to two weeks, when duties or taxes are owed and unpaid, paperwork is missing or incorrect, the parcel is selected for inspection, or the customs office is backlogged. A parcel sitting at customs for under three business days is normal and needs no action; past that, check for a duty or documents request from the carrier. AliExpress tells its buyers customs "can take 7-14 days depending on your country's regulations". The stage-by-stage detail, with the causes of each delay, is in how long does customs clearance take.
After the release, the quiet stretch before the first local carrier scan is the ordinary handover gap, usually one to three days, not a customs problem. No retailer publishes a delivery time from the release scan.
No customs authority publishes a maximum hold time for an inspection. The clock that does have a published deadline is payment: for parcels into the UK, the government states that Royal Mail, Parcelforce or the courier "will normally hold your parcel for about 3 weeks" after sending you the bill, and "if you have not paid the bill by then, your parcel will be returned to the sender." The three clocks, inspection, payment and the carrier's storage window, are set out in how long can customs hold a package.
Duties, taxes and who pays
Two charges show up at the border, and they are not the same thing: duties are a tax on the product itself, based on its type, value and country of origin; import VAT or sales tax is charged on the value. Who pays depends on how the retailer shipped the parcel. With DDP (delivered duty paid) the seller collects duties and taxes at checkout and the parcel clears with everything prepaid; with DDU, formally DAP today (delivered duty unpaid), the carrier or customs stops the parcel at the border and bills the customer before handing it over. Same product, same lane, two different experiences at the door. The models are compared in DDP vs DDU and cross-border shipping: duties, customs and DDP.
When a charge applies, it is collected when the parcel reaches the destination country: the carrier contacts you, the person receiving the parcel pays, and the retailer generally cannot say in advance what it will be. ASOS, for example, says that orders sent to EU mainland addresses are usually not subject to customs or import charges, and that where a charge applies its delivery partner contacts you by SMS or email; the Ireland case is in ASOS customs charges in Ireland. Pay only through the official channel that quotes your tracking number. Messages posing as customs or a courier that ask for a fee without that number are scams; Temu's own tracking page warns about exactly these.
When a customs scan is a problem, and what to do
A package stuck in customs is almost never randomly stuck. The causes are consistent, and most of them are the sender's to fix: unpaid duties or import VAT on a DDU parcel (the parcel is not stuck, it is held for payment), missing or vague paperwork, a valuation query, or restricted or inspected goods. Match your action to the stage:
- Export scans, then silence. Normal. The parcel is on its way to your country; the import clearance is still ahead.
- "Awaiting customs clearance" or "in customs" for under three business days. Normal. Nothing to do.
- A payment or document request from the carrier through the official channel. Act: pay or supply it. The parcel does not move until you do, and the UK's three-week payment window shows how the clock runs.
- Over a week in clearance with no request and no change. The problem is usually paperwork on the sender's side. Contact the retailer, not the carrier: the retailer or its forwarder is the declarant. On SHEIN, over a week deserves a support ticket; on AliExpress, refunds are not available "if you refuse customs clearance", so do not refuse the parcel to avoid a charge.
- "Returned to sender" after customs. An unpaid charge, a refusal or a missing document; what happens to the order is in package returned to sender meaning.
The full playbook, cause by cause, is in package stuck in customs; the waiting stage is in awaiting customs clearance meaning.
Translations people search
| Language | "Customs clearance completed" | "Awaiting customs clearance" | "Held at customs" | Full glossary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| French | Dédouanement terminé / libéré par la douane | En attente de dédouanement | Retenu en douane | statuts de suivi en anglais |
| Italian | Sdoganamento completato / rilasciato dalla dogana | In attesa di sdoganamento | Fermo in dogana | stati di tracciamento in inglese |
| German | Zollabfertigung abgeschlossen / vom Zoll freigegeben | Wartet auf Zollabfertigung | Vom Zoll zurückgehalten | Sendungsstatus auf Englisch |
| Spanish | Despacho de aduana completado / liberado por la aduana | A la espera del despacho de aduana | Retenido en aduana | estados de seguimiento en inglés |
| Portuguese | Desembaraço aduaneiro concluído / liberada pela alfândega | Aguardando desembaraço aduaneiro | Retida na alfândega | status de rastreamento em inglês |
SHEIN's Portuguese app calls the review stage "despacho aduaneiro"; that status, and what follows it, is in despacho aduaneiro na SHEIN.
For merchants
Customs is the most expensive silence in a parcel's journey: a hold with no explanation is where the support tickets, the refused parcels and the chargebacks start, and a brand selling across borders sees it on its own orders, in every language and in every carrier's wording. The fix has two parts. On the shipping side, decide DDP or DDU per market with the refusal rate in view, and get the declaration right, because most doorstep disasters trace back to the documents rather than the carrier. On the tracking side, give customs its own message in the customer's language: which stage the parcel is in, whether a payment is expected and from whom, and a prompt only when the release runs later than the carrier's normal window. Pango normalises the customs events of every connected carrier into one status set in the customer's language and watches the gap between events instead of showing each carrier's words. If this stage is generating tickets, the options to compare are in carrier management software.
The bottom line
Customs clearance is one check, recorded twice: an export scan that clears the parcel to leave, and an import scan in your country that releases it for delivery. Most of the scans between them are routine and need nothing from you, and most parcels clear within a day or two. The only stage that needs you is a payment or document request through the official channel; past a week with no request, the retailer is the one to ask.
