United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division)

Name: United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division)
Creator: United Nations
License: https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html

Open · redistributedcustom-terms-comtradeInternational Trade

Redistributable. This source is served as canonical Parquet under the license below, with attribution and provenance preserved.

Coverage

Series catalogued

791

Temporal coverage

2014-12-31 – 2025-12-31

Licensing & provenance

License: custom-terms-comtrade
License URL: https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html
Required attribution: Source: United Nations, UN Comtrade (© United Nations)
Redistribution: Permitted (served here)
Commercial use: Restricted / no
Modification: Permitted
Provider homepage: https://comtradeplus.un.org
Provider terms: https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html

How to cite

United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division). Retrieved from https://comtradeplus.un.org. Compiled and redistributed by the Elkassabgi Data Library.

Processing: Retrieved from the official source, normalized to a long {series_key, obs_date, value} schema (period-start dates), de-duplicated, and stored as zstd Parquet. Compiled and redistributed by the Elkassabgi Data Library.

Access & mirrors

Download: Select & download comtrade series as CSV →
API: Get a free API key, then GET /v1/series/<id>.csv
Canonical landing: https://econdatalibrary.com/comtrade
Update cadence: annual
Automated refresh: live — this database is on the daily update run
Update strategy: extend by date
Storage layout: single parquet (comtrade.parquet); 24,086 rows / 713 series; schema series_key(str), obs_date(date32, Dec-31 annual), value(float64); data spans 2014-12-31..2025-12-31

Full description

UN Comtrade — annual total merchandise trade (imports/exports) for 200+ countries. License: CC BY 3.0 IGO Source: https://comtradeapi.un.org/ No API key required (public preview endpoint, free tier). Coverage: * Annual total merchandise trade (imports CIF, exports FOB) * ~200 reporting countries × 2014–present * cmdCode=TOTAL (all goods aggregate) * Additional: total services trade, bilateral totals for major partners Rate limits: ~100 requests/hour on free tier; handled with 2s rate limiting. Run: python jobs/ingest_comtrade.py

Structured metadata

schema.org/Dataset (Google Dataset Search)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division)",
  "description": "Merchandise trade — total imports and exports by reporter country. United Nations. 791 series, 2014–2025. Free download.",
  "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/comtrade",
  "identifier": "comtrade",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true,
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com"
  },
  "includedInDataCatalog": {
    "@type": "DataCatalog",
    "@id": "https://econdatalibrary.com/#catalog",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/catalog"
  },
  "creator": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "United Nations",
    "url": "https://comtradeplus.un.org"
  },
  "license": "https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html",
  "keywords": [
    "International Trade",
    "comtrade"
  ],
  "temporalCoverage": "2014-12-31/2025-12-31",
  "creditText": "Source: United Nations, UN Comtrade (© United Nations)",
  "citation": "United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division). Retrieved from https://comtradeplus.un.org. Compiled and redistributed by the Elkassabgi Data Library.",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/econdatalibrary-comtrade",
    "https://zenodo.org/communities/econdatalibrary"
  ],
  "distribution": [
    {
      "@type": "DataDownload",
      "name": "comtrade — CSV",
      "encodingFormat": "text/csv",
      "contentUrl": "https://econdatalibrary.com/download.html?source=comtrade",
      "license": "https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html"
    }
  ]
}

Croissant (ML-ready, schema.org JSON-LD)

{
  "@context": {
    "@language": "en",
    "@vocab": "https://schema.org/",
    "cr": "http://mlcommons.org/croissant/",
    "data": {
      "@id": "cr:data",
      "@type": "@json"
    },
    "dataType": {
      "@id": "cr:dataType",
      "@type": "@vocab"
    },
    "sc": "https://schema.org/",
    "conformsTo": "dct:conformsTo",
    "dct": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
  },
  "@type": "sc:Dataset",
  "conformsTo": "http://mlcommons.org/croissant/1.0",
  "name": "comtrade",
  "description": "Merchandise trade — total imports and exports by reporter country. United Nations. 791 series, 2014–2025. Free download.",
  "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/comtrade",
  "creator": {
    "@type": "sc:Organization",
    "name": "United Nations",
    "url": "https://comtradeplus.un.org"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "sc:Organization",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com"
  },
  "license": "https://comtrade.un.org/licenseagreement.html",
  "keywords": [
    "International Trade"
  ],
  "temporalCoverage": "2014-12-31/2025-12-31",
  "citation": "United Nations — UN Comtrade (UN Statistics Division). Retrieved from https://comtradeplus.un.org. Compiled and redistributed by the Elkassabgi Data Library.",
  "distribution": [
    {
      "@type": "cr:FileObject",
      "@id": "comtrade-csv",
      "name": "comtrade-csv",
      "description": "Per-series CSV, downloadable with a free API key.",
      "contentUrl": "https://econdatalibrary.com/download.html?source=comtrade",
      "encodingFormat": "text/csv"
    }
  ]
}

Part of the Econ Data Library catalog · metadata generated 2026-08-02 from the central registry · browse all datasets