How CarryRules works
CarryRules answers one question: what happens if you put this item in your bag and cross this border. The answer has to come from the authority that decides it, so every rule on this site carries the sentence the authority wrote, the document it came from, and the date we last read it there.
This page explains how a rule gets onto the site and what each date on it means. The editorial policy covers who decides, the source policy covers what we will and will not cite, coverage lists what is missing, and corrections is how you tell us we got something wrong.
How a rule is made
Every rule starts at a primary source: a customs authority's own page or passenger guide, a ministry's instrument, a national legal gazette, or the binding international text where one governs. A rule record stores the verdict, the number, the conditions, and a verbatim sentence from that source in the source's own language — Turkish rules quote Turkish, Greek rules quote Greek.
The quote is not decoration. It is the test. Before a rule can be published, its stored sentence has to be found again in the live document at the cited address. If the sentence is not there, the rule does not publish, whatever it says.
Research and extraction are done by automated systems working page by page through official sources. Every extraction is then checked mechanically against the live source text, and a second pass re-reads the document and judges whether the record matches what the authority actually says. Where a rule is contested — two sources disagreeing, or an extraction that does not match the page — it is held back and re-read at the source rather than averaged or guessed.
The editorial decisions — what counts as a source, what may publish, what must be held back, and what happens when authorities contradict each other — are made by CarryRules and published on this site, so you can hold the rules to them. The reading itself is automated, at a scale no person could match: tens of thousands of quote checks against live government documents.
What it takes to publish
A rule publishes when its quote is confirmed at its source. Three things hold a rule back:
- the cited source and another authority contradict each other,
- two readings of the same document disagree,
- the source cannot be reached and the claim cannot be checked.
Some national sources block automated access or publish only scanned documents. Where a rule could not be confirmed at the national authority but is settled by a binding international or union instrument, we publish it citing that instrument and say so on the rule.
What the dates mean
Verified is the date we last confirmed that the cited document still contains the sentence this page quotes. Updated is the date the rule itself last changed. A rule can carry a recent verification date and an older update date: the source was re-read and still said the same thing.
We do not move a date because a page has been sitting still. A date changes when something real changed.
Two different rulebooks
A traveller with a bag faces two authorities that do not consult each other. Aviation security and the airline decide what may go in the cabin and in the hold. The destination's customs decides what may enter the country and in what quantity. A lithium power bank is a cabin-only item for the first and an unremarkable personal effect for the second; a carton of cigarettes is the reverse.
Most sites answer one half. CarryRules holds both and shows them side by side on the same page, because the answer a traveller needs is the stricter of the two.
What this site is not
CarryRules is an independent reference, not a government service and not legal advice. The officer at the border applies the rule, and an officer's discretion is part of most customs regimes. Where a rule is discretionary, we say so rather than printing a number that sounds firmer than it is.
Before you travel with something that matters, follow the source link on the rule and read the authority's own words. Every rule on this site gives you that link precisely so you can.