Methods and apparatus are provided for fast item identification. A plurality of sensors capture data for an unknown item that is moved past the sensors. The data is processed to produce a plurality of physical attributes related to the unknown item. The physical attributes are used to search a database of physical attributes for a large number of known items where the unknown item is one of the known items. A small set of known items are selected where the physical attributes of the known items match the physical attributes of the unknown item. Further processing of the selected set of known items identifies the unknown item as one of the set of known items.