Where the money actually goes
Six things are charged on a typical order. Only two of them appear in the price you were quoted, and the biggest one is usually invisible.
The six lines on a finished order
Written in the order you pay them, not the order anyone advertises them.
1. The item price, paid to the seller
Start with the selected variant’s live price. Confirm any purchase handling charge, domestic delivery fee and currency conversion separately.
2. Domestic shipping inside China
Seller to the agent warehouse. Often a few yuan, sometimes free, occasionally more than the item.
3. The agent service fee
29 of the 34 agents in the sampled table charge nothing here. The advertised zero is real.
4. The exchange rate margin
Not a line item. It is the gap between the rate they charge you and the market rate, applied to everything above. This is where the money is, and it is the only one with no row on your invoice.
5. International freight
Quoted per line per weight. Varies by more than you expect: see the route tables.
6. Duty and tax at your end
Nobody controls this and nobody will promise you a number. Some lines price it in and say so, most do not.
Line four is the one this page exists for. You can compare lines three and five on any comparison site. Line four only shows up if someone measures the actual conversion, which is what the all-in column below does.
The exchange rate, which is the real price of the service
The spread between the cheapest and most expensive agent in the sampled table is about eighteen percentage points. On a 300 dollar haul that is roughly 53 dollars.
29 of 34agents
charge no service fee at all, and take the margin on the rate instead
sampled 2026-10-02 source
| Agent | All-in markup | FX markup | Service fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugargoo | +0.4% | +0.4% | $0 |
| Fansbuy | +1.3% | +1.3% | $0 |
| LoongBuy | +2.0% | +2.0% | $0 |
| CSSBuy | +6.4% | +0.4% | 6% |
| LoloBuy | +7.0% | +7.0% | $0 |
| HUBBUY | +7.1% | +7.1% | $0 |
| FishGoo | +7.3% | +7.3% | $0 |
| TigBuy | +7.3% | -2.7% | 10% (6–8% VIP) |
| Lovegobuy | +8.3% | +8.3% | $0 |
| KakoBuy | +8.5% | +8.5% | $0 |
| Superbuy | +8.6% | +8.6% | $0 |
| Eastmallbuy | +9.7% | +9.7% | $0 |
| OKEYHAUL | +10.1% | +10.1% | 0 (standard platforms) |
| MyCNBox | +10.3% | +10.3% | $0 |
| Hoobuy | +11.1% | +11.1% | $0 |
| ZentBuy | +11.1% | +11.1% | $0 |
| USFans | +11.7% | +11.7% | $0 |
| Boonbuy | +12.1% | +12.1% | $0 |
| JoyAGoo | +12.1% | +12.1% | $0 |
| GTBuy | +12.1% | +12.1% | $0 (standard platforms) |
| UIDBuy | +12.2% | +12.2% | $0 |
| Orientdig | +12.2% | +12.2% | $0 |
| OOTDBuy | +12.2% | +12.2% | $0 |
| OopBuy | +12.2% | +12.2% | $0 |
| RizzitGO | +13.1% | +13.1% | $0 |
| Vigorbuy | +13.8% | +13.8% | $0 |
| DgoBuy | +13.9% | +13.9% | $0 |
| OssBuy | +14.1% | +14.1% | $0 |
| LitBuy | +16.1% | +16.1% | $0 (0% markup) |
| Hipobuy | +16.3% | +16.3% | $0 |
| iTaoBuy | +18.1% | +18.1% | $0 |
| GoatedBuy | not stated | +5.8% | not stated |
| Fsbuy | not stated | +7.7% | not stated |
| Wheebuy | not stated | +12.2% | not stated |
Sampled 2026-10-02. Historical comparison sample; confirm a live quote before ordering.
One figure in that table is worth staring at. The same agent that sat at +8.9% in a July sample sits at +2.0% in the October one. Nothing visible changed. If a page tells you who is cheapest and does not tell you when it last looked, it is describing a different month.
The visible fee, and why a bigger one can cost you less
Only 2 agents in the sampled table charge a service fee at all. The instinct is to avoid them. The instinct is wrong, or at least incomplete.
Take the clearest case. One agent charges a 6% service fee and marks the exchange rate up by 0.4%, which comes to 6.4% all-in. Several agents charging nothing come to 12% or more all-in, because the whole margin is in the conversion. The agent with the bigger visible number is the cheaper one, and it is also the one whose pricing you can audit.
So the rule is simple and almost nobody follows it: compare the all-in column, never the fee column. A fee you can see is a fee you can check.
Storage, where the free number is not the number that matters
Free storage in the sampled table runs from 60 days to 300. That is the advertised figure and it is the one every comparison page reproduces.
The figure that actually decides outcomes is the ceiling, and it lives in the terms rather than on the homepage. One agent states a 90 day standard period counted from the moment the order is marked in warehouse, then a hard limit of 180 days, after which it stops providing storage and the goods are treated as abandoned. Miss the first window without paying an extension and the same thing happens earlier.
If you are the kind of buyer who accumulates items for months before shipping, that second number is the one to look up, and you will have to open the terms page to find it.
What to add up before you commit
Four numbers, in this order. The all-in markup for the agent, from a dated table. The freight for your destination at your weight, from a dated table. The duty your country charges above its threshold, which is a guess. And the storage ceiling, in case the parcel sits.
Two of those four are published and comparable. One is published and buried. One is nobody's to promise. Treating the fourth as free is the single most common way people end up paying more than they planned.
Freight by destination covers the second, and the six dimensions puts fees back in context with the rest.
These are snapshot numbers, not live rates. The date shown is when the figure was sampled, not when this page was built.