Fees: what you pay, and at which stage
The item price is the smallest part of the answer. Total cost is built from six separate charges, and knowing which stage each one belongs to is how you compare two options honestly.
The six charges
| Charge | Paid at | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Item price | When ordering | Set by the seller, not by the platform |
| Domestic delivery | When ordering | Seller to warehouse, inside China — separate from international shipping |
| Service charge | When ordering | Usually a small percentage of the item price; check the current rate |
| International shipping | When submitting the parcel | Billed on chargeable weight — the greater of actual and volumetric |
| Cover / insurance | When submitting the parcel | Often optional, priced as a percentage of declared value |
| Duty and tax | On arrival, to your country | Not paid to the platform. Rules vary by country and change often |
Comparing two orders honestly
Take the two candidate items and write down six numbers: item price, domestic delivery, service charge, international shipping, cover, and your best estimate of duty. Add them. The item with the lower price tag loses more often than people expect, because a bulky or heavy item moves the shipping line by more than the price gap.
If one option is retail packaging and the other is not, add the repacking charge to the one you want boxed. If one is a two-week wait, add the storage risk.
- Cheap, light, flat items almost always win on total cost
- Bulky items: compare priced parcels, not item prices
- Two light parcels can beat one heavy parcel — ask for both quotes
- Insurance is cheap relative to the value it protects on high-ticket items
Where money is genuinely saved
Three places. Consolidation, when it keeps you under a weight ceiling. Route choice, because two routes serving the same destination can differ substantially on the same weight. And timing: ordering slow items early enough to combine them, without overstaying the free storage window.
One place money is not saved: undervaluing the parcel. It reduces duty in the best case and removes your cover in the worst, which is the wrong way round for anything you would be upset to lose.
A worked example, using placeholders
Say an item is priced at 100 units at the source, domestic delivery 8, service charge 5%. One pair of boots weighs 1.6 kg packed and occupies 0.028 m³, which at a divisor of 6000 gives roughly 4.7 kg volumetric — so you pay for about 4.7 kg, not 1.6 kg, and the pair becomes substantially more expensive than its price suggested.
The same 4.7 kg of chargeable weight spent on two flat items would carry far more goods. That is the whole argument for planning a parcel by weight rather than by item price, and it is why this page puts the arithmetic before the shopping.
Is there a fee for using the spreadsheet?
Why is international shipping so much more than domestic?
Can I reduce the shipping charge?
Do you earn a commission from these links?
How do I avoid duty surprises?
Keep reading
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Kakobuy Shipping Cost: How the Number Is Actually Built
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