What these tools are for
Buying from a Chinese marketplace through an agent involves four decisions, and each one has a way to get it wrong that costs real money. Which agent to route the order through. Which shipping line to take. What size to order. Whether to approve the parcel at QC. Every tool here maps to one of those four.
They are calculators rather than articles, because the questions have numeric answers. What does a 3 kg parcel to Manchester cost on an economy line? What does a $300 basket cost in fees at Sugargoo versus MuleBuy? What EU size is a 265 mm foot? These are answerable, and the answers change what you do next.
What we will not do
There are no invented numbers on this site. That sounds like a low bar, and in this category it is not — comparison pages routinely publish confident per-kilogram rate cards and agent scores with no source behind either.
Where a figure comes from somewhere, it is attributed. The shipping estimates interpolate between published 2 kg and 5 kg prices per route and say so on the page. Fee and Trustpilot data comes from a July 2026 comparison snapshot, named on the calculator. Ten of the eighteen agents in the link converter are missing from the fee calculator entirely, because we could not verify their rates and would rather leave a gap than fill it with a guess.
How the process actually runs
1. Find the item
Community spreadsheets, Yupoo albums from suppliers, or searching Taobao directly with the Chinese product name. The catalogue page lists 29 supplier albums sorted into 9 categories, which is faster than scrolling a flat list of links when you already know you want a Samba rather than a Jordan.
2. Convert the link
Whatever form the link arrives in, the useful part is the numeric product ID. The converter extracts it and rebuilds the URL for 18 agents, including from links that are already pointing at a different agent.
3. Pick an agent and order
You pay the agent, the agent buys from the seller, the item goes to their warehouse. Domestic Chinese shipping is usually a few yuan and often free. This step is where the exchange rate quietly does its work.
4. Check the QC photos
The warehouse photographs your item and holds it until you approve. This is the last cheap decision — a rejection here costs domestic return shipping, a rejection after international freight costs more than most items. The checklist covers what to look at.
5. Consolidate and ship
Ship several items together to pay the first-weight charge once. Free storage runs 60 to 100 days depending on the agent, so there is no rush — but past roughly 8–10 kg the per-kilo rate dominates and waiting stops saving you anything. The shipping calculator shows where that line falls for your route.
Three things that cost people the most money
Volumetric weight
Carriers bill on length × width × height ÷ 6000 when that exceeds the actual weight. Four pairs of sneakers in their boxes measure roughly 40×30×20 cm, which is 4 kg volumetric against maybe 1.8 kg actual. You pay for 4. Asking the agent to remove the boxes and vacuum-pack drops it to about 1.8 kg billed — on a US route, roughly $34 down to $22. It is free and almost nobody asks.
Converting sizes twice
UK, US and EU sizing are built on different units from different zero points, so each conversion rounds. Going UK to US to EU to a Chinese listing can drift a full size. Measure your foot in millimetres and convert once — millimetres are what the factory works to anyway.
Approving QC without looking
The most common fault is a warehouse pick error, not a manufacturing defect, and it is visible in twenty seconds if you compare the size stamp against the box label. Most buyers never do.
What the numbers actually say
A few figures come up often enough to be worth stating plainly, with their sources, rather than leaving buried in a calculator.
| Figure | Value | Source and caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Highest-rated agent | MuleBuy, 4.7 / 5 | Trustpilot, 2,813 reviews. July 2026 snapshot. |
| Most-reviewed agent | CNFans, 4.2 / 5 | 13,300 reviews — a lower score on far stronger evidence. |
| Lowest-rated agent | KakoBuy, 2.5 / 5 | Only 74 reviews. Too thin a sample to be conclusive either way. |
| Agents charging 0% | 6 of 8 verified | Which is why the fee column does not decide anything. |
| Free storage range | 60–100 days | CNFans shortest at 60, KakoBuy and Sugargoo longest at 100. |
| Volumetric divisor | L×W×H ÷ 6000 | Industry-standard air freight divisor, cm inputs. |
| Typical parcel, 2 kg to the US | $22–32 | Published EMS route pricing. Interpolated for other weights. |
| Supplier catalogues listed | 29 | Grouped into 9 categories. Verified reachable at publication. |
Two of those deserve a second look. The KakoBuy figure is the one most likely to be quoted out of context — 2.5 out of 5 reads as damning until you notice it rests on 74 reviews, which is roughly a fortnight of feedback for a busy agent. And the CNFans versus MuleBuy comparison inverts if you weight by evidence rather than by headline: 4.2 across 13,300 buyers is a more settled result than 4.7 across 2,813.
Who runs this
A sourcing team that has been shipping parcels out of Guangdong since 2019. That is the reason the shipping and QC pages read the way they do — the volumetric problem and the pick-error problem are what actually generate messages, not the things comparison articles tend to lead with.
We do not take commission from any agent listed, and no generated link carries a referral code. If you want a second opinion on a specific item, a QC photo set or which agent suits a particular order, the WhatsApp and Telegram lines are answered by people who handle this daily.