If you sell on Shopify, Amazon, eBay, or Etsy and have considered sourcing from 1688, this guide is the fastest path. It assumes you have never ordered from China before, walks through every term, and ends with a 5-agent price bar you can install in 5 minutes.
1. What is a 1688 sourcing agent (and why you need one)
1688.com is the domestic wholesale marketplace run by Alibaba, and it is where a very large share of the physical goods you would otherwise buy from a reseller actually originate. The catch for anyone outside mainland China is structural rather than a matter of translation: payment settles through Alipay or WeChat Pay, the interface assumes a Chinese bank account, sellers ship to Chinese addresses, and most listings will never get an answer in English.\n\nA sourcing agent sits in the middle. You hand over a product link, they buy it on your behalf, receive it into a warehouse inside China, hold it, optionally photograph it, combine it with other purchases, and then ship it onward internationally. What they charge to do that is not one number — four of the five agents we compare charge no commission at all on 1688, taking either a flat per-parcel fee or nothing beyond the item and the freight, and only Supplyia prices it as a percentage.\n\nAll five support English, take payment in USD, EUR, JPY or KRW, and book space with DHL, FedEx, EMS and a range of regional lines. Which of those lines is actually available to you depends on what you are shipping and where it is going.
2. Real shipping cost: a worked example from ¥300 product to your door
Let us price a concrete example: a ¥300 dress shipped to a US address, 0.5kg, by air.
• Item cost: ¥300 • Service fee: ¥0 — four of the five charge nothing on 1688 • Order fulfilment (BuckyDrop): ¥9.9 • Domestic shipping inside China (1688 seller → agent warehouse): ¥8 • Photo/QC review (optional): ¥0–¥2 • International shipping to US (0.5kg, cheapest line each agent actually quotes) • Total landed: ¥361.90 at the cheapest agent, ¥559.65 at the priciest
That is a ¥197.75 spread — about $28 — on a single ¥300 order, before any optional add-on. At 100 orders a month it is real money.
The reason 1688CMP matters: the shipping line, the fulfilment fee, the domestic leg and the QC fee all vary by agent, and the ranking flips with parcel weight and destination. The extension re-ranks all 5 on the exact product page you are looking at, with the price you actually see, instead of a static table.
3. Five questions to pick the right agent for YOUR niche
Q1. Do you sell heavy items (>2kg) or light ones? Heavy parcels are where the air lines separate — per-kg rates differ by well over 3x between agents, and volumetric weight can double the bill on a bulky but light box.\n\nQ2. Do you need 48-hour air, or can you wait a month? Both BuckyDrop and CSSBuy publish sea lines with stated transit windows; the trade is roughly two-thirds off the freight against a month of lead time.\n\nQ3. Do you need photographs before despatch? Supplyia and Oopbuy include the standard set at no charge; CSSBuy charges ¥1.5 per item; BuckyDrop and Superbuy charge ¥2.\n\nQ4. Do you accumulate items from several 1688 sellers before shipping them together? Superbuy, CSSBuy and Oopbuy each publish 90 days of free storage and BuckyDrop publishes 30 — but compare what happens after the window rather than the window itself, because those three quote expiry in three different units.\n\nQ5. Do you sell into markets with strict clearance? Duty-prepaid lines exist and they change the experience considerably, though which ones are offered depends on the agent and the destination, and the comparison only shows lines an agent will actually quote for your parcel.\n\nFive questions and no single answer that survives every combination of them. That is the honest reason the comparison runs on your product page rather than settling into a table here.
4. What you should NEVER ship via 1688
• Branded items (Nike, Apple, Lego) — Customs will seize fakes. Even legit branded items often fail due to trademark paperwork.
• Lithium batteries (power banks, vapes) — DHL/FedEx will refuse most of them. Sea shipping has fewer restrictions but still slow.
• Perishables (food, plant seeds, supplements) — Random customs checks; 50%+ seizure rate for undeclared.
• Liquids over 100ml — Aviation restrictions. Even declared perfume shipments get held out by trained dogs.
• High-value single items (>USD 5,000) — Most agents max insurance at USD 2,000 per parcel. Split orders.
• Pre-orders with >30 day lead time — You will compound agent warehouse time + your lead time + consolidation. Aim for in-stock items.
FAQ
How long does the first order take end to end?
Day 1: Place order on 1688 via agent website, pay via card or PayPal. Day 2-3: 1688 seller ships to agent warehouse (free). Day 3-5: Agent receives, weighs, photographs if requested, bills you for international shipping. Day 5-7: You confirm and pay international shipping. They consolidate with any other items. Day 7-10: Parcel leaves China via DHL/FedEx. Day 10-14: Delivered to US/EU address.
So 10-14 days end-to-end for a single ready-to-ship item. If you batch 5-10 items, the consolidation window saves you 3-5 days.
Can I use 1688CMP without committing to one agent?
No. 1688CMP is purely a price-comparison bar — it shows you the cheapest option for each product you browse, but it never creates an account for you, never signs you up for any agent, and never auto-orders. You click "Open in cheapest agent" and the extension simply opens that agent’s product page in a new tab. From there you decide whether to register, order, or move on. Many of our users use 1688CMP as a 2nd opinion before checking out a friend’s recommended agent.
Do you make money from my orders?
Yes — and we disclose this on every agent’s order page via the affiliate link (our invite / affiliate links). When you check out through one of our links, the sourcing agent pays us a small commission (typically 3-8% of their service fee). You pay exactly the same price as going direct. We never sell your data, never show ads, and never mark up prices.
What if 1688CMP misses an agent?
Email [email protected] with the agent’s name, the URL pattern they use for a 1688 product page, and a link to their affiliate programme. Our bar is mostly about data rather than code: if their fee schedule and line rates are published somewhere we can read them now and re-check later, and they have a public referral agreement, we can usually add them in the next release. If everything available on them comes from comparison blogs rather than their own site, we will leave them out — that is exactly why we removed two agents in 2026 rather than carrying forward numbers nobody could verify.
Is the extension open source?
No — the extension source code is not publicly distributed. It is free to use, with no paid tier. What you can check without the source is the permission set: on install, Chrome shows exactly what it requests — storage, tabs, and access limited to 1688 product pages.