How much does a China sourcing agent cost in the UK?

The short answer, and why it is the wrong question

UK sourcing agencies that publish figures cluster in a narrow band. Commission typically runs 5% to 10% of order value. Orders under £10,000 sit higher, at roughly 8% to 12%, because the work barely changes with order size; orders over £50,000 fall to 3% to 6%. Monthly retainers, where they exist, run about £800 to £3,000. Alongside those sit charges that are often quoted separately: samples at roughly £50 to £500 depending on complexity, quality inspections at £200 to £350 per man-day in China, and factory audits at £300 to £600. On a £20,000 order, a typical commission-based agent is therefore taking £1,000 to £2,000.

Those are the numbers, and every fee guide in this market repeats them. The trouble is that the fee is not where the money goes. How we work as a China sourcing agent in the UK is set out on the home page.

Two costs on a normal import are larger than any commission on that list, and neither appears in a single one of the competing articles. The first is margin taken inside the quoted unit price, which is invisible by construction. The second is import VAT you cannot reclaim, which on a £20,000 consignment is £4,000 — two to four times the commission you were negotiating over. Both are covered below, because comparing agents on headline fee while ignoring them is how buyers end up choosing the expensive option and feeling clever about it.

“A price that looks too low usually is. Going straight to a factory is cheapest on paper, but you pay for it in communication, time zones and trial and error. What you pay a good intermediary for is the service.” — Bono Xu, Cambridge China Bridge

China sourcing agent fees: the three models, and what each does to the agent

A visible service fee or retainer. You pay a stated amount for a stated scope. Its virtue is that it is legible: you can compare it, budget for it, and argue about it. Its weakness is that it is payable whether or not the sourcing works out, so the agent is paid for effort rather than for result. For the tax treatment, see reverse-charge VAT on sourcing agent fees.

A commission on order value. The dominant model, and the one with the problem nobody states out loud: the agent's income rises with your unit price. An agent on 8% earns £80 more every time your unit cost goes up by £1,000 across the order. This does not make commission agents dishonest, and plenty of good ones work this way. It does mean that the person advising you on whether a quote is good has a financial interest in the answer, and you should know that while you are reading their advice.

Margin inside the unit price. The agent quotes you £4.20 a unit, pays the factory £3.60, and keeps the difference without ever issuing a fee. This is the model that causes arguments, because from the outside it is indistinguishable from a £0 fee agency, and the only way to tell is to ask. It is also the model where the incentive is worst: every improvement the agent negotiates out of the factory can be kept rather than passed to you, and you will never see it happen.

None of the three is dishonest by itself. Concealing which one applies to you is. The single most useful thing you can do before signing anything is to ask, by email so you have it in writing, whether the agent receives any payment, commission or rebate from the supplier side. A direct answer tells you more than any published rate card.

Fixed fees, and the payment you never see

Two more ways agents are paid complete the picture. A fixed project fee is a set price for a defined piece of work, such as a supplier search, a sample round or a single inspection, and it is the easiest to compare because it does not move with your order value. It suits one-off jobs, but check what happens when the first shortlist does not work out and a second search is needed.

The one buyers ask about under the name hidden commission is a payment from the factory to the agent: a rebate, a kickback or a percentage of the order, paid on the supplier side and built into the unit price you pay. It is not illegal in itself, but it means the person choosing your supplier is being paid by the supplier, and it never appears on your invoice. The test is the same written question: does anyone on your side receive payment of any kind from the factory? An agent who will name the factory, show its business licence and let you contact it directly has much less room to hide one.

The £4,000 nobody puts in the fee comparison

Here is the arithmetic that changes which agent is actually cheapest. Take a £20,000 consignment. Agent A charges 8% commission, so £1,600. Agent B charges nothing and arranges delivery duty paid, which sounds strictly better.

Now ask who owns the goods for VAT purposes and whose details appear on the customs entry. If the agent or the freight forwarder acts as importer of record rather than you, that alone does not decide whether you can reclaim the import VAT: ownership, the recovery conditions and supporting evidence matter. At 20%, £4,000 on a £20,000 consignment could become a cost if you cannot recover it, but Agent B's £0 fee does not automatically mean you lose that VAT. The mechanism and how to avoid it are set out in the DDP shipping VAT trap.

The same principle applies more quietly to duty. If nobody on your side is checking the commodity code used on the entry, you are paying whatever rate the agent's broker picked, and that is frequently not the lowest correct one. Finding your commodity code is a twenty-minute job that can be worth more than the whole fee negotiation, and our free import duty calculator will do the arithmetic for you.

So the comparison that matters is not fee against fee. It is total landed cost per sellable unit, with the VAT position stated, from each agent, on the same product. Understanding landed price sets out how to build that number so the quotes are actually comparable.

What the fee is supposed to buy

A fee is only expensive relative to what it covers, and scopes vary far more than rates do. Ask which of the following are inside the number you have been quoted and which are billed on top, because a 5% agent who charges separately for every audit, inspection and sample can easily cost more than a 10% agent who does not.

Supplier identification and verification — checking the company actually exists, actually manufactures, and is not a trading company presenting as a factory. Factory versus trading company explains why the distinction changes your price.

Specification and quotation management, meaning getting the same brief in front of several factories so the quotes you receive are genuinely comparable rather than three different products at three different prices.

Samples, including the handling and shipping of them, which is where separate charges most often appear.

Production oversight and pre-shipment inspection — somebody physically at the factory before the goods are packed, while there is still time to change the outcome. This is the line item most worth paying for and the one most often quietly subcontracted.

Freight, customs entry and delivery, and critically who is named on the entry.

Getting this list answered in writing takes one email and is the difference between comparing prices and comparing quotations.

What we charge, and why we can

For a goods order we charge no separate sourcing fee, commission or retainer. Supplier checks, factory audits, sample coordination and agreed inspections are usually included in the landed price covering product, shipping and duty; complex checks that need a third party are charged extra, agreed first. The factory's own sample charge, the courier cost of sending samples to you, extra travel you ask for and third-party testing are passed on at cost, agreed in writing first. A factory audit on its own, without an order, is quoted to the scope you need. The opening step is a free landed-price comparison against what you pay today, returned within 72 hours for an off-the-shelf product; a custom or OEM product runs through our partner in China and takes about three weeks to quote properly.

The obvious question is how that works, and it deserves a straighter answer than agencies usually give. Our margin is inside the landed price, and if you would rather see the factory price, we quote it itemised, with the factory price and our margin shown separately, or you import directly and know the factory from the start. The single price is the third model described above — the one we called the model that causes arguments — and we are not going to run a page criticising it while pretending we are somewhere else. We buy at one number and quote you another, the way a wholesaler does, and the difference is what we live on.

What we said causes arguments is concealment, so here is the disclosure. There is no second income stream: we receive nothing from the supplier side, no rebate and no commission, and that is worth having from us in writing exactly as it is from anyone else. But the first one is real, and the incentive objection to it applies to us as much as to anybody — an improvement we negotiate out of a factory is one we could keep rather than pass on, and you would not see it happen.

If you would rather see the factory price and our margin separately, repeat and container projects can use an itemised or direct-import arrangement where you know the factory from the start, and on the simple landed-price route the factory identity can be shared on request under agreed terms. What makes the simple route checkable rather than a matter of trust is a number you already have. You know what you pay today. The free comparison puts our landed price beside it on the same product, so you are never asked to evaluate a percentage you cannot see — only to say whether one delivered number beats another. If it does not, there is nothing to discuss and we have both found that out inside 72 hours. Ask a commission agent for the same comparison; it is the right test whoever you are talking to.

The reason we can work this way at all is that the sourcing operation was not built to be sold. We buy from Chinese factories for our own businesses and have done since 2021; taking on other UK companies uses capacity that already exists, which is why there is no fee to cover it and why a one-unit order is not a problem. How the whole process works sets out each step, and our comparison of the UK agents names the alternatives, including where they are the better choice.

Is a sourcing agent worth it for a small order?

This is where the percentage model looks worst. At the published 8% to 12% for orders under £10,000, an agent on a £3,000 first order takes £240 to £360, and many commission agents decline orders that small because the work is the same as for a large one. The honest comparison is not fee against nothing, though: it is the fee against the cost of a first batch that arrives wrong, which on a small order is often the whole order.

A small order is worth paying for help when the product is made to your design, when it needs a UK compliance file, or when you cannot visit the factory. It is not worth paying a percentage for a standard catalogue item from a supplier with a long trading record. We add no minimum of our own, and our small-order service explains how a first trial order runs.

When it is worth paying

It is worth paying when the work changes what arrives.

The fee earns its place in three situations. When the product is custom or made to your specification, because the gap between what you wrote and what arrives is where money is lost, and closing it needs somebody reading Chinese and standing in the factory. When it is a first import, because the compliance and customs work is unfamiliar and the mistakes in it are expensive and slow to unwind. And when something has already gone wrong, because at that point what you are buying is somebody in the right time zone with an existing relationship with the factory owner.

Do you need a China sourcing agent? works through that decision in more detail, and it reaches "no" more often than you might expect from a page on this website. The mechanism behind that figure is explained in who is the importer of record.

Already importing? Our cost review compares your current price with a like-for-like landed price.

To compare a Chinese factory price with a UK wholesale price on a landed basis, use our China vs UK price comparison.