Pre-shipment inspection cost in China, worked out in days

A pre-shipment inspection in China is priced by the inspector’s time, and the time is set mostly by the sample size. Under the national sampling standard, a lot of 3,201 to 10,000 units at general inspection level II means checking 200 of them. Add product types, tests, travel and the report, and you have the days.

Example. A buyer has 6,000 units of one product waiting at a factory in Ningbo. One inspection quote says one day, another says two, and the buyer can’t tell which is right. The table shows where the days come from.

From lot size to inspector-days, October 2026 edition. The first three columns come from GB/T 2828.1-2012: general inspection level II, single sampling, normal inspection. The three example columns are our arithmetic on stated assumptions, not market data: one product type; 2 minutes of visual and function checks per sampled unit; 5 fixed hours per job (1.5 hours of carton, packing and label checks, 2 hours of travel within one city, 1.5 hours of report writing); an 8-hour working day. Total hours are the sample size times 2 minutes, plus 5. Days are total hours divided by 8, rounded up to the next half day. Change an assumption and the days change with it. For a lot size outside these rows, use the AQL sample size calculator.

To turn days into money, multiply them by the day rate in each bid you get. The wage figures further down give you a floor to read that rate against.

How these figures were built

The sample sizes come from China’s national standard for sampling by attributes. It was adopted as an identical copy of the international standard ISO 2859-1:1999.

The state platform doesn’t show the full text. It copies an ISO standard, and the platform cites copyright. We read the two tables we need somewhere less obvious: the normative annex of DA/T 38-2021, an archives standard issued by China’s National Archives Administration, which reprints both from GB/T 2828.1-2012 for testing batches of archival discs.

• The code letter is a row label. You find it from the lot size and the inspection level. Level II is the middle of the standard’s three general levels. Your contract or your inspector should name the level; this table uses II.
• The sample size is the number of units the inspector pulls at random and checks. For a lot of 3,201 to 10,000 units at level II, the letter is L and the sample is 200.
• The AQL (acceptance quality limit) doesn’t set the sample. It sets how many defective units the sample may hold before the lot fails. With 200 units at an AQL of 2.5, the lot passes with up to 10 defective units and fails at 11. At a few very low AQL values, the table points you to a neighboring row with a different sample.

The last three columns show the mechanics, not your job: a different product takes a different time per unit. We also left out any inspection firm’s price per day. A cost page on this site is never built on another provider’s rate card.

ISO published a new edition, ISO 2859-1:2026, in January 2026, and withdrew the 1999 one. China’s standards platform still listed GB/T 2828.1-2012 as current on October 18, 2026, and its last review, on May 30, 2025, kept it in force. This table follows the Chinese standard. If an inspector quotes the 2026 ISO edition, ask whether anything in your sample plan changes.

What a day is worth

No official source prices an inspection day. What the statistics do publish is what employees earn, and that’s a floor you can read a bid against. These are wage averages for staff on a payroll, not prices.

The statistics bureau counts wages before income tax and before the employee’s own social insurance contributions. A freelancer pays their own insurance and their own travel, and has days between jobs. Expect bids above these figures. A bid far below them deserves a question. The same 248-day method sits behind our pages on what freelancers in China charge, on developer rates in China and on sourcing agent fees, commission or fixed.

Ask every bidder for two numbers: the days they plan and their price per day. Check the days against the table, and the price against the wage floor. That shows you what each quote assumes.

A search of the China Government Procurement Network on October 18, 2026 found no award notice pricing inspection work per person-day, so none is printed here.

What moves the price

Now the days, and what stretches them.

The table assumes one product. Each product type, or each lot your contract treats separately, is sampled on its own, so three styles can mean three samples. Of everything here, it moves the day count most, as the worked example below shows.

Then there are the tests. Drop tests, function tests on every sampled unit and measurements against a drawing all take longer than a look and a count. Two extra minutes a unit, on a sample of 200, is almost seven more hours.

In our example the inspector spends two hours on the road within one city. A factory out in a remote county can take most of a day to reach, and the bid will include that day.

The report takes time too. Photos with short notes are quick to write up. A measured report against your specification, line by line, is not, and our 1.5 hours assumes the quick kind.

A failed lot. If the lot fails, the factory reworks it and someone pays for a second visit. Settle who pays before the first visit. A freelance services agreement is the place for it, along with the AQL and the checklist.

If you buy the same product again and again, the standard’s switching rules come in. They allow reduced inspection when results stay good and call for tightened inspection when they slip, and both change the sample.

More than one inspector. Inspector-days can be split. A day and a half can be one person over two visits or two people on one day. Two people at the same factory each spend the travel hours, though, so splitting adds paid time.

A freelancer or an accredited body

ISO/IEC 17020 sets the requirements for the competence, impartiality and consistent operation of inspection bodies. Its third edition, ISO/IEC 17020:2026, came out in March 2026. In China, the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) accredits inspection bodies, and in August 2026 it trained them on the new edition and on its own criteria for inspection bodies, CNAS-CI01:2026.

If your contract or your bank asks for an accredited certificate, hire an accredited body. If what you need is someone in the factory who counts and tests and then tells you plainly what they found, before you release the balance, a freelancer can do that for the day count above. Seeing a factory you can’t visit is a wider job, and our guide to checking a factory without traveling covers it.

If a sourcing agent found the factory, consider a different person for the inspection. The agent chose that supplier and has a stake in the goods passing. Hiring a freelance sourcing agent explains how to scope and pay that first job. For goods bought from a seller on 1688, the 1688 ordering guide shows where the inspection fits in the order.

Example: one order, priced from the ground up

Back to the buyer in Ningbo. Six thousand units of one product puts the lot in the 3,201 to 10,000 band.

1. Code letter L at level II. Sample size 200.
2. Unit checks: 200 units at 2 minutes each is 400 minutes, or 6.7 hours.
3. Fixed hours: 1.5 for cartons and labels, 2 for travel, 1.5 for the report. That’s 5.
4. Total: 11.7 hours. At 8 hours a day, that’s 1.46 days, rounded up to 1.5 inspector-days.

So why did one quote say one day? To fit 200 units into one 8-hour day with the same 5 fixed hours, each unit gets 54 seconds. For a simple product and a short checklist, that can work. The two-day quote may include more tests, a measured report or a longer drive.

Now split the same order into three colors of 2,000 units each, and sample each color as its own lot.

1. Each lot of 2,000 is code letter K. Sample size 125.
2. Three lots: 375 units checked in all.
3. Unit checks: 375 units at 2 minutes is 750 minutes, or 12.5 hours.
4. Add the 5 fixed hours: 17.5 hours.
5. At 8 hours a day: 2.19 days, rounded up to 2.5 inspector-days.

The same 6,000 units now need a full day more. How an order is split into lots is something you agree with the inspector, in writing, before the day.

You won’t find a yuan figure in this example. Take each bid’s day rate, multiply it by these day counts, and compare. If a bid’s days don’t match the table, ask which assumption it changed.

Edition history

• October 2026: first edition. Sample sizes from GB/T 2828.1-2012; wages from the National Bureau of Statistics release of May 15, 2026. The wage figures are updated when the bureau publishes its 2026 averages.

For the wider job of hiring in China, start with how to hire a freelancer in China without speaking Chinese. Inspectors bid on jobs in the sourcing and quality control category.

Post the inspection with your lot size and your checklist, and compare day counts. Start a brief.