Sourcing agent fees in China: commission or fixed fee

A sourcing agent in China gets paid one of three ways: a percentage of your order, a monthly retainer or a fixed fee for defined work. A percentage grows with the order, not the work. On a small order a fixed fee can cost more than a commission; on a large one, much less. The table shows where they meet.

In a 2017 thread on UK Business Forums, a buyer asked how to know “that the agent isn’t going to just take my money and run.” Part of the answer is in how the agent gets paid.

Example: the break-even commission against a 1,881-yuan fixed fee, October 2026 edition

Example, not market data. The fixed fee is 3 working days at 627 yuan: a supplier search, calls and one factory visit, with no expenses. 627 yuan is the 2025 average annual wage of professional and technical staff at larger Chinese firms (155,491 yuan) divided by 248 working days. It’s a salary-equivalent day, not a price. A freelancer’s bid sets the real fixed fee. Each percentage is 1,881 yuan divided by the order value. Dollar amounts use the central parity of 6.7220 yuan to the dollar published for October 16, 2026, the last business day before this edition.

Find your order value. If the percentage you’ve been offered is higher than the figure beside it, the commission costs more than three days of work at the example day rate.

How these figures were built

The table divides one fixed fee, built from two official figures, by six order values.

That’s 627 yuan a day (155,491 divided by 248), or 1,881 yuan for three days. Our page on developer rates in China uses the same 248 days. The page on what freelancers in China charge uses the ministry’s 21.75 paid days a month instead, and says why.

You won’t find any agent’s commission, retainer or minimum fee here. We don’t build cost pages on another provider’s rate card, and no official source publishes a rate for this work. So the table answers a narrower question: at what percentage does a commission cost the same as paying for the days?

You can redo it with your own numbers. Get a fixed bid on the work from a freelancer and divide it by your order value. The result is your break-even commission.

Three ways to pay, and what each rewards

A commission ties the agent’s pay to the size of your order. That can work on a large order with an agent who has already proved themselves. But it pays the same whether the agent found you a good factory or only the first one that answered. It also gives the agent a reason to push the order up.

A retainer pays for attention. It suits a buyer who orders every month from many suppliers, not a one-off order. To put a retainer on the same scale as the table, divide the monthly amount by the days of work you expect in a month, and compare that day with the 627-yuan example.

With a fixed fee, the agent earns the same whichever supplier wins, so their advice isn’t bent by your order size. The risk moves to your side: the agent delivers what the list says, so a vague list gets vague work.

When the factory pays too

The forum buyer feared an agent who takes the money and vanishes. The quieter risk is an agent paid by both sides. China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law, revised in 2025, bars a business from bribing a person the other side has entrusted with the deal, and since the revision it bars that person from accepting. It also says what an honest commission looks like.

Under article 24, a person who accepts such a bribe loses the illegal gains and can be fined up to 1 million yuan. Criminal law reaches further, for staff of a company or other unit:

Article 163 is written for staff of a company, enterprise or other unit. Whether it reaches a self-employed agent depends on the facts.

A commission you pay and money the factory pays to the same person are different things. The first is your price for the work. The second is something you should hear about from the agent, in writing, before it matters. So ask whether they take anything from suppliers, and put the answer in the contract. Our guide to hiring a freelance sourcing agent has a one-line declaration, in English and Chinese, for the agent to sign, and splits the work into paid milestones.

An official commission schedule, for comparison

One more reference point comes from an unlikely place. China’s state once set a commission for buying on someone’s behalf. That schedule was for tendering agents, who run a formal tender for a buyer, never for sourcing agents, and the state no longer sets it.

The former State Planning Commission’s interim measures of 2002 (计价格〔2002〕1980号) set a sliding, marginal scale with a 20% band either way. For a goods tender, the base rates were:

• 1.5% on the first 1 million yuan;
• 1.1% from 1 million to 5 million;
• 0.8% from 5 million to 10 million;
• 0.5% from 10 million to 50 million;
• 0.25% from 50 million to 100 million;
• 0.05% from 100 million to 1 billion.

On a tender of 1 million yuan, that’s a base fee of 15,000 yuan. On 10 million, it’s 99,000 yuan, or 0.99% (our arithmetic).

In 2003 the NDRC rewrote the rule on who pays: the fee is paid by the party running the tender, unless that party, the agent and the bidder agree otherwise (发改办价格〔2003〕857号). In 2011 the NDRC set lower marginal rates above 500 million yuan, from 0.035% between 500 million and 1 billion down to 0.004% above 10 billion, and capped the fee for one goods tender at 3.5 million yuan (发改价格〔2011〕534号). Since March 1, 2015, tendering agency fees for construction projects have been left to the market (发改价格〔2015〕299号).

The shape is the useful part. The official percentage fell as the order grew, and from 2011 it had a ceiling. Nothing obliges an agent to charge a flat percentage with no ceiling. You can ask for a rate that falls as the order grows, or for a cap.

What moves the price

A fixed bid moves with the number of suppliers to screen, because each name on the long list means a record to pull and a call to make. It moves with the product too: a cotton tote is quicker to source than a part with tolerances and certificates. A factory visit or an inspection adds days, and our page on what a pre-shipment inspection costs in China shows how a lot size turns into inspector-days.

The rest depends on how you pay:

• The order’s value, if you pay a commission.
• How long it runs, if you pay a retainer.
• Travel, and who pays it. Put it in the bid.

Buying it at a fixed fee

A fixed fee only works if the work is written down. Five lines get you comparable bids.

Pay the fee as what it is, a payment for a service, and pay the factory for goods separately, to the factory’s own account.

Goods money should never travel inside an agent’s fee. It misdescribes the payment, and it uses up limits that belong to the agent. An individual in China can convert up to the equivalent of $50,000 a year on their ID alone. One licensed remitter’s Alipay route caps service payments at 300,000 yuan a year per recipient, counted across all providers.

The handbook’s chapter on paying a freelancer in China covers the routes for the fee. If the goods come from 1688, our guide to buying on 1688 walks through the order itself. And the freelance services agreement template is where the five lines, the fee and the dates go in writing.

On ChinaTalentDesk you fund one milestone at a time, as Pricing explains, which limits what you have at risk to one milestone’s fee.

Edition history

• October 2026: first edition. Wage figure from the National Bureau of Statistics release of May 15, 2026; exchange rate from the central parity of October 16, 2026. The table is recomputed when the bureau publishes its 2026 averages.

For the wider job, start with how to hire a freelancer in China without speaking Chinese. To see a factory without flying out, read our factory visit guide. Sourcing agents bid in the sourcing and quality control category.

Post the sourcing job as a fixed list of deliverables, and compare fixed bids. Start a brief.