How to hire a freelance sourcing agent in China

A freelance sourcing agent in China is one person you pay a fixed fee, by milestone, to find and check suppliers for you. Pay them yourself, and don’t let a factory pay them. Ask them to sign that they take nothing from suppliers. And release each payment only against evidence you can see: a shortlist with registration records, call notes, photos of samples.

Below, that advice is worked through on one small order, a first run of mugs. For the wider job of hiring a freelancer in China, start with the overview, How to hire a freelancer in China without speaking Chinese.

One sourcing job as four paid milestones

Example: a buyer of 2,000 ceramic mugs. The quantities are assumptions for this example, not market figures. Prices come from the freelancer’s bid; see What a freelance sourcing agent costs below. To turn this table into a job post, use How to write a brief a freelancer in China can bid on.

Each milestone has its own price and its own date, both set in the bid, so you don’t pay for the whole job up front. If the long list is weak, you stop after milestone one, and what you have spent is one milestone’s fee.

The last row is worth a second look. The recommendation is paid for on delivery, even if you end up choosing a different supplier. Tie the payment to your agreement and you give the agent a reason to tell you what you already think.

Don’t let the evidence column slide. Without registration records, a long list is just names someone found online, and you can’t tell a factory from a shop front. Call notes are only useful next to the quotes they describe. And sample photos need a date and your spec sheet in the frame, or they could have been taken anywhere. Put all of this in the brief, so the agent prices it in.

Eight to ten names may sound like a lot, but the list shrinks fast once a few turn out to be traders, ignore the call or quote above your target.

The agent needs something from you too: a spec sheet. Dimensions, material, finish, packaging, the quantity and the price you hope to pay, with a photo or drawing of what you want. Without it, milestone three has nothing to check the sample against, and the report can only say the mug looks like a mug. The samples themselves, and the courier, you pay for directly to the factory, like the order that follows.

Who pays the agent decides who the agent works for

There are three common ways to pay a sourcing agent, and each one pulls the agent in a different direction. On a percentage of your order, they earn more when you order more. If the factory pays them, they earn more when that factory gets the deal, whatever it costs you. A fixed fee from you, paid milestone by milestone, is the only arrangement where the agent earns the same whichever supplier wins, and so the only one that keeps them fully on your side.

The second arrangement is where Chinese law comes in. The Anti-Unfair Competition Law, revised in 2025, bars a business from bribing a person the other side has entrusted with the deal. Since the revision, it also bars that person from taking the bribe.

The third paragraph matters as much as the first. A commission paid to an intermediary is allowed when it is paid openly and both sides book it, so not every payment from a factory is a bribe. But a hidden payment from a supplier to the buyer’s agent can fall under the rule, and a payment you don’t know about is a conflict whether or not the law reaches it.

The fix is one line in the services agreement. Ask every agent to sign it before milestone one. The Chinese version is for an agent who would rather sign in Chinese.

Raise it on the first call. An agent who pushes back should give you a reason you can live with before the work starts.

Four questions before you hire one person

The worry is an old one. In a 2017 thread on UK Business Forums, a buyer asked how anyone could know an agent wouldn’t simply take the money and disappear. A year earlier, on the same forum, another put the whole search in one line:

A name from a contact is a start, and freelancers who do this work also bid on posted jobs in the sourcing and quality control category. Whichever way you find them, four questions, asked in this order, tell you more.

1. Will you sign that you take no payment from any supplier on this job? This is the declaration above. Ask it first, because the answer decides whether the rest matters.
2. Can you show me one past shortlist or sample report, with the client’s name blacked out? A description of past work tells you little. A real report, dated and with the registration records attached, shows you what you are about to buy.
3. Which part of this job will you not do? A good agent will name things: signing for you, paying the factory, holding your money. The section below explains why those stay with you.
4. How do you want to be paid? A bank transfer, a remitter to Alipay or a payer in China in RMB. Money sent from abroad meets conversion and receiving limits in China. The overview sets them out in its section on paying, and the handbook’s chapter on paying goes through each route. The freelancer usually knows which route works for them.

The answers belong next to the price when you compare bids, and Reading a bid shows how to set them side by side.

Checking a factory’s registration from abroad

This is the one part of milestone one you can check from your own desk, once the agent sends the records.

Companies in mainland China are registered with the market regulator, and the regulator publishes their registration records through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (国家企业信用信息公示系统), at gsxt.gov.cn. When we tried to open it from outside China on October 18, 2026, it refused the connection. Your agent opens it from China and screenshots the record for milestone one.

Each company also has an 18-character unified social credit code (统一社会信用代码). A company’s name can come back from translation in several spellings, but the code stays the same, so ask for it every time.

The first six rows are the items every company registers. A company goes on the abnormal-operation list when it misses its annual report. On its own that doesn’t mean anything is wrong, but ask about it before milestone two.

If the registered address and the factory your agent visits don’t match, ask why. The answer can be ordinary: a company may be registered in one place and produce in another. It can also mean you are talking to a trading company, and you’ll want to know that before you compare its price with a factory’s.

For the factory floor itself, see how to check a factory in China without flying there.

Our sister site TheChinaPath walks through the register screen by screen in Verify a Chinese company on Qichacha and GSXT.

What one freelancer should not do for you

Three things stay with you, however good the agent is.

• Signing contracts in your name. The contract for your goods should be between you and the factory. If the agent signs it, the factory may treat the agent, not you, as its customer.
• Receiving your payment to the factory. Pay the company named on the contract, to its own account. If the money goes through a person first, it is harder to trace when something goes wrong.
• Holding samples or goods for you beyond the job. An agent checks samples and sends them on. Storing your goods is a warehouse’s job, with its own terms.

This isn’t a judgment on any one agent. Good agents move on to other clients, take other jobs, get sick. If your contract and your money already sit with the factory, nothing of yours goes with them.

For a small order from a marketplace listing, buying on 1688 without speaking Chinese keeps the same split: you pay for the goods, and the person in China is paid for the help.

What a freelance sourcing agent costs

If you scrolled straight here, you’re not alone, and the short answer is that the bid sets the price. What follows is how to judge it.

A freelance sourcing agent sets a price for each milestone in the bid. There is no official rate card for this work, and this page doesn’t invent one.

What official statistics do give you is a floor to read a bid against: what people in China earn as employees.

A freelancer’s price for a day is not an employee’s salary for a day. It has to cover their own social insurance and the trips out to factories, and it has to carry them through the days between jobs. So expect bids to work out above the salary figures. The one to question is a bid far below them, because someone is making up the difference, and it may be a factory.

To compare bids, ask each bidder to state the days they expect to spend on each milestone. Divide the milestone price by those days to get a day price. Multiply it by the number of days someone could work in a month, and you can set it against the monthly figures above.

Two costs pages go further: what freelancers in China cost, role by role, and a commission against a fixed fee for sourcing work.

When you need a firm, not a freelancer

A few jobs do need a firm. If a retailer demands a certified inspection or a social-compliance audit, it will want the report from an accredited body, and one freelancer can’t sign that. A shortlist, calls in Chinese and a sample check are different work. They need one careful person who reads Chinese and can get to the factories, and a freelancer is a good fit for that.

If you do bring in an inspector, what a pre-shipment inspection costs in China sets a freelancer beside an accredited body, and the AQL sample size calculator gives the number of units to pull from the lot.

On ChinaTalentDesk, you fund one milestone at a time, as How it works and Pricing explain. Post the job as the four milestones above, and ask every bidder to price each one. Start a brief.