Most sourcing agents in China charge a commission, and the published rate cards cluster between roughly 3% and 10% of order value, stepping down as orders get bigger. The percentage matters less than the two questions almost nobody asks: what exactly does the fee include, and is the factory price underneath it real?
The published bands
Agent rate cards are public, so the frame is checkable. One published card (Statrys) runs 8-10% on a USD 2,000 order, stepping down to 3-4% above USD 100,000, with flat fees of USD 500-1,000 for one-off supplier identification and monthly retainers of USD 1,500-5,000 for an ongoing desk. Others quote a flat 5-10% of order value (Sourcing Nova). Rates vary with scope, not with the agent’s city: technical or heavily customised projects sit at the top of the range, plain repeat orders of a catalogue product sit at the bottom.
| Model | Typical band | What it buys | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission on order value | 3-10%, lower on larger orders | Full desk service: search, sampling, production, inspection, consolidation | The percentage alone says nothing without the real factory price |
| Flat fee per project | USD 500-1,000 | Supplier search and vetting, one-off | Scope per task; production follow-up is usually extra |
| Monthly retainer | USD 1,500-5,000 | An ongoing buying office | Only pays off with real volume every month |
| “Free” agent | 0% quoted | Supplier introductions | Somebody pays; see the next section |
Where the money actually hides
The classic structure is a low headline commission with the difference earned inside the goods price. The arithmetic is simple enough to check on one order:
| Same goods, real factory price USD 20,000 | Goods line | Fee line | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent A: 5% on its own line | 20,000 | 1,000 | 21,000 |
| Agent B: “2%” but goods quoted at 21,200 | 21,200 | 424 | 21,624 |
Agent B looks cheaper in the headline number and costs USD 624 more, because the extra 1,200 sits in the goods line where nothing audits it. This is illustrative arithmetic to show the mechanics, not a quote. The two protections are equally simple: ask for the original factory quotation in writing (not a retyped version), and require the fee as its own line. A fee that is invisible is a fee you cannot audit – that sentence is on our pricing page and it is the whole argument.
What a fee should include
Our rate is 5% of the order value. No subscription, no retainer, no tier to grow into. The fee appears as its own line on the quotation, so the goods cost and our cost stay two different numbers.
Included in the 5%:
- Supplier screening and shortlisting
- Price and term negotiation
- Sampling coordination and approval tracking
- Production follow-up against the schedule
- Pre-shipment inspection coordination
- Consolidation of multiple suppliers into one shipment
- Document set preparation and consistency check
- One point of contact, in your timezone where possible
Not in the 5%, and passed through at cost with the original quote shown: goods; sampling and tooling; freight and insurance; third-party inspection fees (no markup); testing and certification where your product and destination actually require them; duties and taxes.
Who pays the agent, and why that decides everything
We are paid by you, on the invoice, at the published rate. We do not take a commission from the factory; a partner paid by both sides cannot represent either one properly. The same logic reads the “free” agent correctly: if you are not paying, the supplier is, and the agent’s job silently becomes keeping the supplier comfortable. Our full position on this is on the pricing page, and the boundaries we work inside (no factory directory, no lowest-price promises, no taking instructions from the factory about your order) are on what we don’t do.
When an agent is not worth the fee
The honest version: a repeat order to a factory you already know, against a standing specification and an inspection routine you trust, may not need a full-commission desk. A fee buys judgement and presence, and a mature relationship needs less of both. What still has to happen on every repeat order regardless: the standard stays sealed before production, the goods get inspected before shipment, and the documents stay consistent. Drop the agent if you like; keep the process. The parts of that process that touch quality are described in the inspection article on our site and in this explainer.
If the useful comparison for you is “what would this cost landed”, the cost tool on our pricing page runs the arithmetic with your own numbers: goods, our 5%, freight, duty. What verification looks like before any of this is in the supplier verification checklist.