The five lines
The seller's price
Paid to the seller
The number on every card on this site, in USD. People quote it to each other as though it were the cost of the order, and it is routinely the smallest of the five.
Domestic shipping in China
Paid to the seller
Getting the item to the agent's warehouse. Charged per seller and often waived above an order value, which is why two items from one seller beat one item from two.
The agent's service fee
Paid to USFans
For buying on your behalf, receiving the parcel, storing it while you decide, and photographing it. Agents compete loudly on this number and it is usually the smallest difference between them.
International freight
Paid to the shipping line
Priced on weight or on volume, whichever is greater. This is where parcels get expensive and where the choice you make actually matters.
Duty, tax and brokerage
Paid to CBP or CBSA, plus the carrier
Assessed at the border and collected by the carrier, with its own flat fee on top. It arrives last, usually after the parcel has already crossed, and it is the line people leave out of the sum.
Landed cost
The sum of all five, divided by the number of items in the parcel. The first four are in your cart before you pay; the fifth comes from the carrier after the border.
Getting the real number, in about twenty minutes
None of this costs anything and none of it commits you. At the end you have a figure for your own parcel rather than somebody else's average.
Build a realistic parcel, not a single item
Three or four things, including something bulky. A quote on one t-shirt tells you nothing useful, because freight has a price floor and the first item carries most of it.
Have the volume stripped before you quote
Shoeboxes are mostly air, and air is billed under the volumetric rule. Ask for boxes removed and a compact repack, then quote. Doing it the other way round gives you a number for a parcel you were never going to send.
Submit the parcel and read every line
The agent weighs and measures it and returns a list of shipping lines with prices for your own address. You are not committed by asking and you pay nothing to see it.
Add your own border
Look up the current position with CBP or CBSA, and add the carrier's brokerage fee — which is flat and is published by the carrier, not the agency. This is the only part the cart cannot tell you.
Divide by the number of items
Landed cost per item is the figure that actually decides anything. It is also the figure that shows you why the fifth item in a parcel is nearly free and the first one never is.
The line the cart cannot show you
Four of the five appear in your agent cart before you confirm anything. The fifth is assessed at your own border by your own authority, and the carrier adds a flat fee for collecting it. That is the half this site covers, because it is the half every other guide leaves as “plus customs”: the United States and Canada work differently enough to be worth reading separately.
One thing worth being plain about
Under-declaring is not a way to reduce landed cost. It is a false statement to your own customs authority, made by you as the importer, and the exposure is yours rather than the agent's. The savings on this page come from consolidating, stripping volume and choosing a line — all of which are entirely legitimate and, together, worth far more.
Questions
Why does this page not give me a number?
Because the honest number depends on your parcel's weight and size, the month, your destination and your province — and because any average printed here would go stale while continuing to rank. The method above produces your real figure in about twenty minutes and costs nothing.
Which of the five lines can I actually change?
Freight, most of all, by consolidating and by stripping volume. Domestic shipping, partly, by buying several things from one seller. Brokerage, by shipping once instead of three times. The service fee and the tax are what they are.
What is the biggest single saving available?
Waiting until you have several items before you ship. It reduces freight per item, it collapses several brokerage fees into one, and it costs nothing but patience. Everything else on this page is a rounding error beside it.
Is the first payment or the second one bigger?
On a light haul, frequently the second. People pay for the items, forget that shipping is a separate transaction weeks later, and then meet a freight quote larger than the goods. That is the single most common complaint about every shopping agent and it is entirely avoidable.
Does the agent show me all of this before I pay?
Four of the five, yes — item, domestic shipping, service fee and freight are all itemised in your cart before you confirm. The fifth, the border, is not theirs to show you. That is why this page exists.