A buyer sends the same product photo to four suppliers on 1688, asks for the same quantity, and gets back quotes of $2.10, $2.65, $3.40 and $2.90 per unit.
The instinct is to assume three of them are gouging. In most cases none of them are. The four numbers describe four different transactions that happen to involve the same object. Until you know which conditions sit behind each number, you are not comparing prices — you are comparing vocabulary.
1. A quote is not a price. It is a set of conditions.
On a domestic wholesale platform, a quote is shorthand. Both sides are assumed to know the context. When that context is missing — because you are not in China, do not speak the language, and are asking through a chat window — the shorthand collapses and you get a number that means nothing on its own.
Every 1688 quote silently answers at least eight questions:
- Tax. Is VAT included, and can they issue a formal invoice (发票, fapiao)?
- Freight. Does the price get the goods to their own loading dock, to a Chinese warehouse, or nowhere at all?
- Quantity. Which tier is this price for — 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000?
- Packaging. Plain poly bag, or a printed retail box with your logo?
- One-time costs. Tooling, print plates, samples, certification — included, extra, or not mentioned?
- Payment. Deposit and balance, or full prepayment? Who absorbs the transfer fee?
- Currency. Quoted in RMB or USD, and who carries the exchange risk?
- Lead time. And what happens to the price if you need it sooner.
Four quotes that disagree by 20 percent usually disagree on two or three of those lines. Find out which ones and the gap mostly disappears.
2. The four price bases you will actually encounter
Nearly every quote you receive on 1688 is one of these four. They are not variants of the same number — they sit at different stages of the same supply chain.
| What it is called | What it includes | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Ex-works (出厂价, bare price) |
The goods, packed in standard packaging, at the factory gate. | VAT, domestic freight, export handling, anything custom. |
| VAT-inclusive (含税价) |
Ex-works price plus Chinese VAT, with a formal invoice issued. | Freight, and usually custom packaging. |
| Delivered to warehouse (含运价) |
Ex-works price plus domestic freight to a named city or warehouse. | VAT, any onward international shipping. |
| Export price (出口价) |
Usually quoted without VAT, because the supplier intends to claim the export rebate themselves. | Freight, export documentation, and — importantly — the rebate. |
That last row is the one that confuses people most. An export quote often comes in lower than the domestic VAT-inclusive price for the identical product. It is not a discount and it is not a scam. Chinese VAT on manufactured goods is typically 13 percent, and most manufactured exports are eligible for a rebate of roughly the same order. When a supplier quotes you an export price, they are usually quoting the price net of VAT and planning to keep the rebate as part of their margin.
Whether that is fair is a separate argument. What matters for you is that an export price and a VAT-inclusive price are not comparable, and suppliers will not always tell you which one they have just sent.
Two quotes that differ by the VAT rate look like a negotiation. One quote with the tax stripped out and one with it included is not a negotiation — it is a misunderstanding.
3. The price you were quoted is the price for a quantity you never specified
Most 1688 listings display a starting price tied to a minimum order quantity, because that is what makes a listing look attractive in search results. The number in the chat window inherits that ambiguity.
Suppliers routinely quote in tiers: a price at 100 units, a lower one at 500, lower again at 1,000 and 5,000. The spread between the 100-unit price and the 5,000-unit price on simple manufactured goods is commonly 15 to 30 percent. If you ask "how much per unit" without stating a quantity, you will often be sent the tier that flatters the listing, not the tier you can actually afford to buy.
Custom packaging has its own, much higher floor. A plain poly bag might have a minimum of a few hundred pieces; a printed colour box with your artwork can start in the thousands. This is why one of your four quotes may look absurdly high: that supplier assumed you wanted a retail-ready box, priced the print run, and divided it across the quantity you named.
4. Units and packing quantities — where freight costs are decided
Three words get used interchangeably in these conversations and mean completely different things:
- Piece (件) — the single sellable unit.
- Set (套) — several pieces sold as one unit. A "set" price can look like a bargain until you notice it contains one item.
- Carton (箱) — the shipping box. The carton quantity tells you how many pieces fit in one box.
The carton quantity is the single most useful number in the entire conversation, because international freight is priced on volumetric weight, not on the weight you were quoted. A dense, small item and a bulky, light item can share the same unit price and have wildly different landed costs. Suppliers quote per piece and think per carton; if you never ask for the carton dimensions and packed weight, you cannot calculate what the goods will cost to actually receive.
Ask for: pieces per carton, carton dimensions in centimetres, gross weight per carton, and net weight per piece. Four numbers, and your freight estimate stops being a guess.
5. The one-time costs that live outside the unit price
These are the lines most likely to be absent from a first quote and most likely to appear on the final invoice:
- Tooling or mould fee (开模费). Charged once for anything requiring a new mould. Can range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars depending on the process.
- Print plate or screen fee (版费). Charged per colour for printed packaging or printed product. Frequently quoted separately and forgotten.
- Sample fee (样品费). Often refundable against the bulk order, but only if you negotiate it in advance, in writing.
- Certification testing. If your target market requires CE, FCC, FDA or children's product testing, this is a real cost and it is not the supplier's to absorb by default.
- Logo or artwork setup. Small, but never free, and always easier to agree before the order than after.
A supplier who quotes $2.10 and then adds $400 of tooling is not necessarily cheaper than a supplier who quotes $2.40 and includes it. At 1,000 units those two positions are nearly identical. At 5,000 units they are not. This is why unit price alone is the wrong basis for a decision.
6. Payment terms move the real price too
The quoted number assumes a payment method. Change the method and the number moves.
A typical domestic arrangement is 30 percent deposit, 70 percent before shipment, by bank transfer. That is cheap for the supplier and gives you almost no protection. Platforms and trading companies offer escrow, but they charge for it. Card and PayPal payments commonly attract a surcharge — often in the 3 to 5 percent range — because the supplier is the one absorbing the fee and will pass it on.
Currency matters as well. A quote in RMB and a quote in USD are not the same quote even at the same nominal number, because somebody has to carry the exchange movement between the day you agree and the day you pay. Ask which currency the price is fixed in, and for how long it holds. A quote that is "valid for 15 days" is telling you something about the currency, not the goods.
7. Normalise before you compare
The fix is mechanical. Take every quote you receive and restate it on one common basis, then compare. Pick a basis and hold it for all suppliers — the simplest is:
Ex-works price, excluding VAT, at 1,000 units, in standard packaging, excluding tooling and samples.
Convert each quote into that sentence. Anything that cannot be converted gets asked about again. The comparison table below is the whole method:
| Line | Supplier A | Supplier B | Supplier C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quoted unit price | $2.10 | $2.65 | $3.40 |
| − VAT | not included | not included | remove 13% |
| Quantity tier | 5,000 | 500 | 1,000 |
| Restated at 1,000 units | ? | ? | $3.00 |
| Packaging assumed | poly bag | printed box | poly bag |
| One-time costs | +$400 tooling | included | +$150 plates |
| Pieces per carton | ? | ? | 40 |
| Carton size / gross weight | ? | ? | 58×38×32 / 14kg |
Fill that in and the ranking usually changes. The $2.10 quote at 5,000 units with $400 of tooling is frequently not the cheapest option at the quantity you can actually commit to. The $3.40 quote stops looking expensive once you notice it is the only one that specified a box you wanted and a carton count you can ship.
8. The message that gets you a comparable answer
You will get clean quotes if you specify the conditions up front. This message works on 1688 and on Alibaba, and can be pasted into a chat window as-is:
Hi — I'm interested in [product]. I need the following, so I can compare suppliers on the same basis:
1. Unit price at 100 / 500 / 1,000 / 5,000 pieces.
2. Ex-works price, VAT excluded. Please tell me separately if you can issue a formal invoice and what the VAT-inclusive price would be.
3. Price with standard packaging and, separately, with printed packaging — including any plate or setup fee.
4. Pieces per carton, carton dimensions and gross weight.
5. Any one-time costs: tooling, samples, certification.
6. Payment terms and lead time for 1,000 pieces.
7. Is the price fixed in RMB or USD, and how long is it valid?
Seven questions. A good supplier answers all seven in one message. A supplier who answers four and ignores the packaging and carton questions has just told you something useful about how the rest of the order will go.
The number that matters is the one nobody quotes first
The cheapest quote is very often the one with the most missing. It is missing the packaging you wanted, the tooling you will pay for later, the invoice you cannot use, or the carton count that triples your freight. None of that is deception. It is just an incomplete sentence, and incomplete sentences are cheap.
Compare conditions, not numbers. Once the conditions match, the difference between suppliers is usually small — and the decision becomes about who answers questions promptly and in writing, which is the only reliable predictor of how they behave once money has changed hands.