Comparing China buying agents when the freight mode is the real decision
Choose the lane first, then the agent whose written rules on that lane you trust, and weigh fees across the shortlist.
Pick the mode first, the agent second
Most comparisons start with the agent and treat freight as a price at the end. This site turns that round. Decide which lane suits the haul first, then look for the agent whose written rules on that lane you can live with, because the rules that matter most when something goes wrong are set per mode.
Take a lost parcel. At LoongBuy an air parcel may count as lost after 45 days of carrier silence and is compensated on a base of RMB 80 per kilogram; a rail or sea parcel waits 75 days and is compensated at RMB 40. Fansbuy pays a delay refund on insured parcels past 60 days, but not on rail or sea. A buyer who plans to ship a heavy winter haul by rail cares more about those lines than about which agent has the slickest app.
Fees still come first among the comparison points, as the next section explains. But the mode decides which of the other points you need to check.
Six points of comparison, re-cut by freight
The six usual points for comparing agents are service, speed, safety, trust, routes and fees. Each one keeps its general meaning, and each picks up a freight-specific question once you start from the mode. The table sets the two side by side.
| Point | What to compare in general | The freight-mode question |
|---|---|---|
| Fees (heaviest) | Exchange-rate margin on top-ups and payments; any service fee; per-parcel fixed charges | Custom-route operation fees (Oopbuy and ACBuy: 20 yuan first) |
| Speed | Domestic delivery and warehouse processing times | A published range per lane, not one headline figure |
| Safety | Insurance options and what they exclude | Lost-parcel window and compensation base, both per mode |
| Trust (does it sit on orders?) | Order status that moves, refunds that arrive, an operator you can identify | Written freight rules you can quote back in a claim |
| Routes | Countries served | Which of the five lanes it offers to your address |
| Service | Reply times on tickets | Reply times on custom rail or sea requests (Superbuy 1 to 3 working days, Oopbuy 1) |
Speed is the point people over-read. A line's quoted days are an estimate from the carrier, and the spread between lanes is far wider than the spread between agents on the same lane: JoyaGoo prints air at 10 to 20 days and ocean at 45 to 85. Comparing two agents' air lines by a day or two matters less than choosing the right lane.
Fees carry the most weight
Freight rules decide what happens in the rare bad case. Fees decide what happens on every single order. Nearly every agent featured here charges no service fee on the standard marketplaces, so what really separates them is conversion: each one turns your money into yuan at a rate of its own choosing, and the markup over the interbank midpoint rides on every purchase you make.
Independently measured in October 2026, that margin ran from about 2 percent to about 12 percent across the six agents on this site, which on a year of orders easily outweighs a difference in delay rules. The costs page has the figures and the rest of the fee list.
After the exchange rate come fixed per-parcel charges and any fees tied to a lane, such as the 20 yuan operation fee Oopbuy and ACBuy take before quoting a custom route.
A checklist before you settle on one agent
Before you put real money into one agent, run through a short list. Each item is something you can check on the agent's own pages in a few minutes, and each one has caught buyers out.
- Fee transparency. Can you find the exchange rate it uses, and is every fee named before you pay?
- Storage terms. How long is storage free, and what happens after? LoongBuy states 90 days, then a daily charge by weight, to a maximum of 180 days.
- Compensation and disputes. Is the lost-parcel window written per mode? Is the compensation base stated? Who decides a claim, and how long do you have?
- An operator you can name. Does the site show a registered company and a way to reach it? A company number you can look up is worth more than a badge.
- The lanes you need. Do the modes you want actually appear for your country, today, on its estimator?
If an agent fails two of these, keep looking. Plenty of agents pass all five.
