Tmall vs Amazon: what a brand actually pays

Amazon has not run a marketplace for third-party sellers in China since July 2019. So the choice is not Tmall or Amazon. It is Tmall Global against JD Worldwide and Douyin. Tmall Global’s commission runs 2% to 5%, well under Amazon’s 8% to 15%. The fixed money is where China costs more.

Updated September 17, 2026. The February 2023 version of this page compared the two platforms as though a brand could pick either door. It could not, and still cannot. What follows is the fee sheet, the tax arithmetic and the dates.

Here is the money side by side. The Amazon column is the US marketplace, because that is the one most brands reading this already run.

Opening a store on Amazon requires no security deposit. Professional sellers pay US$39.99 a month and referral fees of 8% to 15% of the sale in most categories. Source: Amazon Global Selling (亚马逊全球开店), July 2024. https://globalselling.amazon.com/zhishi/article-240523

Deposit, annual fee and commission by category on Tmall Global, as loaded in the calculator. Source: TheChinaPath calculator data, October 2026.

Health supplements sit outside that range on Tmall Global, at a 300,000 RMB deposit. Everything else lands on one of two rungs.

Amazon left the China marketplace in 2019

In April 2019, Amazon told Chinese media it would stop providing seller services to third-party sellers on its China site three months later. The date it gave was July 18. It kept four things: the import retail store, the export seller program, Kindle and cloud.

Amazon will stop providing seller services to third-party sellers on the Amazon China website on July 18, 2019, and will keep Amazon Global Store, Amazon Global Selling, Kindle and Amazon cloud computing. Source: China Daily (中国日报网), April 2019. https://qiye.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/19/WS5cb92e4ca310e7f8b1577840.html

Seven years later, plenty of brands still ask which of the two to open first. The honest answer is that one of them is not open.

What Amazon still runs in China

Two businesses, pointing in opposite directions.

Amazon Global Store (亚马逊海外购) sells imported goods to Chinese shoppers. It is Amazon’s own retail, not a marketplace a brand joins. It also got smaller. On January 27, 2024, Amazon shut desktop shopping on amazon.cn and ended Prime in China, moving the whole thing into an app and a WeChat mini program.

Starting January 27, 2024, we will no longer provide Prime membership services, and the desktop will no longer provide shopping services. Customers can upgrade the app or shop through the Amazon Global Store WeChat mini program. Source: Amazon China (亚马逊中国), notice on amazon.cn, effective January 2024. https://www.amazon.cn/

The second business is Amazon Global Selling (亚马逊全球开店), and it moves goods the other way. It signs up Chinese sellers to sell on Amazon’s sites outside China. In December 2025 it published its four priorities for 2026. Every one of them is about export.

Amazon’s 20-plus major international sites across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania are fully open to Chinese sellers. Source: Amazon Global Selling (亚马逊全球开店), December 2025. https://globalselling.amazon.com/en/news/news-brand-251204

So when a China agency, a forum thread or a competitor’s blog compares Tmall to Amazon, check which Amazon they mean. Usually it is the one that helps a Shenzhen factory reach Ohio.

The commission gap runs the other way

Most people assume China takes a bigger cut. On the platform line, it does not.

We keep the category fee data for Tmall Global, JD Worldwide and Douyin cross-border loaded in our own calculators, because we quote from it every week. Across the nineteen Tmall Global categories in the picker, commission runs from 2% to 5% and averages 3.5%. Eight categories sit at 2%. Nothing goes above 5%. Amazon’s band, in most categories, starts at 8%.

Tea, packaged food, Swiss watches, kitchen appliances and phones all pay Tmall Global 2% of the sale. On Amazon the same goods would pay 8% or more.

Then the fixed cost arrives. Deposit plus annual fee comes to 80,000 RMB in eleven of the nineteen categories and 110,000 RMB in the other seven, before a single order ships. Amazon asks for US$39.99 and a credit card. A brand that wants to test a market cheaply is not choosing between two similar things.

The line that reverses the comparison

Nobody runs a Tmall Global store alone from Milan or Portland. The store needs a Tmall Partner, a Chinese operating agency that holds the back end, writes the Chinese copy, runs customer service in the local time zone and sets up the campaigns. The default in our own Tmall Global calculator is a 35,000 RMB monthly retainer plus 10% of GMV, and those defaults exist because they are the numbers we see quoted.

Add that 10% to the platform’s 3.5% and the China take rate clears 13%, which lands inside Amazon’s 8% to 15% band instead of under it. The retainer sits on top and does not care whether you sell anything.

Few comparisons get that far. Amazon’s fee looks worse on paper because Amazon’s fee is nearly the whole bill. China’s is one line of six. Warehousing, the customs broker, the Chinese label, paid traffic and returns are all separate, and traffic is the biggest of them. Getting seen on Xiaohongshu (RedNote) or Douyin is its own budget, and the seeding side of that work sits with TheRedScroll, the group’s China social media agency (https://www.theredscroll.com).

Run your own category through the Tmall Global setup and run calculator before you take anyone’s word for a monthly number, including ours. The JD Worldwide setup and run calculator does the same for the other big cross-border marketplace, and JD’s entry rung is cheaper.

The tax your shopper pays

A seller on Amazon’s US site rarely thinks about import duty. Selling cross-border into China, you have to, because the tax shows up at checkout and moves the price the shopper sees.

Goods sold under China’s cross-border retail import scheme carry a 0% tariff. Import VAT and consumption tax are then levied at 70% of the amount normally payable.

The tariff rate is provisionally set at 0%, and import VAT and consumption tax are levied at 70% of the statutory payable amount. Source: Ministry of Finance (财政部), 财关税〔2016〕18号, March 2016. http://www.mof.gov.cn/gp/xxgkml/gss/201603/t20160324_2510682.htm

The standard VAT rate was cut from 16% to 13% with effect from April 1, 2019. Source: State Council Gazette (国务院公报), announcement 2019 No. 39, March 2019. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2019/content_5416183.htm

Do the arithmetic and general goods land at 9.1%. Thirteen percent, times seventy percent, with no duty on top. Cosmetics, fragrance and alcohol carry consumption tax as well and run considerably higher.

The scheme has a ceiling, and it is per shopper, not per brand.

The single-transaction limit for cross-border e-commerce retail imports is 5,000 RMB and the annual per-person limit is 26,000 RMB, effective January 1, 2019. Source: Ministry of Commerce (商务部) policy database, 财关税〔2018〕49号, January 2019. https://policy.mofcom.gov.cn/claw/clawContent.shtml?id=65769

A 9,000 RMB handbag only just fits. It can come in alone in its order, but then it pays full duty, VAT and consumption tax, and it eats more than a third of the shopper’s annual quota. A range priced above the limit usually ends up in general trade, which means a Chinese importer of record, full duty and VAT, and product registration where the category demands it. That is a different business, and it is the one our cross-border setup team spends most of its time mapping before a brand commits.

Who is actually doing this

The route is crowded, which is usually a good sign about whether it works.

2,415 overseas brands opened a first China store on Tmall Global in 2025, from 52 countries and regions. More than 40,000 brands from over 110 countries and regions now sell on the platform. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), citing Tmall Global, January 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/tob/2026-01-27/doc-inhithne5772830.shtml

Six new foreign brands a day, roughly. Not all of them last, and a store that opens without a media budget behind it goes quiet inside two quarters. But the number does say something plain: the cross-border marketplace is where foreign brands go, and it is where they have been going since Amazon stopped offering the alternative.

If you are weighing whether to run the store yourself or hand it to a partner, that decision usually costs more than the platform fee. Our cross-border ecommerce team runs stores on both sides of that choice and the tradeoff is rarely about money alone.

Common questions

Can a foreign brand still sell on Amazon in China?

Not as a seller. Amazon stopped serving third-party sellers on its China site on July 18, 2019. Amazon Global Store still sells imported goods to Chinese shoppers through an app and a WeChat mini program, but that is Amazon’s own retail. There is no China storefront a brand opens and runs.

Is Tmall Global’s commission really lower than Amazon’s?

On the platform line, yes. Commission across the nineteen Tmall Global categories in our calculator runs 2% to 5%, averaging 3.5%, against 8% to 15% on Amazon in most categories. Add a Tmall Partner’s commission on GMV and the combined China take rate passes Amazon’s.

What does a Tmall Global store cost before the first order?

The deposit plus the annual fee, which is 80,000 RMB in eleven of the nineteen categories and 110,000 RMB in the other seven. Health supplements runs to 330,000 RMB on the deposit alone. The deposit comes back when the store closes in good standing. The annual fee does not.

Does Amazon Global Selling help my brand reach China?

No. It points the other way. Amazon Global Selling recruits Chinese sellers onto Amazon’s 20-plus sites outside China, and its published 2026 priorities are all about export. It is useful to a Chinese manufacturer, not to a European or American brand looking for Chinese buyers.

If you want a vetted shortlist of the operators who could actually run your category in China, request a Compass shortlist.