Tmall Global cost and fees: what a store spends in year one

A food brand selling 3.5 million RMB on Tmall Global pays 150,000 RMB in deposit, annual fee and commission. Its first year costs about 2.36 million RMB in money it won’t see again, roughly 16 times that figure, plus 450,000 RMB parked in deposits and a tax float. Paid media, the Tmall Partner and fulfillment decide the bill.

Ask about Tmall Global cost and fees and you get the platform’s three lines. They’re real. They’re also the smallest part of the year. Here is the whole year one for a packaged-food store in our model, line by line, with the money that comes back kept apart from the money that’s gone.

TheChinaPath calculator data, October 2026: our Tmall Global calculator at its default settings, packaged-food category, 250 RMB average order, shopper pays the cross-border tax. These are model defaults, not results from a named store. The platform rules cited below were checked on October 31, 2026.

The number on the fee sheet, and why it misleads

Tmall Global publishes its own charges, and they’re easy to find. A store pays a security deposit, an annual fee and a commission on every sale, which the platform calls a technical service fee.

Tmall Global’s annual fee is set by first-level category at either 30,000 RMB or 60,000 RMB; commission on snacks, nuts and specialty foods is 2%, on skincare 4%, and on women’s apparel 5%. Source: Tmall Global (天猫国际), Annual Fee and Commission Rates by Category (天猫国际各类目年费、技术服务费率), adjustment effective September 9, 2026. https://rule.tmall.hk/?type=detail&ruleId=11005909&cId=625

A brand flagship or specialty store puts down a 50,000 RMB deposit in food, beauty and apparel; a multi-brand store puts down 100,000 RMB. A flagship whose brand holds only a pending (TM) trademark pays 100,000 RMB. Source: Tmall Global (天猫国际), Platform Deposit Rules (天猫国际平台保证金规则), changed May 6, 2026, in force May 12, 2026. https://rule.tmall.hk/?type=detail&ruleId=8942&cId=625

Add those up for a food brand selling 3.5 million RMB and you land at 150,000 RMB: 50,000 of deposit, 30,000 of annual fee, 70,000 of commission. That’s the figure that ends up in a board deck as “the cost of Tmall Global.”

It’s wrong twice. Part of it (the deposit) isn’t a cost at all, because it comes back. And the lines that are costs leave out almost everything a store spends to get to 3.5 million RMB in the first place.

The platform’s charges are fixed or close to it. A store’s real costs scale with what it sells, and two of the biggest are set by people other than Alibaba: the agency that runs the store, and the ad auction that prices every click.

Money that comes back, and money that doesn’t

The first fix is to split the year in two. Some of the cash a brand puts into Tmall Global is parked. The rest is spent.

Parked money is real money. It leaves your account before the first order, and you can’t use it for anything else while the store runs. But it isn’t a cost, and adding it to the spending inflates the bill in the early years and hides it later.

Three lines sit on the parked side:

• The platform deposit. Tmall Global holds it against fines and shopper claims. New merchants pay the year’s deposit in one go once the store is approved, under the deposit rules cited above.
• The bonded warehouse deposit. Our calculator sets it at 100,000 RMB. Warehouses quote their own terms, so treat it as a planning figure.
• The tax prepayment. A float the warehouse holds to settle the cross-border tax order by order. Our model uses 300,000 RMB, and again the warehouse sets its own terms.

The deposit does come back, but slowly.

Tmall Global returns the deposit, or tells Alipay to unfreeze it, within 10 PRC business days after the third month following the end of the agreement, provided no shopper claim against it is outstanding. Source: Tmall Global (天猫国际), Tmall Global Merchant Service Agreement (天猫国际商户服务协议), clause 7.2, last updated October 31, 2022. https://terms.alicdn.com/legal-agreement/terms/suit_bu1_tmall/suit_bu1_tmall202111051504_43705.html

So a store whose agreement ends on March 31 can expect its deposit in mid-July. Budget for that gap.

The deposit can also grow while the store is open. The deposit rules raise it to 300,000 RMB after a second warning on product quality scores, and bring it back to the base only after three passing reviews in a row. A store that sells a product shoppers don’t like ties up more cash, which is the point.

Everything else in the table is spent. That’s 2.36 million RMB at 3.5 million RMB of sales, against 450,000 RMB parked. About 84 cents of every yuan committed in year one is gone by the end of it.

The four lines that decide year one

At 3.5 million RMB in sales, four lines carry 93% of the spending. The platform’s own lines (annual fee, commission and payment fee) come to 135,000 RMB, or 5.7%.

TheChinaPath calculator data, October 2026, same defaults as the table above.

Paid media is the biggest line. Our model assumes 60% of sales arrive through paid traffic at a return on ad spend of 2, so every 2 RMB of those sales costs 1 RMB of ads. That puts media at 30% of all sales. It’s an assumption, and it’s the one most worth testing, because a new store has no reviews and no repeat buyers to fall back on.

The Tmall Partner (TP) comes second. That’s the service provider most foreign brands hire to run the store day to day. Our calculator’s yardstick is a 35,000 RMB monthly retainer plus 10% of sales, which comes to 770,000 RMB at this sales level. A real quote can sit well above or below that, which is why the calculator lets you type your own.

Fulfillment is third, and it’s the line brands most often price from home. Bonded storage, picking, the last-mile parcel and return handling come to 17.35 RMB an order in the calculator, about 7% of a 250 RMB basket. On a cheap basket that share climbs fast: the same 17.35 RMB is 17.5% of a 99 RMB order.

Creators come fourth. Our default sends 20% of sales through creators and livestreams at a 20% commission. Brands that lean harder on livestream rooms push this line up, and some of what they spend on media comes down.

The platform fees sit fifth. They’re the lines brands ask about first, and the ones they can change least.

Tmall Global cost and fees as sales grow

The multiple in the first table doesn’t shrink as a store grows. It gets bigger.

At 1 million RMB in sales, the store spends 10.1 times the fee-sheet figure. At 10 million it spends 21 times. The fee sheet barely moves: the deposit and annual fee stay flat and only the 2% commission scales. Media and the TP commission scale with every sale.

What does shrink is spending as a share of sales. At 1 million RMB the store spends 1.01 RMB for every 1 RMB it sells, before it has paid for a single product. At 3.5 million that falls to 68 cents, and at 10 million to 59. The fixed lines (the TP retainer, the annual fee, setup) get spread over more orders.

That’s the real shape of a Tmall Global first year. Opening the store costs little; filling it is where the money goes. A brand that budgets 150,000 RMB because that’s what the platform charges has budgeted for an empty store.

The other half of the picture is margin. Spending 68 cents per yuan of sales only works if the product leaves enough gross margin to cover it. We set the same model against gross profit, line by line, in what a China eCommerce P&L looks like. At a 75% gross margin, the store in our default case breaks even at about 2.2 million RMB a year.

What moves the bill: category, sales model and who runs the store

Every number above is a default. Three things push a real store away from it more than anything else.

Your category

Category sets the platform lines, and the spread is wider than the food example suggests. Apparel, footwear, bags and toys sit in the 60,000 RMB annual-fee tier with a 5% commission. At 3.5 million RMB in sales, an apparel store’s fee-sheet figure is 285,000 RMB, and its year-one spending in our model is 2.5 million. The multiple drops to 8.8, because the fee sheet is bigger, while the bill barely moves.

Two rules cut the annual fee for new stores until March 2027.

Stores that open between April 1, 2026 and March 31, 2027, and second-year stores that opened in the year before, pay 30,000 RMB a year instead of 60,000 RMB during that period. Source: Tmall Global (天猫国际), 2026 Annual Fee Incentive for New and Second-Year Merchants (2026年天猫国际新商家及次新商家技术服务年费激励计划), July 2026. https://rule.tmall.hk/?type=detail&ruleId=20010439&cId=625

New stores in listed apparel, mother-and-baby and home lines that sit in the 60,000 RMB tier pay no annual fee between April 1, 2026 and March 31, 2027. Source: Tmall Global (天猫国际), 2026 Special Annual Fee Incentive for New Merchants in Parts of Apparel, Mother and Baby and Home (2026年天猫国际新商家 服饰/母婴/家居部分类目技术服务年费 特殊激励计划), July 2026. https://rule.tmall.hk/?type=detail&ruleId=20010440&cId=625

Both are charged by the month, so a store that opens in January 2027 saves three months of fee, not a year. On a 2.5 million RMB year it’s a rounding error. Take it, but don’t plan the launch around it.

Health supplements are the exception to watch on the deposit side. Most supplements pay the standard 50,000 RMB at a flagship. NAD+ precursor supplements pay 300,000 RMB in every store type, under the deposit rules cited earlier.

Your sales model and your price

How a store finds its buyers moves the bill more than any platform rule. At 3.5 million RMB in sales, lifting the return on ad spend from 2 to 3 cuts media from 1.05 million RMB to 700,000 in our model. Dropping it to 1.5 adds 350,000. That one input swings year one by 700,000 RMB, more than four times the fee-sheet figure.

Tax is the other switch. The default assumes the shopper pays the cross-border tax at checkout, the usual setup for a flagship.

Cross-border retail imports within the limits pay 0% duty, with import VAT and consumption tax charged at 70% of the normal 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 general import VAT rate fell from 16% to 13% on April 1, 2019. Source: State Council Gazette (国务院公报), Announcement No. 39 of 2019 of the Ministry of Finance, State Taxation Administration and General Administration of Customs, March 2019. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2019/content_5416183.htm

Thirteen percent at 70% is 9.1% for most goods. A brand that absorbs it to hold a price adds about 318,500 RMB at 3.5 million RMB in sales. The limits matter too.

Cross-border retail imports carry a 5,000 RMB limit per order and a 26,000 RMB limit per shopper per year. Source: Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs, State Taxation Administration (财政部 海关总署 税务总局), 财关税〔2018〕49号, November 2018. http://gss.mof.gov.cn/gzdt/zhengcefabu/201811/t20181129_3079073.htm

Who runs the store

The TP line is a choice. Some brands run Tmall Global with their own team, and then the retainer and commission turn into payroll.

Shenzhen’s 2024 median pay for an e-commerce specialist (电子商务师) was 112,691 RMB a year, wages only. Source: Shenzhen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau (深圳市人力资源和社会保障局), Shenzhen 2025 Labor Market Wage Levels and Industry Labor Cost Information, April 2026. https://hrss.sz.gov.cn/xxgk/tjsj/zxtj/content/post_12735120.html

Four people at that median cost about 450,800 RMB in wages before social insurance, against 770,000 RMB for the TP at 3.5 million in sales. On paper that saves about 320,000 RMB. In year one it rarely holds. An in-house team still needs a legal employer in China, and someone who can fight a platform penalty in Chinese at 11 at night. Most brands hire a TP for the first year and revisit it once the store has history. We cover what a store operator does for the money on cross-border ecommerce operations.

Model your own year one

None of the defaults above is your store. A skincare brand with a 400 RMB basket, a 15% return rate and a TP quote of 50,000 RMB a month will land somewhere else, and should.

The way to use the numbers is to swap the defaults for your own, one line at a time, and watch which ones move the total. Start with the four lines that carry the bill: your ad return, your TP quote, your basket and your return rate. The platform lines will fill themselves in from your category.

Then read the result twice. Once as cash, to see how much you need in the bank before the first order: our food case needs 505,000 RMB before anything sells, of which 450,000 comes back on exit. And once as spending, to see what the year costs. The Tmall Global setup and run calculator keeps the two apart, so its cash total and its profit line show different numbers.

If the deposits, the warehouse and the store registration are still ahead of you, the order they come in is set out on cross-border store setup.

FAQ

How much does it cost to open a Tmall Global store?

The platform asks for a security deposit and an annual fee before the store opens: 50,000 RMB of deposit at a food, beauty or apparel flagship, and an annual fee of 30,000 or 60,000 RMB by category. Our calculator adds a bonded-warehouse deposit, a tax float and store setup, for 505,000 RMB before the first order in the food case.

Is the Tmall Global deposit refundable?

Yes. Tmall Global holds it against fines and shopper claims, then returns it within 10 PRC business days after the third month following the end of the agreement, if no claim is open. An agreement that ends on March 31 means the money arrives in mid-July. Quality warnings can raise it to 300,000 RMB while the store runs.

What is the biggest cost of a Tmall Global store?

Paid media, in our model. It takes 44% of year-one spending at 3.5 million RMB in sales, ahead of the Tmall Partner at 33%. Platform fees come to under 6%. The ratio moves with your return on ad spend, which is the input to test first.

Do I need a Tmall Partner to run a Tmall Global store?

Tmall Global signs the store contract with your overseas company, and most foreign brands hire a Tmall Partner to run it for the first year. In our calculator that costs 520,000 RMB at 1 million RMB of sales and 1.42 million at 10 million. An in-house team trades that for payroll and a legal employer in China.

Run your own year one in the Tmall Global setup and run calculator