AliExpress is already charging a new EU fee, even though it only applies from November! A cheap gadget from China will now cost more by 6,15 €—more than it costs by itself

Three days ago we wrote that AliExpress charges only customs duty in the cart for now, and that adding a new handling fee is a matter of days. It happened faster than we expected. At checkout now, for a single product from China, besides customs duty you’ll also see a handling fee of 2.46 €, so the order total increases by 6.15 € together. AliExpress collects it a week earlier than the time when the EU will start paying it officially.

This is what the new item in checkout looks like

We tested it on a product for 53.21 € with free shipping. AliExpress added a line called Estimated import charges for 6.15 €, so you pay 59.36 € in total. After clicking the question mark next to the line, AliExpress shows what it’s made of: customs duty 3.69 € and handling fee 2.46 €.

Both amounts already include Slovak VAT at 23%, which is paid both on the customs duty and on the fee. That’s why a three-euro customs duty introduced by the EU on 1 July for shipments up to 150 € becomes 3.69 €, and the two-euro fee we wrote about at the beginning of October becomes exactly 2.46 €. The amount of the surcharge doesn’t depend on the price of the item, so you pay it the same for a cheap cable as for more expensive headphones.

Why the fee is added even before 1. November

It doesn’t matter which day you pay for the package, but the day when it passes customs procedures in the EU. For our product, AliExpress estimates delivery between 29. October and 6. November, so the shipment will almost certainly reach customs only after 1. November. That’s why AliExpress charges the fee already for today’s orders, and Banggood does the same.

In checkout, AliExpress explains that the handling fee is charged once for each product category according to the customs code (HS code), and customs duty is charged for each different type of goods. So five identical cables are one line item, but a cable, a case, and a charger are three. The good thing is that the amount in checkout is final and you pay nothing extra upon delivery. If a courier or customs officers want to charge those same fees again, AliExpress advises saving the receipt and contacting support.

With cheap gadgets you pay more in fees than for the item

It hurts the most with small items worth a few euros that were bought from China the most often. For a product priced at 5 €, you’ll pay more in fees than the item itself costs, and a ten-euro gadget gets more expensive by 62 %. If you put three different things into one order, you’ll pay 18,45 € more, because each one has a different customs classification.

Back in June, for shipments up to 150 €, you only paid VAT, which AliExpress includes in the price since 2021. First customs duty was added, and now also a handling fee—so a single China product has become more expensive by 6.15 € in less than four months. Members of our China Planet group noticed the new cart item among the first and complaints about it are growing.

The fee has no cap and it won’t be refunded

Customs duty 3 € applies only to shipments up to 150 € and is supposed to be temporary until 1. July 2028. However, according to the European Commission’s impact assessment, the handling fee also applies to more expensive goods bought online—for example, a phone or a robotic vacuum cleaner ordered directly from China. For mobile phones, customs duty is usually zero, so with them you only get charged 2,46 €. The fee is also permanent and you won’t get it back even if you return the goods to the seller.

The Commission’s fee is defended with the costs of customs officers’ checks. According to its figures, in 2025 5.9 billion low-cost shipments arrived in the EU, four times more than in 2022, and over 90% of them came from China. It set the 2 € amount per item via a regulation from 21 September. A Maltese MEP, Alex Agius Saliba, called this fee an unfair tax on consumers on the portal Borderlex, but the European Parliament and member states did not want to stop it.

How to get around new fees

Goods from warehouses in Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany or Spain: the seller imported them and cleared them in bulk, so you don’t pay customs duty or a handling fee—and they usually arrive within a week. You can find the offers in our EU warehouses category, and in the guide we show you how to search for them directly on AliExpress.

When buying from China, it’s worth ordering more pieces of the same small item at once, because they count as one item. On AliExpress, there’s also a Bundle Deals promo marked “Duty Covered”, where customs duty for you is paid by the platform. In the cart, we checked that for three products from the same category, the promo also subtracts the new handling fee, so from fees totaling €17, we only had to pay 6 cents. Before you pay, still check in checkout whether there’s a line with a discount under the estimated fees.

The fee appeared right before the sales: AliExpress on 1. November launches 11.11 and right after it comes Black Friday. For pricier products, the 2,46 € discount disappears, but for cheap gadgets it’s worth first checking whether you can also get them from a European warehouse. That’s why for every China offer, we’ll tell you how much you’ll truly pay for it.

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