- One product from China is more expensive by 6,15 €
- Customs duty 3,69 € and new fee 2,46 €, both amounts include VAT
- AliExpress charges it already now, before November 1
- The fee applies too for phones over 150 €
Anyone who opened their AliExpress checkout in the last few days found a new item there. A 2 € handling fee was added to the three-euro customs duty that has been in effect since July, and since VAT is paid on both, one product from China will now cost you 6,15 € more. AliExpress collects the fee already now, even though the European Union is introducing it only from November 1.
Where do the 6,15 € come from for one product?
We added one product to the cart for 53,21 € with free shipping, and the checkout added an item called Estimated import charges for 6,15 €, so the final amount jumped to 59,36 €. If you click on the line, AliExpress breaks it down into two parts: customs duty 3,69 € and handling fee 2,46 €.
In both amounts, Slovak VAT is 23 %. Customs duty is, according to EU rules, 3 € for each type of goods in the shipment up to 150 €, and the new fee 2 € is calculated similarly, just without a price limit. From 3 € you then get after adding VAT 3,69 €. And from 2 € exactly 2,46 €. The surcharge doesn’t depend on the product price, so you’ll pay the same 6,15 € for a cable for 3 € as well as for headphones for 50 €.
Why AliExpress charges the fee even before Nov. 1.
Back on Oct. 21, we only saw customs duty in the AliExpress checkout, but the handling fee appeared there a few days later. It’s determined by the day when the package passes customs procedures in the EU—not the day you paid. For a product from our cart, AliExpress estimates delivery between Oct. 29 and Nov. 6, so the package will almost certainly reach customs at the time when the fee is already being charged.
In the explanation window, AliExpress writes that it charges the handling fee once for each product category, according to the customs classification (HS code), and customs duty for each different type of goods. More units of the same product are counted as one. The amount in checkout is, according to AliExpress, the final one—so at delivery you don’t pay anything extra to the courier or the post office. If someone asks you to pay these fees again, AliExpress advises keeping the payment receipt and contacting its customer support.
For cheap accessories, the fees are higher than the price of the item
A fixed amount hits the hardest on cheap items—the ones people buy most often on AliExpress. For a small item for 5 €, you’ll pay more in fees than the product costs itself, and for a ten-euro gadget the price increases by over 60 %. If you put three different items in one order—for example, a cable, a case, and a charger—count on 18,45 € extra, because each one has a different customs classification.
| - | Additional fees | Share of the price |
|---|---|---|
| Product for 5 € | 6.15 € | 123 % |
| Product for 10 € | 6.15 € | 62 % |
| Product for 20 € | 6.15 € | 31 % |
| Product for 50 € | 6.15 € | 12 % |
| Three different products for 10 € | 18.45 € | 62 % |
| Phone for 300 € (customs duty 0 %) | 2.46 € | less than 1 % |
Until July 2026, for shipments up to 150 €, only VAT was paid—the one AliExpress had included in the price since 2021. Starting July 1, customs duty was added, and now also a fee—so in less than four months, one Chinese product got more expensive by 6,15 €. In our Facebook group, members are already speaking up and definitely aren’t thrilled about the new cart item.
You’ll pay the fee even for a phone from China
Unlike customs duty, the handling fee has no price cap. In the explanatory memorandum to the regulation, the European Commission says it also applies to online purchases over 150 €, so you’ll pay it as well for a Xiaomi, Redmi or POCO phone ordered directly from China. The three-euro customs duty won’t apply for such a shipment—instead, you pay the standard customs tariff, which is zero for mobile phones. For a phone for 300 €, only 2,46 € will be added, and you probably won’t even notice it in the total price.
Customs duty €3 is meant to apply only temporarily until 1 July 2028, when it will be replaced by standard customs rates depending on the type of goods. However, the handling fee will remain even after that, and they won’t refund it even if you send the item back to the seller. Other stores handle it their own way, and Banggood told us as a partner that until they finish automated recognition of customs codes, they charge a flat fee of €6 per package.
Why did the European Union introduce the fee
According to the European Commission, the fee is supposed to cover the costs of customs officers who have to check an enormous number of small parcels. In 2025, 5.9 billion cheap shipments arrived in the Union from e-shops—four times more than in 2022—and over 90% of them came from China. The Commission set the amount of €2 per item by a regulation dated 21 September, and the fee applies starting from the tenth day after it is published, so, according to the Commission, from 1 November.
It was also criticized in the European Parliament. Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba, according to the portal Borderlex, called it an unfair tax on consumers. However, neither the Members of the European Parliament nor the member states wanted to block it. Formally, the fee is paid by the platform or carrier that submits the customs declaration, but from the AliExpress cart it’s clear that in the end the customer pays the full amount.
How to avoid the new fee?
Safest is to buy from European warehouses. Goods stored in Poland, the Czech Republic, or Spain were imported and customs-cleared in bulk by the seller, so you don’t pay customs duty or the new fee, and the package usually arrives within a week. You can find offers from EU warehouses in our category European warehouses as well as in the overview of EU warehouses on Deal Planet.
If you’re buying from China, it’s worth ordering multiple pieces of the same item at once, because the same product counts as one item. AliExpress also offers the Bundle Deals promo marked as Duty Covered, where customs duty (clo) is paid for you by the platform. How to use it, we broke down in a separate article. In the cart, we checked that the promo deducts even the new handling fee for three products from the same category, so from the fees of €17 we had to pay just 6 cents. Before you pay, still check whether in checkout there’s a line with the discount under the estimated fees.
Timing is unpleasant for customers, because AliExpress runs the sale 11.11 starting on 1. November, and after that comes Black Friday. So the fee will first fully show up during the biggest shopping period of the year. For pricier items like phones or robot vacuum cleaners, 2,46 € disappears in the discount, but for cheap little things, calculate carefully whether ordering from China is still worth it.
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