How these numbers are worked out
Most proxy comparisons quote a service fee and stop there. The service fee is rarely the largest number on the bill, and it is never the one that decides which company is cheapest. This page sets out exactly what goes into the totals on this site so you can check them against your own quote.
The three tiers
Import tax is a rule of the country you live in, not a property of the proxy company. What a proxy decides is only when you pay it — some collect it at checkout, some leave you to pay the courier on the doorstep. Add tax straight into one number and the honest companies that collect up front look expensive. So every total on this site is split three ways:
- What you pay the proxy now — goods, service fee, packing, domestic postage inside Japan, international postage, payment or deposit fees, and tax if that company pre-collects it.
- What you pay on delivery — import VAT, GST or business tax charged when the parcel lands, where it was not already collected.
- The final total — the two added together. This is the only figure worth ranking on.
Where each number comes from
| Input | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Service fees, packing, deposit fees, storage | Each company's own published fee pages (FROM JAPAN, Buyee, ZenMarket, Neokyo) | 2026-08-07 |
| International postage | Japan Post's official EMS rate table | 2026-08-09 |
| Import tax and duty-free thresholds | Each destination's own customs or tax authority | 2026-08-09 |
| Prohibited and restricted items | Each company's prohibited-items page, plus Japan Post's country-by-country acceptance list | 2026-08-09 |
Every figure carries the URL it came from and the date it was read. Nothing is estimated from memory or copied from another comparison site.
Rules we hold ourselves to
- An unknown fee is never silently treated as zero. A company with missing data would otherwise look cheapest simply because we failed to find its price. Where something is unpublished the total carries a warning saying so.
- Postage is charged in bands, not per gram. EMS prices step up at fixed weights, so a parcel one gram over a boundary costs the same as one at the top of the next band. We always apply the band your weight actually falls into rather than interpolating.
- A duty-free threshold is only applied where it is still in force. The United States suspended its $800 exemption in 2025; the EU abolished its €150 threshold in July 2026. Taiwan's NT$2,000 exemption is still live, and where an order sits close to a threshold we say that an exchange-rate move can push it either side of the line.
- Shippability is checked before price. If a company will not export the item, we say so and we do not present it as the cheapest option, however low its total would have been.
What is deliberately not included
- Courier customs handling fees. These are real and often ¥1,000–3,000, but they vary by carrier and country and none of the four companies publish them. We say a fee is likely rather than invent a figure.
- Customs duty by HS code. Duty depends on what the item is, and the rate for a resin figure differs from that for a cotton shirt. Where duty applies but cannot be pinned down, the total is marked as a minimum rather than padded with a guess.
- Optional extras. Photo services, reinforced packing, and repacking are all priced on the individual company pages but are left out of the default comparison, because most orders do not use them.
- Carriers other than EMS. DHL, FedEx and UPS are cheaper on some routes and are the only option for some restricted goods. Their rate tables are not public in a usable form, so this site prices EMS only.
How to check us
Open the breakdown on any result and you will see every line that makes up the total. Put the same order into the company's own quote tool and the two should agree, allowing for the exchange rate they use on the day and for domestic postage, which depends on the individual seller and is entered by you as an estimate.
If a number is wrong, we would rather know. There is a form on the contact page.