ZenMarket: what you actually pay
Checked against ZenMarket's own fee pages on 2026-08-07.
Service fee by marketplace
| Buying from | Fee |
|---|---|
| a ZenMarket recommended store | ¥300 per item |
| Amazon.co.jp | ¥500 per item |
| Rakuten Ichiba | ¥500 per item |
| any Japanese online shop | ¥500 per item |
| Mercari Japan | ¥800 per item |
| Yahoo! Auctions | ¥800 per item |
| Rakuten Rakuma | ¥500 per undefined |
Other charges
- Payment / deposit fee: 3.5% of the gross transaction (about 3.63% on top of what you need)
- Packing / consolidation: included
- Free storage: 60 days
- Export clearance fee: not published
When ZenMarket is actually the cheapest
Fee tables do not answer that on their own, so here is the same set of orders priced through all four services, showing where ZenMarket lands:
| Order | ZenMarket | Total | Beaten by |
|---|---|---|---|
| one ¥10,000 item, 1kg, to the United States | 4th | ¥17,409 | FROM JAPAN ¥16,500 |
| three separate items from one shop | 4th | ¥18,135 | Buyee ¥16,500 |
| a heavy 3kg parcel | 4th | ¥22,591 | FROM JAPAN ¥21,500 |
| an expensive ¥100,000 item | 4th | ¥110,674 | FROM JAPAN ¥106,500 |
| a light 200g order to Taiwan | 4th | ¥13,993 | FROM JAPAN ¥13,223 |
ZenMarket does not come out cheapest on any of these five, which does not make it a bad choice — what it bundles in for the money is covered above — but if price is the only thing you care about, the comparison pages below will show you which service to use instead.
Storage, and what happens if you leave things too long
ZenMarket stores a purchase free for 60 days from the moment it reaches their warehouse. After that it is ¥50 per item per day. This matters more than it sounds: the free window is what lets you win several auctions over a few weeks and ship them together in one box, which saves far more in postage than the storage costs. Leave it past the limit and the item is disposed of, with no compensation.
Optional services you may end up paying for
- Photographs of the item before it ships: ¥500 for 3. On a second-hand auction purchase this is often the only way to find out what you actually bought before it leaves Japan.
- Repacking after the parcel is made up: ¥1,000–¥4,000 depending on weight.
- Reinforced packing: ¥1,000 per box.
- Cancelling after the item has reached the warehouse: ¥1,000, and not possible at all for auction or flea-market purchases.
- Disposing of something that cannot be exported: ¥300 per kg, plus ¥1,000 per 15 minutes of work. Batteries are ¥300–¥3,200 each.
- Digital goods such as game codes: an extra 10% of the item price.
Import tax collected up front
- AU: GST 10%
- NZ: GST 15%
- GB: VAT 20%
- NO: VAT 25%
- CH: VAT 8.1%
- SG: GST 9%
- KZ: VAT 16%
- DE: VAT 19%
- FR: VAT 20%
Where tax is collected up front you pay nothing extra when the parcel arrives, and you usually avoid the courier's own customs handling charge.