Kakobuy lever calculator: compare five parts of your order budget
Enter your own order to compare five cost scenarios in dollars. These are different kinds of costs, not an additive savings total. Defaults are the reference order; line prices are pre-filled from the estimator reading of 10 October 2026 and should be replaced with today's.
The lever calculator
Scenario inputs, not a checkout quote. PayPal’s official help pages conflict; the 3.5% + $0.30 assumption below is illustrative. The consolidation bar uses an old EMS example, not current freight.
How to use the calculator
Start with the goods total and domestic delivery from your cart, both in yuan. Enter the packed weight if you have it from a pre-pack weigh-in, or your best estimate. Set the number of parcels you would send if you shipped items as they arrived; 1 means you were going to consolidate anyway, and lever two drops to zero.
Then check the two line prices. Choosing a destination fills in the lowest and highest bookable 1 kg readings from 10 October 2026. Replace them with the lowest line that suits your goods today and the line you would otherwise have picked. Finally choose the top-up channel and the add-ons you are weighing.
The bars redraw as you type. The note under them tells you which lever came first and by how much.
The formulas behind each bar
Nothing here is a black box. Each lever uses one line of arithmetic:
- Rate: (goods + domestic) ÷ mid-market rate × markup.
- Consolidation: the help centre's EMS example tariff (160 RMB first 500 g, 55 RMB each further 500 g, 4 RMB operation fee) applied to your weight split into N parcels, minus the same weight as one parcel, plus one assumed ¥8 per-extra-parcel charge, converted at the mid-market rate.
- Line: the line you would pick minus the lowest suitable line.
- Top-up: 3.5% of (goods at the marked-up rate + lowest line) + US$0.30 per top-up; zero agent fee assumed for the wallet scenario; external wallet or bank charges are not modelled.
- Add-ons: the yuan prices you ticked, converted at the mid-market rate.
The EMS tariff is the operator's worked example, not a current line price, so lever two is an illustration of the mechanism. For a real figure, price one parcel and two parcels in the estimator and enter the difference as your judgement.
The full Kakobuy bill, line by line, and the fees behind it
The calculator only shows levers, the parts that vary with your choices. The full bill has more lines. The help centre's formula adds four things: what the goods cost, the international freight, a packaging fee and any value-added services you choose, where the goods cost is the seller's price plus domestic delivery to the warehouse. Elsewhere it lists a customs declaration cost of generally RMB 8.00 per parcel.
The standard purchase service-fee headline does not cover every charge. The rate markup sits inside the prices you see in your display currency, which is why the calculator needs the mid-market rate to show it. Customs duties at your border are a separate matter that depends on the line: check which taxes and clearance costs the selected route actually includes.
What the calculator cannot tell you
It does not know today's line prices, today's mid-market rate or whether a coupon applies to your parcel. It does not price volume weight, so bulky parcels will cost more than the weight field suggests. It cannot see PayPal's own conversion if your card is not in US dollars.
It also does not tell you what to buy, which agent to use or which line is right for your goods. It ranks the cost decisions on an order you have already chosen, and that is all it is for.
How to act on a large bar
If the conversion bar is largest, compare another current payment quote for the same yuan amount; the whole markup is not automatically avoidable. If the consolidation bar is largest, replace the old EMS illustration with two actual eligible packing quotes. If the line bar is largest, make sure the cheaper line accepts the contents and offers the terms you need.
For payment charges, changing the number of top-ups affects the fixed part but does not erase the percentage. For add-ons, remove a service only when the question or protection it supplies is unnecessary. Do not total the bars as a promised saving: they overlap and use different assumptions.