Taobao & 1688 Checker: Fake Brand Flag, Landed Cost & Sizes

You scraped 200 Taobao or 1688 listings. Which ones are fakes, which sellers are safe, and what will each one really cost once it lands at your door?

China Buy Check reads the dataset your Taobao, Tmall or 1688 scraper already made and adds a BUY / CHECK / AVOID verdict to every product, with the reasons. It does no scraping of its own, so it never fails on a blocked page: point it at your scraper's run and get the answer in seconds.

For each product you get:

• Verdict: BUY, CHECK or AVOID, with every reason written out
• Counterfeit brand flag: replica slang (原单, 莆田, 公司级, 1:1, 复刻, 高仿), lookalike spellings ("Beat.s", "ApplyBeats", "Inpods"), famous brands sold by shops that are not the brand's official store, and luxury names at pocket-money prices
• Seller trust score (0 to 100) with the reasons: official or Tmall store, shop age, credit level, shop ratings, good-review rate, units sold, and on 1688 the supplier's years, factory inspection and repeat-buyer rate
• English title and summary of the Chinese listing
• Size chart in US, UK and EU sizes for shoes and clothes (Chinese clothing usually runs a size small, and the chart says so)
• Estimated delivered cost to the US, UK and EU: item, shopping-agent fee, China shipping, international shipping, duty and VAT, with every assumption on the row
• Questions to ask the seller or your agent before you pay

Who it is for

• Resellers and dropshippers sourcing from 1688 or Taobao who need to bin the knockoffs and price the rest
• Shopping-agent users (Superbuy, CSSBuy, Sugargoo and similar) who want to know the real landed price before ordering
• Brand-protection teams scanning marketplace listings for counterfeits of their brand
• AI agents comparing Chinese listings on a user's behalf

How to use it

1. Run any Taobao, Tmall or 1688 scraper (for example pizani/taobao-product-scraper, scrapesage/taobao-scraper, zen-studio/taobao-detail-scraper, memo23/taobao-scraper or zen-studio/1688-wholesale-scraper). Turn on its "details" option if it has one: shop ratings and sales make the trust score sharper.
2. Open China Buy Check, pick that run's dataset in Dataset, and press Start.
3. Read the Buy check table, or download it as CSV or Excel.

Run it automatically after every scrape: on your scraper's Integrations tab, add China Buy Check. The Dataset field is filled with {{resource.defaultDatasetId}} for you, so every new scrape gets its verdicts.

You can also give it a CSV, Excel or Google Sheet link (your own sourcing sheet works), or product rows as JSON from an agent or n8n.

Example output

From a real run on mixed scraper output (shop names in the public example are made up):

Product	Verdict	Fake risk	Seller trust	Delivered US	Delivered UK	Delivered EU	Main reason
Nike Court Vision Low sneakers	BUY	low	100	$128.59	£89.99	€112.71	Sold by the brand's own official store
Clip-on Bluetooth 5.4 open-ear earbuds	BUY	none	73	$11.20	£8.20	€14.06	No counterfeit signs found
ApplyBeats Studio Buds+ earbuds	AVOID	high	39	$34.17	£24.09	€33.23	The title spells Beats in a lookalike way
Pro3 TWS "Inpods3" earbuds	AVOID	high	69	$10.99	£8.09	€13.93	¥10.9 is far below any genuine AirPods price
Lululemon Groove leggings	CHECK	medium	57	$102.04	£71.53	€90.45	Named by a buying-agent (代购) shop, not Lululemon's store
Retro football fan jersey	CHECK	none	unknown	$21.33	£15.41	€22.77	Too little seller data for a trust score

Every original column from your scraper is kept, and these columns are added: verdict, verdictReasons, englishTitle, englishSummary, productKind, counterfeitRisk, counterfeitBrand, counterfeitReasons, sellerTrustScore, sellerTrustReasons, deliveredCostUsUsd, deliveredCostUkGbp, deliveredCostEuEur, costBreakdown, costAssumptions, costQuantity, priceRead, priceCurrencyRead, sizeChart, sizeNote, watchOuts, buyerQuestions, platformDetected, shopNameRead, checkStatus, checkDetail, checkedAt.

How the verdict is decided

The rules are fixed and run in code, so every verdict can be explained:

• AVOID: counterfeit risk is high, or seller trust is under 35.
• CHECK: counterfeit risk is medium (a famous brand sold by a shop that is not its official store), the listing looks like it imitates a brand, seller trust is unknown or 35 to 64, or there is no price.
• BUY: everything else: no counterfeit concern, seller trust 65 or more, price known.

Never invented: prices, sales, ratings, weights and shop details are read from your own columns. An AI model (OpenAI) only translates the listing, describes the product and names a brand it imitates; a brand claim is kept only if its words are really in the listing, and any AI sentence holding a number that is not in the listing is dropped. A counterfeit flag is a risk signal read from the listing, not a legal finding about the seller.

Delivered cost: what is included

Each cost is an estimate from the row's own price, shipping fee, weight and minimum order, plus assumptions you can change in the input:

• Shopping-agent fee: 5% of the item price (agents charge about 0 to 10%).
• China shipping to the agent: from the row, or ¥8 if the row has none.
• International shipping: $12/kg to the US, $10/kg to the UK, $11/kg to the EU (typical agent economy lines), minimum 0.5 kg; 0.5 kg per piece when the row has no weight.
• US: duty on every China parcel, because the small-parcel (de minimis) exemption is suspended. Default 30% of the item price; most consumer goods fall between about 25 and 40%. Set your own rate if you know the product's HTS code.
• UK: no customs duty up to £135; 20% VAT on goods plus shipping.
• EU: since 1 July 2026, a flat €3 customs duty per item type on goods up to €150, plus import VAT (default 21%; set your country's rate).

Currency rates are the European Central Bank reference rates of the day. Above £135 (UK) or €150 (EU), normal customs duty is due on top and the row says it is not included.

Pricing

$0.01 per product checked (cheaper on higher Apify plans: down to $0.007). Rows with no title and products the AI step could not read are never charged. Optional CSV or Excel file: $0.01 each.

• Checking a 50-product 1688 search before you order: $0.50
• A reseller checking 300 new listings a week: about $12 a month

FAQ

Which scrapers does it work with? Any that outputs Taobao, Tmall or 1688 products. Field names are detected automatically for pizani, scrapesage, zen-studio (Taobao and 1688), memo23, tortuga and similar layouts; for anything unusual, set Title field and Price field.

Does a CHECK mean it is fake? No. CHECK means "look closer before paying": often a reseller of a real brand, or a shop without enough data for a trust score. Ask the seller the questions in buyerQuestions.

Why is my seller trust "unknown"? The scraper row did not include shop ratings, shop age or sales. Turn on your scraper's detail option and run again.

Can I use my own shipping rates and duty? Yes: every cost assumption is an input field.

Is it agent-ready? Yes. It runs through Apify's MCP server and API, takes rows as JSON, and charges per product only after a result comes back.

If China Buy Check saved you from a fake or a surprise customs bill, a review on the Apify Store helps a lot. Questions or a scraper layout it misreads? Open an issue on the Issues tab and it will be fixed quickly.