About AliCheap — what we measure, and what we do not know
What this site measures, how the numbers are made, and what we do not know.
What this site does
On AliExpress the same item costs different amounts depending on the seller and the option you pick, and the listed price is not what you end up paying. AliCheap calls item price + shipping − coin discount the “real price” and ranks popular items by it. There is no sign-up, and we do not sell anything ourselves.
We try never to hand you a number without its parts. The “Why this price?” block on an item page opens up how the figure was built. A number you cannot trace back is a claim, not evidence.
Where the data comes from
- Items, prices and images come from the official AliExpress affiliate API. We do not scrape product pages.
- We stay under fifteen API calls a day rather than refresh aggressively.
- Exchange rates are derived from what AliExpress itself charges for the same item, not a bank reference rate — a bank rate disagrees with what you see at checkout.
- Price history is a set of dated observations. It is not a live lookup; the date shown is the day we saw that value.
What we do not know — stated up front
- Card prices are the cheapest option. Picking a colour or capacity can cost more, which is why every figure carries a “from”.
- We do not calculate customs duty or import VAT. Rates depend on the item and change by law. We would rather say nothing than show a confident wrong number.
- We cannot verify that a coupon still works, so coupon amounts never enter our price maths — we only point you to where they were posted.
- Coin discounts are shown as a ceiling. What is actually deducted depends on the coins in your account, which we do not know.
- All figures are for delivery to South Korea. AliExpress prices and shipping vary by destination country.
How this is funded
Item links are affiliate links and we earn a commission on purchases. The price you pay is the same. Commission rates play no part in ordering — the ranking code cannot even see that field, because it is dropped from the candidate data. Once you start floating high-commission items to the top, nothing else the site says can be trusted.
Contact
Wrong price, a review you want taken down, anything else — see Contact.