China supplier verification methods, compared — what each route can and cannot answer.

1. The four tiers, each in four honest layers

Each tier below is described the same way: the Fact. of what you get, its Relevance. to a real decision, its Limit., and the Next action. it points at.

• Tier 0 — Free DIY checks (US$0).

  Fact. The checks buyers actually run first: ask for the business licence, validate the 18-character Unified Social Credit Code, search the company name together with “scam”, weigh platform tenure, ask for a factory video — and keep payment inside channels with recourse.

  Relevance. This tier catches transcription errors, mismatched names and the oldest tricks, and it costs nothing but an hour.

  Limit. It cannot confirm the company’s current registered status, who owns the beneficiary account, or whether the factory floor exists. A code that passes validation was transcribed correctly — that is all it proves.

  Next action. Run the free unified social credit code checker and the factory-or-trader wording screen in your browser, then follow the due diligence checklist for what to ask next.

• Tier 1 — Low-cost online verification (about US$5–11).

  Fact. Scoped registry reads sold per company: our own menu sells single record lines from $4.90 and theme packs from $26.55, each delivered line naming its source and query date; QINCheck sells an instant database report at €10 and states it timestamps every data pull; CheckChinaCompany advertises a US$9.99 report with 12-hour delivery. All three checked on their own public pages, 21 August 2026.

  Relevance. This is the tier for the questions that decide small first orders: does this exact entity exist, what status does the record show, does the company on the contract match the company on record.

  Limit. A registry record is not the factory floor, not the beneficiary account, not the certificate’s scope. Database-driven reports are only as fresh as their last pull — ask when that was.

  Next action. Look at what a delivered report actually looks like before paying anyone, then pick lines from the published menu for the question in front of you.

• Tier 2 — One-off desk reports (US$69–199).

  Fact. A person or pipeline assembles one company’s file, typically within one to three working days: China Company Lookup lists a $69 Registry Check (24 hours, described on its own pricing page as data only, no analysis) and a $199 Full Investigation (72 hours, with a red/yellow/green verdict); ChineseCheck sells an instant AI-generated credit report at $199 with a 0–100 score; ChinaCheckup states a 1-working-day manual turnaround and that its verification is confirmed only at the time of research — its current price could not be confirmed on its own page on 21 August 2026, so none is quoted here. Registration China lists manual reports from $99 with a 1-working-day turnaround.

  Relevance. This tier buys back your time: someone who reads Chinese records for a living assembles the file while you do something else.

  Limit. On the public pages checked 21 August 2026, most of these providers did not show per-field sources and query dates — you get a conclusion, not the evidence chain behind it. A score or a traffic-light grade is the provider’s judgement layered on top of records you cannot inspect.

  Next action. If you buy one, read it for sources and dates, not for the verdict — and run the money-path check (contract seller, invoice issuer, beneficiary) yourself regardless.

• Tier 3 — On-site audits (about US$300+ per man-day).

  Fact. A person physically visits the factory: V-Trust lists a factory audit at $398 per man-day, all-inclusive, with the report within 2 days of the visit; QIMA states on-site inspections in China within 48 hours of booking with same-day report delivery, and does not publish a price — it quotes. Both checked on their own public pages, 21 August 2026.

  Relevance. This is the only tier that answers capability questions: whether the floor, the machines and the process for your order are physically there. Before tooling payments or first bulk orders, a wrong answer costs multiples of the audit fee.

  Limit. A visit is a dated snapshot of one site on one day. It does not prove the legal entity you contracted with, where your payment goes, or what the next batch will look like.

  Next action. Records first, site second: settle identity and scope cheaply, define what the visit must observe with the capability check guide, then book the audit.

2. The same market as one dated table

Every third-party row is from the provider’s own public page, checked 21 August 2026. Prices and promises change; treat this as a dated snapshot, not a live feed, and confirm on the provider’s site before relying on any figure. “Sources and dates shown?” refers to what the provider’s public pages state about the delivered report — not to a purchase we did not make.

“Not seen” is a reading of public pages on one date, not a claim about what a purchased report contains — no reports were purchased for this comparison. ChinaCheckup’s price is absent because its own page did not yield a figure on the check date; quoting a number from third-party blogs would break this page’s own rule.

3. Choosing by the decision point, not the price

• “They sent a licence photo — is this even a real company?” Stay in tier 0: validate the code and read the registered scope in your browser. Spend nothing until one of these raises a specific question.
• “I’m about to wire a deposit.” The decisive questions are identity and money-path: what the registry shows for this exact name, and whether the beneficiary matches the contracting entity. Tier 1 answers the first in the same hour; only your own name-matching answers the second.
• “I want the whole file assembled for me.” That is what tier 2 sells. Buy it when your time is the constraint — and read whatever arrives for sources and query dates, because a conclusion without them is decoration.
• “Tooling is paid / the first bulk order is coming.” Tier 3 earns its price here, because capability is a physical fact. Records first, then eyes on the floor.

4. About the verdict formats — scores, grades, traffic lights

Some desk reports compress the records into a judgement: a 0–100 score, a risk grade, a red/yellow/green light. Treat these as the provider’s opinion about records you cannot see, priced on top of them. The cleanest statement of the limit comes from a provider of exactly such a report: “Legal existence does not mean ‘Safe to Pay’” — China Company Lookup’s own pricing page, checked 21 August 2026. A registration match is not a safety verdict: it confirms what the registry displayed on the query date, nothing more. That holds for our reports too — which is why ours carry sources, dates and limits instead of a score.

One honest note on the low-cost tier’s obscurity: in a 15-thread sample of buyer-forum discussions (read 21 August 2026, mostly 2020–2023 archives), pay-per-check online verification services got zero spontaneous recommendations — buyers were pointed to payment-channel discipline, free DIY checks and, for larger orders, on-site audits. The tier exists and is cheap; it simply is not yet what forums recommend. Absence from forum lore is a popularity measurement, not a quality one.

5. Where we sit in this spectrum — honestly

We sell tier 1, and we are not the only honest option in it: QINCheck’s €10 report states it timestamps every pull, and tier 0 costs you nothing but an hour. We are also not a substitute for tier 3 — when the question is the factory floor, book the audit. What we do differently is scope and evidence: you can buy a single record line instead of a bundle, start with a free in-browser read of documents you already hold, and every delivered line names its source, query date and limits. If another tier or provider fits your decision better, use it; this page is here to make that call easy. For the same market cut by price rather than by method, see the verification cost comparison; for the full map of our buyer guides, the guide index.

Method: all third-party figures from providers’ own public pages on 21 August 2026; no accounts were registered and no reports were purchased, so delivery quality is not assessed — only published price, turnaround and evidence display. Providers change prices and pages without notice. Our own scope, template and limits, for comparison.