The real landed cost of anything from China — calculated properly.

The four lines that decide your margin

Landed cost is not "the price on the page." It is four lines, and people skip at least one of them:

Line	Charged on	The trap
1. Item	—	None — the part everyone counts.
2. Freight	Weight, route, and quantity	Quoting one unit’s shipping and multiplying. Real per-unit freight falls with volume — but not linearly, and sometimes not at all.
3. Duty	The item price	Duty is owed even when shipping is free. Free shipping ≠ free entry.
4. Import tax (Canada)	Item + freight + duty	It compounds — tax is charged on everything above it, not just the item.

Why quantity changes everything

We request freight for the actual quantity you will buy, because real quotes vary that way. In one measured case, the per-unit shipping cost at 20 units was roughly a sixth of the single-unit cost — while a different product’s quote barely moved. Scaling one unit’s quote by gut feel gets the number wrong in both directions: sometimes you underprice, sometimes you price yourself out of a sale you could have won.

Currency: the 3% you do not see

If you sell in Canadian dollars, you are pricing in CAD but buying in USD. A stale exchange rate silently misstates every Canadian quote — we use a live USD→CAD rate and, if the rate providers are unreachable, a dated fallback that is labelled as such. The rate we used is printed next to the number.

One product, both countries, 60 seconds

Same dog bed, priced through our engine:

Line	United States	Canada (Ontario)
Item	$29.89	$29.89
Live shipping	$1.99	$1.99
Duty	$2.69	$1.79 (6%)
Import tax	—	$4.12 (HST 13%)
Delivered	$32.58 USD	$35.80 CAD

Run yours on the free tool — pick the US or your province, and the breakdown prints line by line. Ten free lookups a month, no card.

The mistakes that show up again and again

• "Shipping is free, so this is cheap." Duty is on the item — free shipping changes your freight line to zero, nothing else.
• "I added 10% for fees." Apparel and footwear can run 18–35% in duty alone. A flat 10% buffer is a guess wearing a suit.
• "The FX move won't matter." A 3% USD→CAD drift is 3% of everything — on thin margins, that is the whole profit.
• "One number is enough." Ranges exist because the rate layers are in flux. Cost with the range, decide with the range, and re-check with the as-of date.

Related

What the US de minimis suspension changed · Canada’s duty and tax, province by province

Duty figures here are estimates with an accuracy promise, not a customs ruling. Rates and trade remedies are in flux — every number our tool shows carries a confidence band and an as-of date. See the sample report for exactly what you get.