The short version. A Chinese PCB quotation has to answer three questions before it is worth comparing: what specification is being sold (stack-up, laminate, copper, finish, test coverage), under what conditions the unit price holds (quantity band, panel utilisation, validity window), and who pays when the boards arrive out of spec (acceptance class, rework or replacement, freight and duty). A quote that answers only the first question is a starting point, not an offer.
What this page will not give you. Price ranges. Board prices move with copper, laminate grade, energy costs and order size, and any figure printed here would be wrong within a quarter. What does not move is the structure — the line items that must be there, and the clauses that decide the outcome of a dispute. That is what this page covers.
Why it matters more in China than at home. In this directory's twelve profiled factories in Suining, 0 publish a minimum order quantity and 1 publishes a lead time. The quotation is therefore the only document in the process where those numbers exist at all. If they are not in it, they are nowhere.
Read a quotation as a list of things you are buying, not a list of charges. Each row below is a real line item on Chinese PCB quotations; the third column is what usually goes wrong with it.
| Line item | What you are actually buying | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Bare board price | Fabrication, at a stated quantity band, priced either per board or per square metre | Per-board pricing with no panel size stated — you cannot see the utilisation you are paying for |
| Engineering / NRE | Gerber review, CAM engineering, first-article inspection — one-off | Charged as a lump sum with no scope; a re-quote for a revised Gerber re-charges it |
| Test fixture or flying probe | Either a one-off fixture plus per-board test, or per-board flying-probe test with no fixture | The two are quoted as “test” at the same price, though their cost curves cross at different volumes |
| Panelisation | How many of your boards fit one panel, and who decides the layout | Factory chooses the panel to suit its line; the utilisation gain is not passed on |
| Surface finish | HASL, lead-free HASL, ENIG, OSP, immersion silver or tin — a real cost and shelf-life decision | Quoted as “HASL” when the drawing says ENIG; discovered at first article |
| Impedance control | Controlled-dielectric stack-up plus test coupons, measured and reported | “Impedance control” quoted with no coupon and no measurement report attached |
| Laminate and stack-up | Specific grade and Tg, from a named supplier, in a stated build-up | Written as “FR-4” only — the widest cost range in the whole quotation sits inside that word |
| Packing and labelling | Vacuum pack, desiccant, moisture indicator, barcode and label format | Assumed, then re-quoted as an extra after the order is placed |
| Freight terms | EXW, FOB, CIF or DDP — who books, who clears, who pays duty | Quoted EXW while the buyer assumes DDP; the difference lands on the invoice, not the quote |
The one line item that is almost always missing. Scrap rate or yield assumption. If a factory quotes per good board, it has already priced its expected scrap into the number — and it has no reason to tell you what it assumed. Ask. A factory that can state its assumed yield for your stack-up is a factory that has run something like it before.
These are not commercial niceties. Each one decides who pays in a specific, predictable failure. If a quotation has none of them, it is a price, not an offer.
Who owns the test fixture, the test program and the CAM data after the order? Default answer in the absence of a clause: the factory. If you paid an NRE or fixture charge, ask for one sentence stating that the fixture, program and CAM files are your property and will be transferred or destroyed on request. This matters most when you leave: a fixture you paid for is often the reason a switch to another factory costs more than it should.
A panel holds n of your boards. Who chose n, and who keeps the value of the leftover area? Ask for the panel dimensions, the board count per panel, and whether the quoted price assumes a specific scrap percentage. Two quotations for the same board differ by 10–20% most often here, not in the fabrication cost.
IPC-A-600 class 2 or class 3, and IPC-6012 for the bare board. The class decides which cosmetic and dimensional conditions are acceptable — a lifted pad, a dent, a slot dimension. A quotation that names no class is leaving acceptance to the inspector's judgement, and the inspector works for the seller. Ask for the class in writing; ask for the AQL plan on orders above a few hundred boards.
Rework, replacement, credit, or return — and who pays freight in each case. Also: what happens to a shipment that passes the factory's own inspection but fails at your incoming inspection. Without a clause, the default in cross-border trade is that the goods are deemed accepted on delivery, and the argument becomes about whether your inspector used the right standard.
Gerbers, drill files, stack-up drawings and any customer-supplied laminate specification stay yours; ask the quotation to say so. Also ask whether the factory will fabricate your design for another buyer. Most will say no; the value is in having it written down before you send the files.
The percentage matters less than what releases each payment. A 30% deposit released against a proforma invoice and 70% against a bill of lading is normal. 70% released against “production complete” — a status you cannot verify from outside — is not the same thing. Ask for each payment to name the document that triggers it.
Before any comparison, five variables have to be identical on both quotations. In practice, at least one is different almost every time.
| Variable | Why it moves the price | What to fix in writing |
|---|---|---|
| Layer count and stack-up | A 6-layer build with two core laminations is not a 6-layer build with three | Exact build-up drawing, with dielectric thicknesses |
| Laminate grade and Tg | Standard FR-4 and high-Tg FR-4 are different materials with different prices | Grade and supplier, not the word “FR-4” |
| Copper weight | 2 oz inner layers change plating time, etch control and etch compensation | Copper weight per layer, finished |
| Panel utilisation | The same board in a different panel layout changes the effective cost per board | Panel size and board count per panel |
| Test coverage | Flying probe on 100% of nets against a fixture test at reduced coverage are different products | Test method, net coverage, and whether a report is supplied |
The order of operations matters: fix the specification first, ask for the price second. A buyer who asks “what is your price for 6-layer?” gets a number for a different board from each factory, then spends a week discovering why the cheapest one was cheapest.
Send them in one message. The quality of the reply is itself a test — a factory that answers six of eight in specific terms is operationally mature, and one that answers all eight with adjectives is not.
Quotation language is compressed. Four phrases carry more risk than the rest, and each has a specific question attached:
Ask for both, and ask which one the factory will invoice against. Per-square-metre pricing makes quotations comparable across panel layouts; per-board pricing hides utilisation, which is where a 12% difference in effective cost usually sits.
Whoever paid for it, unless the quotation says otherwise. If you paid a fixture or NRE fee, ask for a written statement that the fixture, test program and CAM data are yours and will be transferred or destroyed on request.
Usually not because one is cheaper. Fix five variables first: layer count and stack-up, laminate grade and Tg, copper weight, panel utilisation, and test coverage. A quotation that leaves laminate as “FR-4” has not specified what it is selling.
IPC-A-600 class 2 for most commercial boards, class 3 for high-reliability work. Ask for the class in writing, and for the AQL sampling plan on larger orders.
Percentages vary. What matters is what releases the balance: acceptance of the first article, acceptance of the shipment, or a bill of lading. Ask each payment to name its document.
This page describes the structure of a quotation, not the market. It gives no price ranges, because a figure that is right this quarter is wrong the next. It does not evaluate any factory: the twelve profiles in this directory record what each plant publishes, and this guide is about the document you receive after you contact them.
Where the guides series is concerned with public records — how to verify a supplier in 20 minutes — this page is concerned with the private document that follows. The two are complementary: verification tells you whether to send an RFQ, and the RFQ tells you whether the factory can describe its own product.