Which Japan proxy service costs the least for buying cards: ZenMarket, Buyee, Neokyo, Japan Rabbit or FROM JAPAN?

Published November 2, 2026 · By the Cards from Japan editors

Summary

There is no single cheapest service: on a Mercari card, Buyee charges ¥500 per order plus a plan fee, ZenMarket ¥800 per item, and Japan Rabbit $3.00 per item plus a percentage of the order, so the answer changes with how many items you buy at once. Storage, consolidation and payment fees, plus the carrier each one uses for the U.S., decide the rest. Since June 2026, Mercari's own Global App also sells Mercari Japan items to U.S. buyers without a proxy.

What a proxy does and when you need one

A proxy service buys an item from a Japanese site on your behalf, receives it at its warehouse in Japan, and ships it to you. It is needed for sites that only deliver inside Japan, such as Mercari Japan, Yahoo! Auctions and many small shops. Mercari's help center says sellers ship to a designated address in Japan when a purchase comes through one of its official cross-border partners, and it lists Buyee as one of them.

You don't need a proxy for stores that already ship worldwide; our guide to getting cards shipped to the U.S. covers two of them. Pokémon Center Online delivers only within Japan, so it is a proxy-or-nothing case.

Fees compared

Fees below are from each service's own pages as of November 2, 2026. "Not stated" means we could not find the figure on the service's official pages.

Service	Fee on a Mercari item	Other per-item or per-order fees	Free storage	Consolidation	Payment fee
ZenMarket	¥800 per item (also per JDirectItems Auction bid)	¥500 per item at most other stores, ¥300 at recommended stores	60 days, then ¥50 per item per day, up to 90 days	First consolidation free	Deposit fee from 1%
Buyee	¥500 per order (Mercari, JDirectItems Auction and Rakuma)	Plan fee: Standard ¥500, Insured Delivery ¥500, Inspection ¥300, Lite ¥0	30 days, then a daily extension fee, up to 90 days	Fee waived	Not stated
Neokyo	Not stated on the fee page	¥250 order fee plus ¥500 per shipment	Up to 45 days, included in the order fee	Covered by the shipment fee	3.6% (plus ¥40 on PayPal)
Japan Rabbit	$3.00 per item	$1.00 per item at most shops, $3.75 at Yahoo! Auctions, plus a sliding service fee from 9.9% (orders under $80) to 1.2% ($880 and up)	45 days per package	Free within one order; $2.50 per extra package, capped at $12.50	Not stated
FROM JAPAN	Not stated	Handling fee ¥500 (one help page says per order, another per item)	Within a 60-day storage period	Free within the storage period	Not stated

Two notes on the table. ZenMarket and Buyee call Yahoo! Auctions purchases "JDirectItems Auction" on their fee pages. Japan Rabbit's help center lists a different fee for some marketplaces ($5.00 per shop link) than its pricing page, so check the total at checkout.

How the fee models change the math

A per-order fee favors buying several items from one Mercari order at once; a per-item fee favors buying one card. Buying three Mercari cards in three separate orders costs ¥2,400 in ZenMarket service fees (3 × ¥800) and ¥1,500 at Buyee (3 × ¥500), before Buyee's plan fee. Bought as a single card, Japan Rabbit's $3.00 is lower than either, but its percentage fee grows with the order's value: on a $60 order it adds 9.9%.

Payment fees work differently too. ZenMarket takes funds as a deposit and charges a deposit fee from 1%. Neokyo charges 3.6% on each order or shipment payment. The others did not state a payment surcharge on the pages we checked. Each service also passes on the seller's shipping inside Japan; Buyee puts that at ¥150 to ¥1,500 per order.

For cards, the optional services matter as much as the base fee. ZenMarket charges ¥500 per item for photos and ¥1,000 per box for reinforcement. Japan Rabbit charges $5.00 for photos and $3.00 for extra padding. FROM JAPAN charges ¥500 for three photos and ¥100 for each one after that. Neokyo says it "does not inspect or authenticate the item as part of the service."

Shipping to the U.S.

Each proxy picks its own carriers for U.S. addresses, and duty handling differs:

Buyee's help center says it ships U.S. packages by ECMS and Buyee Air Delivery, which uses DHL, UPS and FedEx. ECMS cannot deliver to a PO Box.
FROM JAPAN says FedEx shipments to the U.S. are duty-paid (DDP) only, DHL is duty-unpaid (DDU) only, and UPS offers both.
Japan Rabbit says Japan Post methods are available to the U.S. only for shipments valued at $2,500 or more; its other options include EMS, FedEx and DHL.
Neokyo lists surface, airmail, EMS, FedEx, UPS and DHL, with a maximum size and weight for U.S. packages given as 105 cm/200 cm/20 kg.
ZenMarket's shipping page lists EMS, airmail, surface, FedEx, UPS, DHL and others but says its information is as of December 2022.

Whatever the carrier, cards from Japan pay U.S. duty; what a card costs once it lands walks through the 12.5% rate and Japan Post's prices.

Buying Mercari items without a proxy

Mercari launched the Mercari Global App in the United States on June 17, 2026. Its announcement says U.S. buyers can buy items from Mercari and Mercari Shops in Japan "without having to go through a third-party proxy crossborder service," that Mercari checks every item before shipping, and that the whole process from payment to tracking happens in the app. The announcement does not list fees. A step-by-step comparison of the two routes is in how to buy on Mercari Japan.

Before you choose

Count your items. One card favors a per-item fee; several cards from one seller favor Buyee's per-order fee.
Check the photo and packing options if condition matters, then read the listing with our guide to Japanese listing terms and shop condition grades.
Look at the U.S. carrier and whether duty is prepaid before you pay for the item. Buyee, for example, does not accept cancellations once a purchase is complete.
For prices, compare against U.S. listings; price sites explain where their numbers come from. For graded cards, run the cert check in what to check before buying a graded card.

Sources

Details are as published on these pages on the date above and can change. Check the official page before you buy or submit.