AliExpress Tracking

One number, every carrier

An AliExpress parcel rarely stays with one company. A seller in Yiwu hands it to Cainiao. Cainiao flies it out through a consolidation hub. Somewhere over the Pacific it becomes the responsibility of a postal operator you have never heard of, and by the time it reaches your street it belongs to USPS, Royal Mail, Correos or Pakistan Post.

That handoff is why tracking feels broken. The AliExpress app shows you one slice of the journey. The Chinese carrier's site shows you another, usually in Chinese. Your local post office says the number does not exist until the parcel is already in the country.

We stitch those pieces together. You give us one number and we go and ask every carrier that could plausibly be holding it.

How to track an AliExpress order

If you just received the number and we return nothing, wait one to three days. Carriers do not register a number in their system until they physically scan the parcel, and sellers often generate the number before handover.

Where to find your AliExpress tracking number

There are three places to look, in order of how likely they are to work.

The orders page. Account, then My Orders, then View Detail on the order in question. The tracking number sits under Logistics Information or Tracking Number. This is the reliable route.

The shipping email. AliExpress emails you when a seller marks an order as dispatched, and that email carries the number and a tracking link.

Your messages with the seller. For combined shipments, split parcels, or anything unusual, sellers often send the number in chat rather than attaching it to the order. Worth checking if the order page shows nothing.

Your order number is not your tracking number

This trips up more people than anything else on AliExpress.

You cannot track a parcel with an order number. No tracking site can, including this one. If the string you have is all digits and around fifteen characters long, it is the order number and you need to go back to the order page for the real one.

What the prefix on your tracking number tells you

The first two or three characters usually reveal who is carrying your parcel.

A parcel that changes carriers mid-route sometimes gets a second, local number. Both usually work here, but the local one gives better detail once the parcel has landed.

What actually happens to your parcel

Understanding the route makes the silences make sense.

Seller to first carrier, days 1 to 4. The seller packs your item and hands it over. Your first scan says something like "Shipment picked up" or "Order accepted by carrier". Nothing before this point is trackable.

Domestic sorting in China, days 2 to 7. The parcel moves through a local depot to a regional hub, usually Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Yiwu or Shanghai. Parcels heading to the same country get grouped together, which is why cheap shipping sometimes waits for a full container.

Export and flight, days 5 to 20. You see "Departed from airport of origin" or "Handed over to airline", and then quite often you see nothing at all for a week or two. There are no scanners in the air. Silence here is normal and is the single most common reason people think a parcel is lost.

Arrival and customs, days 10 to 30. "Arrived at destination country" and "Inbound into customs" mean the parcel is in your country. Customs works in batches, and during Chinese New Year or the November sale peak the backlog can add two weeks on its own.

Local delivery, days 1 to 5 after clearance. Your national carrier takes over. Scans get frequent and specific again: arrived at local facility, out for delivery, delivered.

The whole thing runs 5 to 10 days on Choice, 15 to 30 on Standard, and anywhere up to 60 on the cheapest economy tiers.

Shipping methods and what tracking you get

Choice now handles a majority of US-bound AliExpress orders and it is the biggest change to the platform's shipping in years. If speed matters, filter for Choice at the point of buying. You cannot upgrade shipping after an order is placed.

When tracking stops updating

Tracking silence has about six causes, and only one of them is bad news.

The number is not live yet. Sellers mark orders shipped before handing them over. Give it three to seven days from the shipping notification before worrying.

The parcel is in the air or on a ship. One to three weeks of nothing is normal on economy air freight, and sea consolidation can be longer.

Customs has it. "Inbound into customs" with no movement for a fortnight is frustrating but common, especially in December and January.

You bought an untracked tier. Cainiao Super Economy and some seller free-shipping options genuinely do not scan in between. There is nothing to show because nothing is being recorded.

The number is wrong or mistyped. Try it here and on the carrier's own site. If neither finds it after a week, message the seller.

The seller gave you a number that was never real. It happens. A small number of sellers generate tracking numbers to stop the dispute clock. If the number has produced no scan at all after fourteen days and the seller is vague, open a dispute rather than waiting.

A rough rule for when to act: 15 to 20 days for express, 30 to 45 for standard, 45 to 60 for free shipping. Past those windows, message the seller. If they stall, open a dispute before your buyer protection expires, because after that you have no recourse at all.

Tracking statuses, translated

For dropshippers and small sellers

If you are running orders in volume, the problem is not one parcel, it is fifty parcels and fifty customers asking where they are.

Paste up to twenty numbers at once and get a single sorted view. Filter by status so you can see only the parcels that have stalled. Spot the supplier whose shipments consistently sit in Guangzhou for nine days, and stop using them.

Most refund requests in dropshipping come from silence rather than slowness. Customers who get an honest update at day fifteen mostly wait. Customers who hear nothing until day thirty ask for their money back.

Frequently asked questions

Last reviewed: August 2026