My KiCAD projects are being manufactured by PCBWay (and sometimes JCLPCB).
I usually order my PCBs by 100 at the very least (mostly 250 when not 500).
When validating my BOMs, some common parts are quoted quite over what I see on Mouser and the like. This is mostly due to parts being ordered from those providers when not stocked by PCBWay.
Another reason is, for example when I have to use a $1.30 SI4702 FM module which works very well just because the SI4702 chip alone is significantly more expensive than the module itself, even when ordered by 100 or 250 pcs.
Are there some major Chinese parts providers which would be significantly cheaper ?
Or even better: an app which compares the prices from serious Chinese providers in order to optimize the manufacturing costs (and even propose alternative parts) ?
Ok so let me change the question: would’t it be useful to have a kicad plugin which goes through the bom and finds parts sources with optimalprices, before using the pcbway plugin for manufacturing ?
Start a new topic in the external plugins category for the question. Plugins are written by volunteers who are usually not developers, so there is no effort towards making a particular plugin; it’s up to a volunteer who is interested in solving a problem; usually firstly for themselves.
A bunch of years ago the KiCost plugin was made. I used KiCad’s BOM and pulled pricing information from multiple sources and made a spreadsheet overview of options. I did not follow this project very closely, but as far as I understood all those shops do not like others making nice overviews of their portfolio and make it difficult for automated tools to get to their data. Apparently there are also paid options for such data but that also is a bit problematic to combine with Open Source software. I don’t know what the current state of KiCost is, but it is sprobably still interesting enough for you to have a closer look at it’s capabilities.