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 often quoted quite over what I see on Mouser and the like.
What about a KiCAD sourcing plugin which goes through the bom and checks components prices from major Chinese sources, and even proposes alternative parts that are not necessarily available from foreign providers ?
This could be a great saver when the pcbs are being manufactured there.
A Copy / Paste from my answer in that other thread:
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.
You must also remember that KiCad is used worldwide. Pricing gets incredibly complicated with differences in customs tariffs to various supply countries.
If course, but here the idea is to get some complementary information for those who get their pcbs assembled in China. Instead of ordering from foreign sources, it would be really interesting that some major Chinese providers be included in hte price comparison.
A very quick look at the above KiCost link shows that some good background is required to parameter the script accordingly. While I develop microcontroller programs, I’m a complete python neophyte. But at the same time, I’ll be happy to try using it if I can get some examples of big Chinese providers, and also detailed informaiton about the script operation and parameters.