Best Xiaohongshu marketing agencies in 2026

This is not a ranked list of the best Xiaohongshu agencies. TheRedScroll sells Xiaohongshu work, so ranking our rivals would mean grading our own exam. We compare agency types instead, and we score them on checks a buyer can run without trusting a sales deck.

Plenty of China agencies sell Xiaohongshu (小红书) work, under that name or as RedNote. On a platform this size, the claim costs nothing to make.

Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users passed 400 million, with 800 million searches a day. Source: Beijing Business Today (北京商报) via Sina Finance (新浪财经), May 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2026-05-27/doc-inhziqxq9291575.shtml

Begin with the type of agency that fits the job, then put the one you like through the tests below.

Agency type	Strongest at	Pricing to ask for	Proof to ask for	Best for
Listed Chinese agency	Creator orders at scale	Agency fee apart from creator fees	Its name on the 2026 platform list	Brands with a Chinese-speaking marketer
Beauty and fashion studio	Creator briefs and claim review	Per-creator rates and reuse terms	Named launches with dates	A product launch
Small-creator volume shop	Many small creators at once	Price per batch of creators	Orders in your own account	Filling search results
B2B content team	Search notes and staff accounts	Fee for notes, accounts and lead handling	Real inquiries, not views	Industrial and service firms
Starter or pilot offer	One-off setup and a test	A fixed price for a fixed task list	What happens after the pilot	A first small budget
Overseas-based agency	English contact, global brands	Who in China does the work	Names of the China team	Head-office reporting

How we judged the best Xiaohongshu agencies

We used four checks. A published price tells you what the work costs before the first call. With named clients, you can ask someone else how it went. The platform’s agency list is the record Xiaohongshu (小红书) keeps of the firms it works with on creator orders. Location matters for a plainer reason: a team in mainland China writes notes the way Chinese users write them.

On October 19, 2026, we read the Xiaohongshu service pages of nine agencies that sell to foreign brands in English. We left ourselves out.

Of nine agencies selling Xiaohongshu work to foreign brands, none showed a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope on the pages we checked. One showed starting prices for two one-off packages. Source: TheRedScroll selected-page check, October 2026. Checked URLs are kept in our editorial source ledger.

The other checks split the field.

On the same pages, five of the nine agencies named at least one client. Two claimed official status with Xiaohongshu but did not name the program. Four gave a mainland city for an office or team. Source: TheRedScroll selected-page check, October 2026. Checked URLs are kept in our editorial source ledger.

A claim of official status isn’t false just because the page doesn’t name the program. It means you need the firm’s Chinese company name to check it.

One more page listed famous foreign brands’ Xiaohongshu success stories without saying they were its clients. Another said its team was “based in China” and gave no city.

These are page-level results from one day. They don’t show what each firm publishes elsewhere, what it quotes in private, or how good its work is. (The platform rules quoted below were current on the same day.) We don’t name the agencies, because TheRedScroll doesn’t name competitors.

Our older benchmark answers a different question:

0 out of 37 agencies analyzed offer fixed-price packages (TheRedScroll competitive analysis, April 2026). Source: TheRedScroll, April 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/

If you already work with an agency, run these checks on it as well. The six questions further down take one meeting.

What “official” means on Xiaohongshu

Paid creator work runs through Pugongying (蒲公英), the platform’s creator marketplace. Its help center publishes a list of the agencies cleared to work on it.

Xiaohongshu’s 2026 Pugongying agency list names 149 companies, each with an introduction and contact details. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center (小红书蒲公英帮助中心), October 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

The list covers creator orders only. Ad accounts on Juguang (聚光), the ad platform, are a separate matter. It’s in Chinese, under Chinese company names. An English brand name will not appear on it. Ask any agency for its Chinese legal name, then search the list yourself.

The platform also lets you control who acts in your name.

An agency can only order creators in a brand’s name if the brand authorizes it in Pugongying. The brand can stop the authorization at any time, and it takes effect at once. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, August 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

Orders already placed stay in force when you end an authorization. Only new orders stop. To give that authorization, you log in to Pugongying with your own professional account (专业号).

A brand logs in to Pugongying with its Xiaohongshu professional account. The account review costs 600 yuan, is not refunded if it fails, and must be passed again every year. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, October 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

That leaves the word “official.” Pugongying’s rules for clients, agencies included, forbid suggesting a closer tie to the platform than the one that exists.

Pugongying clients, including agencies, may not imply any authorization, agency, endorsement or other special relationship with the platform beyond their actual cooperation. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, September 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

An agency that is not on the list can still do good work. It may write the content and let you place the orders from your own account. It may also subcontract a listed agency. Either is fine, as long as it tells you which.

With those checks in hand, the next four sections match each common job to the agency type that fits it.

Best for a beauty or fashion launch

Pick a beauty and fashion studio, or a listed agency with a beauty team. In these launches the creator brief does most of the work. You want briefs that sound like a user, not a label, and a person who checks every product claim before a creator posts it.

For skin care, that check is the law.

Cosmetics efficacy claims need a sufficient scientific basis, and a summary of the evidence must be published on a regulator-designated website. Source: State Council (国务院), Cosmetics Supervision and Administration Regulation, Order 727, Article 22, in force January 2021. https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2020-06/29/content_5522593.htm

Side-by-side product tests carry their own risk on Xiaohongshu (小红书) this year.

On July 30, 2026, Xiaohongshu’s commercial governance team launched a crackdown on side-by-side tests that quietly run down rival products. It gave brands and creators seven days to fix or delete such posts. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center (小红书蒲公英帮助中心), July 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

Get a recent launch brief from each candidate and read how it treats rival products. A brief that asks creators to test your serum beside a rival’s, and then pick holes in the rival, is now a liability.

Then ask how creator fees are billed. A custom order on Pugongying (蒲公英) carries the creator’s own price plus a platform fee.

A Pugongying custom order costs the creator’s fixed price plus a 10% platform service fee: 10,000 yuan becomes 11,000. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, September 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

That 10% goes to the platform, not the agency, so it gets its own line in the proposal.

Best for seeding with many small creators

A small-creator volume shop fits here, but only one that works inside the platform. Some brands need dozens of everyday users, known as KOCs (key opinion consumers), each posting a real review. That fills the search results a buyer sees before a purchase. Pugongying (蒲公英) has modes built for it.

Pugongying mode	How creators are picked	Who sets the price	Fits
Custom order (定制商单)	The brand picks each creator	The creator, plus the 10% fee	Launch content
Batch order (批量商单)	Creators apply, the brand picks 2 to 100	The creator, with a 30-day offer price	Volume on a mid budget
Trial recruitment (众测招募)	Creators under 150,000 followers apply	The brand, fixed or by reads	Consumer goods, small budgets

In batch orders, creators with 1,000 followers or more apply to a brief, and the brand picks 2 to 100 of them. Creators may offer 50% to 100% of their listed price for 30 days. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, October 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

Volume is also where cheating hides. Xiaohongshu (小红书) cleans it out in bulk.

Between August 22 and September 20, 2026, Xiaohongshu acted against 76,000 accounts and 357,000 notes for interaction cheating. It removed 170 million fake follows and 980 million fake likes and saves. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, September 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

Deals done off the platform now cost the brand, too.

From January 12, 2026, Xiaohongshu’s brand trust system targets creator deals made outside the official platform. Measures include a risk warning shown to users who search the brand. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, January 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

So ask where the orders will sit. The right answer is your own Pugongying account, where you can see every creator, price and note. Log in and look, rather than accept a screenshot. A spreadsheet of links isn’t the same thing.

Best for B2B on Xiaohongshu

This is a job for a B2B content team, one that writes search notes and sets up staff accounts. Business sellers use Xiaohongshu (小红书) too, and many post through employee accounts, called KOS (key opinion sales).

More than 40,000 company accounts run employee accounts on Xiaohongshu, and more than 6 million leads a month come through them (August 2026). Source: Xiaohongshu 2026 KOS guide, via Huaxia Morning News (华夏早报) on ifeng (凤凰网), September 2026. https://baby.ifeng.com/c/8wUkh912dXd

The platform doesn’t split those leads into business and consumer. Treat the number as a sign of scale, not a B2B benchmark.

The risk for B2B is the hand-off. A sales team wants a phone number, and the platform punishes notes that steer users off the app.

Xiaohongshu revised its trade-diversion rules effective September 18, 2026. Penalties include suspending business cooperation and Pugongying order rights. Source: Xiaohongshu e-commerce rules center (小红书电商学习中心), September 2026. https://school.xiaohongshu.com/rule/detail/17/119931

A B2B agency should show you how an inquiry reaches your sales team inside the platform’s rules. Ask to see three real inquiries from past work, with names removed. View counts don’t answer that question.

Best for a first small budget

Pick a starter or pilot offer with a fixed price and a fixed task list. A small budget needs a narrow plan. Pick one platform and one product, and write down the question the money should answer.

First, the account. Your company needs a professional account on Xiaohongshu (小红书), and the platform does not open that to every country.

Xiaohongshu verifies businesses from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and other regions it has opened. Review generally takes three working days. Source: Xiaohongshu Juguang help center (小红书聚光帮助中心), October 2026. https://ad.xiaohongshu.com/next_help/docs/195c5fe505c71b4b0335a2fe0d61d8e0

For consumer goods, the platform itself points small budgets to trial recruitment.

For low budgets, Pugongying recommends trial recruitment (众测招募), open to consumer goods and to creators with fewer than 150,000 followers. Source: Xiaohongshu Pugongying help center, October 2026. https://pgy.xiaohongshu.com/help/home

Trial recruitment means shipping samples to creators, so you need stock inside China first.

Paid reach can start small, too.

Xiaohongshu’s self-serve boost tool, Shutiao (薯条), starts at 75 yuan per order. Source: Woshipm (人人都是产品经理), May 2026. https://www.woshipm.com/share/6397056.html

Full ad accounts are slower for a foreign company.

On Juguang (聚光), Xiaohongshu’s ad platform, every industry is invitation-only for overseas entities, through the platform’s sales or operations team. Source: Xiaohongshu Juguang help center, February 2026. https://ad.xiaohongshu.com/next_help/docs/27223a333b21567c31a8c7c8a60fbddb

One agency in our check published starting prices for a setup package and a pilot. That’s a good sign. You can hold it against other quotes before the first call. Before you buy one, ask what the pilot is meant to prove and what happens on the day it ends.

Where TheRedScroll fits

We hold ourselves to the same four checks.

Our pricing page publishes a full rate card. Packages carry a six-month minimum contract, and ad spend goes straight to the platform.

TheRedScroll packages carry a six-month minimum contract. Ad spend is paid directly to the platform, not through us. Source: TheRedScroll pricing page, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/pricing/

For named clients, our work page lists them by name, with case studies. Camper is the clearest Xiaohongshu case.

Camper grew from 43,000 to 187,000 followers in 18 months across WeChat, RedNote and Weibo. RedNote drove 38% of its e-commerce traffic, and same-store sales grew 31%. Source: TheRedScroll, Camper case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/camper/

We don’t score on the platform list: our site doesn’t claim a place on it. Our RedNote agency page says creator campaigns run through Pugongying (蒲公英). Ask us what you would ask anyone: whose account places the orders, and under whose authorization.

The team works from offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

We are a poor fit in two cases. A brand that wants a one-off pilot will hit our six-month minimum. A brand that needs one agency for many markets and a large media budget is better served by a network.

Six questions to ask any Xiaohongshu agency before you sign

1. What is your company’s Chinese legal name, and is it on the 2026 Pugongying agency list?
2. Will creator orders sit in our own Pugongying account, under an authorization we can end?
3. Which named clients can we call, and what did you do for them on Xiaohongshu?
4. Who writes our notes, and in which city do they work?
5. What are the agency fee, the creator fees, the 10% platform fee and the ad spend, each on its own line?
6. Who checks product claims and comparison content before a creator posts?

Expect all six answers in writing. If yours is already in place, start with question two. Moving orders into your own account shows you everything you’ve paid for.

What a good Xiaohongshu proposal looks like

A good proposal reads like a work order. It names the notes, creators and ads you will get each month, and who approves each one.

Money comes in four kinds, and each needs its own line: the agency’s fee, creator fees, the platform’s 10% on creator orders, and ad spend. When two share a line, ask why.

Accounts come next. Your professional account, your Pugongying orders and your ad account should all sit in your company’s name. Your own staff should hold the logins. Then nothing has to be handed back when the contract ends (and nothing can be held back, either). Ask the agency to list each account in the proposal, with its owner and every person who has access.

Define the numbers. “Engagement” should mean likes, saves and comments, counted the same way every month. A lead is a person who asked about your product.

Last, the exit. What do you keep, in what format, and by which date?

Questions buyers ask

What should a Xiaohongshu agency charge?

No platform, regulator or trade body publishes a market rate for Xiaohongshu agency fees. Quotes move with scope: notes per month, the number of creators, claim review and reporting. Keep creator fees, the 10% Pugongying platform fee and ad spend on separate lines. TheRedScroll publishes its full rate card on its pricing page.

How do I verify a Xiaohongshu agency’s case studies?

Ask for the client’s name, the dates and the agency’s exact role. Then ask to speak to that client. On Xiaohongshu, search the brand’s account and read the notes from that period. If the agency ran creator orders, ask to see them in the Pugongying order records, with prices hidden if needed.

Do I need an agency with a mainland team?

For the writing, yes. Notes have to read as if a Chinese user wrote them. An overseas-based agency can fit if it names its China writers. For the paperwork, it depends on where your company is registered. Xiaohongshu verifies businesses from the mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and other opened regions, generally within three working days. Ad accounts for overseas companies are by invitation.

If your brief also includes WeChat, use our WeChat agency comparison to check development skills, WeCom, and account control.

See the full rate card

Compare the scope on our pricing page with the six questions above.