Xiaohongshu business account setup for foreign companies, step by step

Xiaohongshu (小红书), also called RedNote, accepts applications from overseas companies directly. The platform says so in its own verification guide. Eligibility isn’t what trips foreign brands up. The paperwork is, along with a set of naming rules most companies read too late, and a review that quietly runs three separate checks on a single application.

Here is what to have ready before you start.

What the platform asks for	Chinese entity	Overseas entity
Company registration	Business license	BR or CR, both for Hong Kong
Translation	Not needed	Chinese translation, company stamp
Authorization letter	If the mark sits elsewhere	Same, and one level only
Trademark certificate	If the name hits a mark	If the name hits a mark
Where you apply	App or desktop	Desktop only
Verification fee	600 yuan a year	600 yuan a year

The fee is small. The review is not. Budget four to seven working days for a clean application and longer than that for a first attempt, because the platform checks your entity, your account name and your verification details as three separate things, and any one of them can send the file back.

Every source below was checked twice in September 2026.

Step 1: pick the account type before you register anything

Xiaohongshu (小红书) splits accounts into professional and non-professional. Non-professional is the ordinary personal account. Everything commercial sits on the professional side.

Xiaohongshu describes the professional account as the entry ticket for commercial activity on the platform. A personal professional identity needs only real-name verification. An enterprise identity requires a qualification review and carries the Blue V badge. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), professional account product guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/68e374e4257bd30bc07eed15c06cb8b9a51f971b.pdf

For a brand, the enterprise identity is the only one that works. It is what lets you post commercial content without reporting it, run a store and buy ads. A personal professional account can’t do any of that.

There is a second fork inside the enterprise route that almost nobody explains, and it matters if you want staff posting under your brand.

Account type	Verified against	Name can be	Per company
Personal professional	An ID card	A person	2 identities
Enterprise, company	Company documents	Company, trademark, site or app	1 identity
Enterprise, employee	Company documents	Brand plus a job title	20 accounts

One company entity can authorize multiple employees to verify employee accounts. The limit is 20 per entity, raised from the earlier cap of three. Employee accounts carry the same rights and functions as the main enterprise account. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/picasso-editor/7072d509ee7370545a056b6f9030a926e8879dca.pdf

One more thing before you touch anything. The account you are logged into when you apply is the account that gets verified, and you cannot swap it later. The platform’s own guide tells you to register a fresh account for this rather than converting somebody’s personal one. Take that advice. We have watched a country manager’s private account become a corporate asset, and getting it back is a conversation nobody enjoys.

Step 2: get your registration and trademark documents right

This is where most of the delay lives. The platform wants originals, in color, and it wants the details on them to match each other exactly.

For a mainland company, that means the business license with the unified social credit code. For a foreign company, it means your registration documents instead.

Domestic companies upload a business license. Overseas companies upload a Business Registration or a Certificate of Incorporation. Hong Kong companies need both. Registration documents that are not in Chinese need a Chinese translation stamped with the brand owner’s company seal. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), Jiguang platform registration and account opening guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/cc8a5f81ddb6d91d6be9dfb34e62b49b999f234b/%E8%81%9A%E5%85%89%E5%B9%B3%E5%8F%B0%E6%B3%A8%E5%86%8C%E4%B8%8E%E5%BC%80%E6%88%B7%E6%B5%81%E7%A8%8B.pdf

Note the two different stamps. For account verification, a document in a language other than Chinese or English needs a translation carrying a translation company’s stamp. For ad qualification, the registration document translation carries the brand owner’s own seal. Those are not the same requirement and they are not interchangeable. Get both versions made at once.

Then the name. Your account name can come from your registered company name, a trademark, a website or a software application, and it has to pass three tests: no infringement, not too broad, no ambiguity. “Premium Skincare” fails the broad test. Your brand name, spelled the way it appears on your trademark certificate, passes.

If the name you want matches a registered trademark, you upload the certificate. That certificate has rules of its own.

A trademark certificate must not be expired. A mark still under application needs the acceptance notice, and the application must be at least three months old counted from the stamped acceptance date. A mark under transfer is accepted only from the company receiving it. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), Jiguang platform registration and account opening guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/cc8a5f81ddb6d91d6be9dfb34e62b49b999f234b/%E8%81%9A%E5%85%89%E5%B9%B3%E5%8F%B0%E6%B3%A8%E5%86%8C%E4%B8%8E%E5%BC%80%E6%88%B7%E6%B5%81%E7%A8%8B.pdf

That three-month rule catches brands who file a Chinese trademark and try to open accounts the same week. If you have not filed yet, file now and read our Xiaohongshu marketing guide for foreign brands while you wait.

One last trap. If the trademark sits with your head office and the account is being opened by a different company, you need an authorization letter linking them. Where the mark is held by an overseas company, the platform accepts a chain of exactly one level. One. Not two, not a distributor of a distributor.

Step 3: submit for Blue V verification and pay the fee

Blue V (蓝V) is the badge on a verified Xiaohongshu (小红书) enterprise account. You get it by completing enterprise verification, and enterprise verification is a paid service.

Enterprise account verification costs 600 yuan per application. The certification is valid for one year from the date it succeeds, an annual review is required to keep it, and the fee is not refunded if the application fails. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026; the annual 600 yuan standard also reported by New Rank (新榜), October 2025. https://a.newrank.cn/trade/news/4199

Read the last line of that again. A failed application still costs you the fee. It isn’t a large sum, but it does mean guessing at the documents is a paid mistake, and a second attempt is a second 600 yuan.

Foreign companies apply differently from Chinese ones, and this is the detail that wastes the most time.

Enterprise verification is open to companies registered in mainland China and to overseas, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan companies. The mobile app handles mainland entities and first-time verification only. Overseas entities, annual reviews and name changes have to be done on the desktop site. A single review order is valid for 30 days. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/picasso-editor/7072d509ee7370545a056b6f9030a926e8879dca.pdf

So if you are outside China, ignore the app entirely for this step. Go to the business platform in a desktop browser. Teams that start in the app reach the payment screen, pay, then find the flow will not take their documents.

What happens next is not one review.

The platform reviews three things separately: the entity’s qualifications, the account name, and the verification information. A third-party review service provider, a named Shanghai information services company, carries out the entity checks on the platform’s behalf. The applying entity cannot be changed once review has started. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/picasso-editor/7072d509ee7370545a056b6f9030a926e8879dca.pdf

So that is three checks against a single fee, inside one 30-day window. Payment is by Alipay (支付宝) QR code at the end of the form.

Step 4: decide whether you need a store, a lead form, or neither

A verified account opens three groups of capability: community features, store features and paid promotion. Most foreign brands in their first quarter need the first group and nothing else. Open the store when you have demand, not before.

If you do want to sell on the platform, there are three store shapes.

Flagship stores are for your own brand or a brand you hold exclusive rights to. Authorized specialty stores run on an ordinary license from the mark holder. Collection stores carry several brands at once.

Overseas companies sell through the cross-border route, and the document set changes again.

For cross-border trade, every brand needs an authorization letter from the brand owner carrying a signature with the signer’s job title, or a company seal, and the authorization chain must be complete. Where there is no authorization, purchase proof for at least one SKU is required at entry. A cross-border store entering on purchase proof does not submit a trademark certificate. Authorization chains are capped at three levels, two for beauty brands. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), merchant qualification requirements, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://picasso-static.xiaohongshu.com/test/8b3bc7324ca06fceea379177f9eed1fa/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6%E8%B5%84%E8%B4%A8%E5%85%A5%E9%A9%BB%E8%A6%81%E6%B1%82.pdf

One detail here will cost you a rename if you miss it. If you plan to bind a store to the account later, the enterprise account name has to match the store name. Decide the store name before you submit the account name, not after.

For brands selling a service rather than a product, there is no store. There is lead collection, which runs through the ad platform and pushes inquiries into direct messages or a form. That is Step 5.

Step 5: link the ad account

Paid promotion on Xiaohongshu (小红书) runs through Jiguang (聚光). You cannot open it first. The professional account has to exist and be verified before the ad platform will talk to you.

The sequence is: register the app account and bind a phone number, log into the ad platform with that number, choose an advertiser account or an agency account, complete professional account verification, then submit promotion qualifications in the ad platform. Creative is reviewed after the qualifications pass. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), Jiguang platform registration and account opening guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/cc8a5f81ddb6d91d6be9dfb34e62b49b999f234b/%E8%81%9A%E5%85%89%E5%B9%B3%E5%8F%B0%E6%B3%A8%E5%86%8C%E4%B8%8E%E5%BC%80%E6%88%B7%E6%B5%81%E7%A8%8B.pdf

Two small requirements at this stage catch people out. Your industry category has to match the business scope written on your registration documents, not the category you think describes you best. And your avatar has to be the brand logo, with no person in it.

The ad platform supports four marketing scenarios: product seeding, product sales, lead collection and livestream promotion. The account balance and the account daily budget are shared with the professional account promotion center. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), Jiguang platform product manual, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/37f82988d0e9273cd645bb819c37a4e0f697bc70.pdf

Then the rule that changed everything for foreign advertisers in 2026.

Since February 2, 2026, overseas merchants moved from self-service account opening on the Jiguang ad platform to invitation-only admission. They must go through the invitation channel via a Xiaohongshu-authorized agency. Source: Ziyouxing Studio (自由行Studio), Xiaohongshu Jiguang overseas guide, updated August 2026. https://zyxstudio.net/articles/xiaohongshu-jiguang-guide.html

If you are an overseas entity, you no longer open an ad account by yourself. An authorized agency submits for you. Our RedNote agency page explains how that works on our side. Plan for it, because a brand that budgets for paid support and then discovers it needs an intermediary loses a month.

The five reasons applications get rejected

We are describing grounds the platform publishes, not a private list. Every row below traces to platform documentation.

Reason	What the platform says	What to do
Barred industry	Listed categories cannot verify at all	Check the list before paying
Documents invalid or untrue	Treated as a failed review, fee kept	Color originals, matching details
Name breaks the rules	Infringing, too broad or ambiguous	Use the trademark spelling
Order expired	The 30-day window ran out	Submit with documents ready
Entity swapped mid-review	Not permitted once started	Confirm the applicant first

The first one is the expensive surprise, because the list is longer than foreign brands expect.

Categories that cannot obtain enterprise verification include military and political items, weapons and controlled goods, most medical and health categories, sexual health, tobacco including electronic cigarettes, fortune telling, gambling, counterfeit brands, buying agents, campus lending, franchise recruitment, overseas maternity agencies and private clubs. Medical and health is supported only for health supplements and two device types, contact lenses and beauty devices, each with its own extra certificate. Finance is limited to members of the central bank and the three regulatory commissions. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/picasso-editor/7072d509ee7370545a056b6f9030a926e8879dca.pdf

Supplements and skincare devices are the two categories where foreign brands most often assume they are fine and are not. Both are allowed, and both need a certificate most brands have never heard of.

There is also a penalty that applies to your whole company rather than one account.

If all of the enterprise accounts verified under one entity have published content seriously violating community norms, that entity is barred from verifying enterprise accounts. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), enterprise account verification guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/picasso-editor/7072d509ee7370545a056b6f9030a926e8879dca.pdf

What changes if you have no Chinese entity

Less than you would expect, and more than the platform admits in one place.

You can verify. The enterprise guide names overseas and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan companies as eligible, and the ad platform’s document list has a column for you. What changes is the route.

You apply on the desktop site, never the app. You file a Business Registration or a Certificate of Incorporation instead of a business license, and both if you are a Hong Kong company. You add translations with the right stamp on each. You sell through the cross-border store route rather than a domestic one. And since February 2026 you reach the ad platform through an authorized agency rather than opening the account yourself.

The place where the absence of a Chinese company genuinely bites is the trademark chain. Where a mark is held by your overseas parent and the account is opened by another company, the platform accepts one level of general-distributor authorization and no more. If your structure runs head office to regional office to local distributor, the local distributor cannot be the account holder. Fix the structure or file the mark locally. Our China market entry service exists largely because of problems shaped like this one. Whether you need a Chinese entity at all, across all four platforms, is a separate question. Our guide to running social media in China without one answers it.

One reason to put up with all of it.

Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users passed 400 million, with 800 million searches a day. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书) Video Creator Trend Observation Report, reported by 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

Xiaohongshu business account setup: timeline and cost

The platform publishes its own review times, which is rarer than it should be.

After an enterprise professional account application is submitted, a review specialist makes contact within one working day, and review is completed in four to seven working days on average. A single review order is valid for 30 days. Source: Xiaohongshu (小红书), professional account product guide, platform documentation, confirmed September 2026. https://fe-video-qc.xhscdn.com/fe-platform/68e374e4257bd30bc07eed15c06cb8b9a51f971b.pdf

Add your own preparation time in front of that. Getting certified translations made, chasing an authorization letter through a head office and confirming which entity is actually applying all take longer than the review does. Two to three weeks from decision to verified account is a realistic plan for a first application. Our guide to the first 90 days on Chinese social sets out where this sits in a launch.

The platform cost is the 600 yuan verification fee, annually. That is the whole published platform charge for the account itself. Store deposits and ad prepayments are separate, and we have deliberately not quoted figures for either, because no dated platform page or trade publication states them and every number circulating online traces back to agency blogs.

What an agency charges to run the setup is a different question. We publish a full rate card on our pricing page, which is unusual in this market.

0 out of 37 agencies analyzed offer fixed-price packages. Source: TheRedScroll competitive analysis, April 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Can I open a Xiaohongshu business account without a Chinese company?

Yes. Xiaohongshu (小红书) names overseas companies and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan companies as eligible in its enterprise verification guide. You apply on the desktop business site rather than the app, and you file a Business Registration or Certificate of Incorporation instead of a mainland business license. Hong Kong companies file both. Any document not in Chinese needs a stamped translation.

What does Blue V verification cost and how long does it take?

Verification costs 600 yuan per application. It is valid for one year from approval, and an annual review keeps it live. The fee is not refunded if the application fails. The platform says a reviewer makes contact within one working day and that review takes four to seven working days on average. Your review order expires after 30 days.

Why was my Xiaohongshu application rejected?

Five published grounds cover most cases: your category is on the barred industry list, your documents were invalid or did not match, your account name broke the naming rules, your 30-day review order expired or the applying entity was changed after review started. The fee is not returned, so check the industry list and your document details before paying.

Book a call

Tell us your entity structure, your category and where your trademark sits. We will tell you whether you can verify directly, what your document set looks like, and how long it will take.