In the past week, a few forum and Reddit threads have popped up, with people stating that JLCPCB has emailed them with a notice, saying their accounts are set up for terminations after an assessment by JLCPCB’s “Risk Control Team”. Reasons given are vague, the terminations are non-appealable, and if you’re planning a JLCPCB order sometime soon, it can certainly come as a surprise. From the looks of it, the accounts restricted do not appear to be tied to any specific country – and not even from the same “kind” of countries.
As quite a few people have observed, the JLCPCB reasoning resembles a compliance action way more than it resembles any sort of internal policy. A few days ago, JLCPCB has released a statement on their blog, claiming that a “history of risky IP addresses and risky activities” would be grounds for a termination, and mentioning “compliance” in ways that would hint at external legal pressures.
By now, quickly checking around Reddit and some other places, we’ve counted at least ten people affected so far – most of them have received emails about account closures, but at least one person has reported a denial when attempting to place an order, instead of getting an email ahead of time. The latter hints that there’s a number of people not yet notified about their account getting terminated, and the amount of people actually affected might very well be a fair bit larger than we can see.
Wading through the EEVbog forum thread, which is the most active place this issue has been discussed so far, people have a number of guesses, but none of them appear plausible. Some say that China’s recent rare earth material export restriction could conceivably be related to this issue, but it doesn’t quite make sense why that kind of restriction would cause account closures as opposed to the usual order denials, or why JLCPCB would mention “risky IP addresses”, given that the rare earth restriction applies worldwide.
Unless you’ve received an email, it appears there might be no surefire way to check for such a restriction until you attempt to place an order. JLCPCB says they will pay out the account balance, but aside from that, people report problems related to customer components purchased for PCBA reasons, with JLCPCB refusing to ship those components to a non-Chinese address in at least one case of a locked account, and asking for a 30% service fee while at it.
Until we get more clarity, this is yet another reason to try out a non-monopolistic PCB fab for one of your next orders – such as Aisler and OSHPark for EU and US areas respectively. Export restrictions are getting their tentacles into more and more facets of open-source tech development, so it pays to watch out. Of course, if you order from China a lot, you might already have rehearsed for such disruptions, due to the yearly event known as Chinese New Year.
Thanks for the German Aisler reference!
Ah I remember when I ordered a pcb from aisler and then received the pcbs by some-one else. Best part was that I had to wait a few weeks AGAIN. One would think you get priority when they mess up, but no.
It’s never a good idea to be dependant on only one source.
Never heard of Aisler until now. I took a brief look and here’s my first impressions compared to OSHPark (only taking what is listed on the websites into consideration):
Both have free as their cheapest shipping option. In the past OSHPark has shipped me a job that cost less than a US dollar for 3 boards to the UK.
Aisler has a setup fee but a comparative cheap per cm2 cost. OSHPark has no setup fee but a higher per cm2 cost.
OSHPark can be cheaper then Aisler for smaller designs but once you go large enough then Aisler’s pricing wins through.
More importantly, Aisler’s cheap shipping is fast to EU, and OSHPark’s cheap shipping is fast to the USA, and by now, both have 0.8mm offerings. I’m EU-based, and I wouldn’t normally order from OSHPark unless I wanted a flex PCB, but if I were in USA, OSHPark is what I’d be using for sure.
Aisler is 3x times expensive than JLCPCB! Not good for small boards, back to strip-board then..
It’s not as bad, since you don’t pay extra VAT on import the way you have to pay it for JLC orders, and from my experience, the boards you get are worth the price.
Not a shill post (though I have ordered from them in the past) but the boards are very reasonably priced and top notch quality. I guess we’re all (including me and my Aliexpress addiction lol) totally messed up regarding what things and labor “should” cost…
And I say this in the most self-critical way. We recently bought 3D printed stainless parts from JLC. 10 were like 250€ incl. shipping, taxes etc. Our manufacturer next door (we’re talking Germany) who built the rest of the machine for us couldn’t even make one part for that money including programming.
And those parts were quite simple, e.g. no contours one couldn’t do ón a regular CNC lathe/mill…
If you want to be paid fifty bucks an hour yourself, you should expect to pay accordingly. If you insist on paying much less, there’s not going to be a whole lot of jobs that can pay you fifty bucks an hour.
The prices on AliExpress were never sustainable. They’re based on cheating and exploitation in order to capture a market and kill the competition, in other words, to remove the business that could pay you $50 an hour – to put you out of your job.
Let me get this straight. AliExpress cheats to put me out of a job, so that I can no longer buy anything from AliExpress. Clever!
AliExpress cheats to put you out of a (well paying, competitive) job, so that (AliExpress has less competition and) you can no longer (afford to) buy anything from (anyone except) AliExpress.
yeahhhh that comment’s incoherent enough, it should’ve stayed in the drafts =D There’s not much conspiracy needed for “country decides to become a manufacturing hub, consistently invests into its tech industry in meaningful ways over decades, and eventually becomes a highly sought after manufacturing hub”. Doesn’t hurt that other countries (and especially oligarchs in other countries) were looking for a manufacturing hub somewhere else to offload their tech manufacturing industries.
Yeah i think a lot about this cost question. i recently bought a fantastic 3d printer for $170. Given that option, i’d be foolish to pay $300 or $3000 for one. But $170 is absurd. It seems like we’re due for some reckonings in the near future.
Aisler and OSHPark tend to be complementary for different use cases.
Maybe the locked accounts make too much use of subsidized offers.
Unlikely, my account would 100% be gone then ;-P (that said, I didn’t get an email, but I also didn’t try placing an order)
I received a similar letter imposing restrictions. However, over the past eighteen months, all orders have been within China and never left the country. Moreover, I have a couple of projects that JLC has sponsored, which makes the situation look even more absurd.
Looked at your (awesome!) projects and found… An NXP part in your Nema17 driver.
I’ve been in hospital the past 2 weeks. (and probably under a rock before then). NXP issues?
Dutch government took over majority Chinese owned spinoff of NXP recently.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/dutch-government-intervenes-chinese-owned-computer-chip-firm-nexperia-2025-10-12/
Thanks you sir!
Yes, I noticed that too. I also have prepaid components (10 unfortunate CAN transceivers from NXP). Maybe that’s the issue, but blocking an account just because you have some components (even considering that I haven’t ordered anything for six months) is complete chaos. They could have said something like “sir you can’t use these components” or something else. It also looks strange considering that for the past year and a half, all orders were WITHIN China to a CHINESE company.
Hint: NXP is NOT Nexperia
They are related. Nexperia is spin-off of NXP
but completely unrelated now
I’m sure it would be more apparent if the blocked parties shared details of orders.
Risky IP makes me wonder if this is related to tainted VPN IPs?
Reading through reddit it seems much more like it has something to do with where you’re located and politics. Tarifs, “the Nexperia thing”, stuff like that. Why would they ban anyone if they’re not violating any terms of service. It’s China after all…
I don’t think that Nexperia is a good explanation either – same as with rare earths, that’d result in order cancellations, or parts becoming unavailable, I don’t see why it’d result in account terminations specifically.
But it’s also felt like it’s only a very small number of very loud people, who are always avoiding admitting to something
That feels self-selecting, the ones you KNOW ABOUT are the loud people, because they’re the ones who immediately told everyone about it.
Btw, some time ago (July 2024), my account was already restricted (NOT BLOCKED or DISABLED!!!) in terms of PCBA and Parts management. After communication, everything was unblocked. At that time they told me that in this case I could return the components without the 30% fee. I’m not sure if this rule applies to this situation, but it’s DEFINITELY clear that this option existed before
If this is you, I saw the post, but I didn’t include it, because the account had clear links to Russia, so it at least looks self-explanatory on the surface. This one is just cryptic though.
Thats not me but I have same story. Key difference – im not sending boards outside of China for 18 months and didnt have any issues previously (and even had sponsored since then by JLC itself).
All credentials was China’s based so there is no clear reason for ban
Does anyone knows if this affects only JLCPCB and not JLC3DP and JLCCNC? Seems strange to me why only JLCPCB.
Could you have explained what JLCPCB was?
Congrats for being today’s 1 of 10,000! ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ in case that’s new to you too )
“prominent Chinese PCB fab” (as also stated in the body of the post.)
And PCB is “Printed Circuit Board”
“fab” is short for fabricator
I think you’re on the wrong website.
I wonder if it’s related to the type of boards people are making – like were banned people making boards for drones or other weaponizable tech?
That would be impossible to control.
Myself and others wondered why they asked what the pcb was for during payment. at the time I thought that they were pirating the designs and selling the assembled pcbs on market sites.
An alternative answer is that they have decided to monetise your design but don’t want to admit that they obtained it from you so are moving apart like how aldi and lidl split.
I think they only ask it for PCBA, and in that case for customs.
I think that’s only required for assembled PCBs, where it determines the HS code used on the customs invoice. I agree that certain categories could get you on a list. So much for declaring your SAO as aerospace/military for shit and giggles.
My pet theory is, that JLC frequently gets contacted by the authorities about PCBs found in illicit applications (I’ve seen their telltale order number in a teardown of a credit card skimmer). They decided to ban IP addresses associated with these orders, which likely were VPNs, sweeping up other unlucky customers using the same VPN.
IMO this is conspiratorial thinking with no evidence behind it, and little understanding on what it takes to sell a PCB, too. After a decade+ of JLC operating, I’m yet to hear of anyone’s design actually being stolen. With the volume they get, it’s wildly implausible, too.
ALDI and Lidl didn’t split. They never were under the same roof. But ALDI was split in 1961 into ALDI north and south with each of the two Albrecht brothers owning one.
Yep. Or maybe they meant Adidas/Puma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassler_brothers_feud
Seems odd, given that Aliexpress, for example, has no compunctions about stripping Adafruit’s logo off a bunch of their boards and selling knockoffs that are so blatant, they even steal their store page text, including leaving links in, with the hrefs removed.
Guess most of those blocks will come from ISPs with IP-pools that are in a range where others are running botnets or similar things in that range and the anti spam heuristics are not good enough to tell the difference.
I have encountered this seemingly random blocking on various sites in one of the locations I travel on a regular basis.
I used to order boards from JLC regularly, but have not in the past couple of years. I will be getting back to board design next year. This account closing behavior is certainly concerning. If I wanted to select another supplier other that JLCPCB for future designs, which ones should I consider? (I’m in the USA).
Hmmm… so, after reading the comments… it is due to Internet Protocol addresses, or to Intellectual Property?
can you define “monopolistic”?
I don’t write my articles through dictionary pages, so that would be of little use to anyone. If you want clarity, I’m talking about JLCPCB/LCSC/etc significant dominance in specifically hacker/hobbyist markets, and while there certainly are other dominant companies, “oligopolistic” wouldn’t work as well. The implication is simple – everyone going for the cheapest fab tends to be beneficial, but when everyone’s eggs are in the same basket, at some point the basket will start to break.
“no” would’ve been shorter.
you could reasonably describe JLCPCB as a “natural monopoly”, but nobody to my knowledge has presented any evidence that they’re engaged in “monopolistic” practices. they just (HAND WAVING) charge less than anybody else, and presumably still make money.
you can describe that situation and not like it without accusing them of being bad actors (which is the implication of “monopolistic”)
Popular != Monopolistic
You should probably look up the actual definition of monopoly
Yeah whats up with that?
For the last three years, we have been making 10,000+ assembled PCBs each year with JLCPCB. These are musical devices with RP2040, no double-purpose components, for sure.
We received the same message without the possibility of going back.
JLCPCB, you lost a good client.
I suppose it was an IP issue, till we used one “corporate” account from 3 different EU countries (fi/de/por), we are a full remote team.
Try NextPCB, they have promoted 2040 and 2350 for a long time
I would assume it was a foreign (cough US cough) government forcing them.
And that the ‘risky IP’ list was handed to them by that foreign government.
Could also be EU, but US is more likely.
That makes no sense. JLCPCB is a Chinese company located in China. The only government they’re subject to is the Chinese government, who impose this sort of thing all the time in response to perceived slights (or just at random, to keep people from getting too comfortable).
Authoritarian governments gonna authoritariate.
“Authoritarian governments gonna authoritariate.”
Need I cough some more?
The US has been authoritarian to other countries and their people for a very very very very long time.
And JLCPCB might get a good chunk of their income from US customers, and so the US can certainly make them do things to protect their company.
Like has happened a million times now, where non US companies (and governments) dance to the insanity and selfishness (and even hatefulness) of the US.
You’re off in lala land if you think that the US government can dictate terms to a chinese company in china.
The Orange One tried, and look how that turned out.
I think we will not benefit from speculation on this. With how little evidence there is for your claim in particular, there’s about 50 other theories one could think up, with just as little evidence behind them. The IP list part is in particular implausible, because that’s not how such lists work.
We are all guessing yes, but I’m not sure what you mean with: that’s not how such lists work.
And when they say:
global trade compliance criteria
and
accounts with a history of risky IP addresses and risky activities.
Then maybe the FBI is being silly and handing them a list and warning them they might stop their trade, for ‘national security’
Although it could of course also be the Chinese government but I’m not sure it would be this haphazard if it was them, but who knows
The US does this kind of stuff plenty of times though.
By guessing now we can see who was right later on… maybe.
No mention of PCBWay, surprising. They seem to have been the most competitive when I’ve needed boards.
PCBWay is the Chinese board house that at least one person successfully placed orders with after a JLC denial, I just didn’t find it important to mention it. We don’t yet know how much this problem covers, but if it’s really compliance-related, then eventually PCBWay will be inaccessible for some, too.
That is sort of typical too of governments eh, and also typical of the current US Administration, to be selective against who is most competitive.
I’ve also shifted to PCBWay, because of their cheaper shipping. I do a lot of prototyping and supporting jigs and so cheap is important to me.
Do they also have component warehouse like LCSC? If yes, do you know how it compares?
Hmmmm!
Hopefully not my PartsDB instance hammering the LCSC (also belongs to the JLC imperium) site with the datasheet retrival requests.
They hated that in the past with passion.
I placed 3d printing order from a new account, but also cannot pay it due to “IP Address issue”
Have they added AI scanning? And the AI just making stuff up???
Please don’t link that forum.
I’m imagining JLCPCB has the proverbial gun to the head (or maybe a literal one) and they have to basically tell their client base to “shut up and go away” and let not known the real reason for those account terminations.
We received a cancellation email, very inconvenient timing for us.
JLCPCB is scamming us. I asked jlcpcb to send out the components in my inventory because my account will be deactivated on 13 DEC 2025, they said that some compoennts are controlled by eccn and caanot be sent, other resistors and capacitors can be sent. They offered refund eccn controlled components. I said why not refund all other components as well!
They said we cannt refund other components not controlled by eccn !!!!
IF refund is possible, then why not refund everything !!!
This is complete scam.