My Experience Using JLCPCB for Sponsored Prototyping
This article includes sponsorship or links with referral codes which will earn me an affiliate fee. These are clearly marked with a 💵 symbol.
Earlier this year, Ashu and Ava from JLCPCB💵 emailed to say they'd seen my earlier post about working with PCBWay and asking if I was open to comparing another fabrication experience.
They offered to cover a future JLCPCB prototype run and let me judge it on the process, quality, delivery, and support. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I was delighted to be approached for this and jumped at the opportunity.
I was not paid for this post, but JLCPCB did assemble and send me these boards for free, and there are affiliate links to their services on this page.
The comparison in this review between JLCPCB and PCBWay won't be direct, 1:1, as I used slightly different services for each project. My PCBWay project used UV printing for silkscreen and no PCB assembly, while this JLCPCB project used their part supply and assembly services. What I will cover is where the experience differs and how they compare to each other in general.
Process
The first obvious difference as a micro influencer, or what you want to call what I'm doing here, is that JLCPCB's programme seems much more "corporate". Whether that's a good thing or not is for you to decide, but it's interesting to see the difference.
Ordering a sponsored project from PCBWay was pretty simple. I uploaded all my design files, created the order, then let my affiliate partner know. She then applied a credit to my account, which I used to pay for the project.
Ordering a sponsored project from JLCPCB was a little different. I had to have a second account created for me, under their main umbrella account. I can understand why they do this, but it's a little more complicated as you have to create a second email address for this new account and your order history is now split between the two accounts. Once this was done, ordering was much like PCBWay, with a credit being applied for the draft order.
Service
This is where JLCPCB starts to pull ahead for the nervous hobbyist maker.
I deliberately avoided using PCBWay's part supply and assembly services, as it's not very clear what parts they hold in stock, what will be special orders, and what the likely costs will be. They offer a sourcing service to find the parts you need, but you have no way of checking if your part is available on the market, out of stock or deprecated and discontinued altogether.
JLCPCB is part of the same group as LCSC, so they have access to just about every component you want. They also have a part stock checker tool to help you design a project around components you can actually get and use.
Delivery
For regular users, there's pretty much no difference between the two. You get the normal smattering of couriers, each with a couple of different services, plus the cheaper, albeit slower, postal services.
For a sponsored maker, there is a slight difference between the two companies. The voucher PCBWay provided only covered the cheapest "Global Direct Shipping" option. JLCPCB's voucher, however, covered the delivery costs for the courier of your choice. I chose "FedEx International Priority" to ensure the boards arrived quickly, which would have been a £20 additional cost had I paid it myself.
Quality
I was really impressed with the quality of the boards I received from JLCPCB.
In comparison to the boards I've received from OSHPark recently, they're miles apart. I left the panel arrangement and support and mouse bite designs up to JLCPCB, and after their finishing you can barely tell they were. A recent OSHPark order saw boards that had a lot of support material left behind and every single board required hand-finishing.
Compared to PCBWay, there's pretty much no difference. Both Chinese fab houses provide basically the same level of high quality and finish.
Support
Timezones are a killer! As a hobbyist maker, I do a lot of my work in the evening, which from the UK is, unfortunately, basically the middle of the night in China. If you have any questions, the earliest you'll have an answer to work with is a whole day later.
There is no difference for any of the Chinese PCB houses. It's just the problem of working globally.
Conclusion
So, would I order from JLCPCB again, and who would I choose to spend my own money with?
If it's just a plain PCB, with no parts supply or assembly, I'd probably upload my Gerber files to both and see who's got the better deal on at that time. If I needed something unique, like full-colour UV printing, PCBWay is still the better choice. If I wanted part supply and board assembly, JLCPCB really is the only option.
2026-08-28