Xianyu, the largest "AI service provider" in China?

I used to always think that Xianyu is a platform for selling second-hand items. Second-hand mobile phones, computers, graphics cards, furniture, even pots and pans left over after moving, as long as you are willing to list them on the platform, there will always be someone asking: Hey buddy, can you make it a little cheaper?

But today's Xianyu is becoming more and more outrageous.

Some people sell cloud servers, some sell GPU computing power, some sell memberships for GPT, Claude, and Gemini, and even Tokens from various AI large models are sold in batches by measurement. If you think buying these items still requires you to do follow-up setup yourself, don't worry, there are also people offering services including AI installation, model deployment, Agent development, website building, workflow customization, and even post-operation maintenance.

Covering everything from hardware to software, from accounts to computing power, from development to delivery, the service categories are extremely complete. People who don't know the situation might think they have opened the service market of Alibaba Cloud or Amazon AWS.

What's more interesting is that many sellers on Xianyu may just be college students, programmers, or ordinary office workers who take orders part-time at night. They work for their bosses in the company during the day, and deploy AI solutions for other people at home at night. The technologies that large tech companies spend tens of billions of R&D funds to develop can be arranged properly for you by someone on Xianyu for only dozens of yuan.

Now the business scope of Xianyu sellers is getting closer and closer to that of formal technology companies.

01

The AI business on Xianyu has reached 9.81 million orders

Let's first look at a set of data from Guai Ge.

Image source: Public reports on the internet

In July 2026, Xianyu released the AI service transaction data for the first half of the year: 9.816 million orders in half a year, a year-on-year increase of 157%, and nearly 5 million people have purchased AI services. Among them, AI skill order taking accounts for 45.1%, which is the largest transaction category; AI tutorials and courses account for 8.1%, and AI templates and workflows account for 6.6%.

The most explosive growth comes from AI programming and website building, with a year-on-year order increase of 1732%; AI comic drama grew by 1425%, and AI PPT and office-related orders increased by 264%. Even the relatively complex enterprise-level AI deployment services have started to take orders on Xianyu, and the amount of some orders has reached tens of thousands of yuan.

This data is quite surprising to me. In the past when we talked about the AI industry, we often paid attention to what new models OpenAI, Google, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance released, how much the model capability has improved, and how much the Token price has dropped. But for ordinary people, they may not care about these at all.

Some people want to build a corporate website, some want to generate a promotional video, some want to connect an AI customer service for their own store, and some just want to find a cheap Claude membership. These demands are scattered in various corners, and it is difficult to meet all of them with a single standardized product, so sellers on Xianyu have begun to show their magic powers: whatever you need, I will provide it.

Let's look at another set of data. In September 2026, the light entrepreneurship data released by Xianyu shows that the number of light entrepreneurship groups that can continuously obtain a certain income on the platform has exceeded 1.5 million, and post-2000s generation and college students account for about 40%. Service-based orders increased by 87% in the past year, and AI and IT technology have become one of the most popular service categories.

In the past when talking about flexible employment, people would think of food delivery and ride-hailing. Now more and more young people are starting to sell their AI skills on Xianyu: some make images with AI, some produce videos, and others provide programming and website development services.

Large AI manufacturers are responsible for producing tools, and Xianyu sellers are responsible for turning tools into commodities. This business has already reached a considerable scale.

02

Large manufacturers sell memberships by month, Xianyu sellers sell them by day

In Xianyu's AI transactions, the most interesting category is membership and Token.

Normally, if you want to use the advanced features of GPT, Claude or Gemini, you need to subscribe through official channels. But merchants on Xianyu have played a lot of tricks on this: membership carpooling, shared accounts, short-term rental, top-up on behalf of users, model API relay... Even for some services, you only need to pay a few yuan to get the usage right for a certain period.

Why can it be so cheap? The reasons are complex. Some merchants get discounts through formal agent channels, some split the benefits using new user offers, student offers or family memberships, and some sellers provide services through unauthorized account pools and other methods. Similar transactions have formed an entire industrial chain.

In July this year, a survey by *China Business Journal* found that a large number of low-cost Token relay services appeared on some e-commerce and second-hand platforms. For example, some merchants sell Gemini interfaces that claim unlimited calls for 15 days for more than 60 yuan, and some companies provide Claude Code relay services, advertising that users can get a dollar quota far higher than the top-up amount by paying in RMB.

This price looks really tempting at first glance. Especially for AI Coding users, Token is the real cost of use. Programmers run dozens of code generation, debugging and modification operations a day, and Token is consumed very quickly. If a merchant claims to be able to provide a cheaper quota, it is really easy to attract users.

But there is a problem here: the seller dares to say unlimited, which does not mean he really has unlimited computing power.

Some so-called unlimited Tokens are forwarded through monthly subscriptions, shared account pools and third-party interfaces. Once the upstream policy is adjusted and the account is restricted, the entire service may suddenly become invalid. Worse still, some API relay platforms may replace the model in the background: you think you are calling a high-performance model, but what you are actually using may be another model with lower cost.

If you just chat casually, you may not notice it easily. But if you use it to generate code, process work files, or even run commercial projects, the problem will be very serious.

I think this is also an inevitable phenomenon when AI commercialization develops to a certain stage. When Token starts to be billed like water and electricity, the business of wholesale, retail, agency and resale around Token will also emerge.

Of course, we need to distinguish between formally authorized API distribution and illegal account resale, and not all low-price services are identified as gray transactions.

03

After selling out Tokens, they start to help you get the work done

If membership and Token still have the meaning of reselling resources, then another type of business on Xianyu is more worthy of attention: directly selling AI technology services.

This phenomenon was particularly obvious when OpenClaw became a hit earlier this year. OpenClaw itself is an open source project, which technicians can download and deploy by themselves, but for ordinary users, installing dependencies, configuring the environment, accessing models, and debugging permissions may get them stuck at any step.

As a result, a group of sellers providing OpenClaw installation services emerged quickly.

Image from the report of Jiemian News

According to the report of Jiemian News in March this year, the remote deployment quotation on platforms such as Xianyu was generally between 100 and 200 yuan, and on-site installation was basically between 400 and 500 yuan. Only on March 5, the daily transaction volume of OpenClaw-related goods and services on Xianyu increased by 150% month-on-month, and the number of consultations increased by more than 120%.

Interesting, right? It is clearly a free open source software, but after installing it on the user's computer, it becomes a paid business, and there are quite a lot of buyers. Of course, what is sold here is mainly installation, debugging and guidance services, and the open source software itself can still be obtained for free.

From this case, we can see that a new service demand has emerged in the AI era. Many people know that AI is very powerful, and they also know that a certain open source project is very popular, but they just don't know how to use it. Especially small and medium enterprise owners, individual entrepreneurs, self-media workers, and knowledge payment practitioners, they may not have a technical team, and do not want to spend time studying complex software configurations.

For them, spending a few hundred yuan to let others help them install the system is much more cost-effective than spending several days studying tutorials.

Going one step further, it is more complex AI development services. Nowadays, with the help of AI tools such as WorkBuddy, Doubao Work, and Qoder, even without the rich development experience of traditional programmers, people have the opportunity to complete the development of some simple websites and applications.

The substantial growth of AI programming and website building orders on Xianyu exactly confirms this trend. For customers who only need a simple display website, registration page or small tool, the development demand that used to cost thousands of yuan at every turn can now be taken over by someone at a much lower price.

Of course, AI-generated code does not mean that the software quality is guaranteed. Especially when it comes to payment, user data and complex business logic, professional development and testing are still very important. But it is undeniable that AI is reducing the production cost of part of technical services.

In the past, being able to write code was a skill. Now, being able to use AI tools, understand customer needs, and deliver projects can also become a viable business.

This is indeed a new opportunity for many individual developers, freelancers and even OPC entrepreneurs.

04

Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud may have overlooked a group of users

Here I think there is a very interesting business question.

Since Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Volcano Engine and other companies have provided various cloud products and AI services, why do users still go to Xianyu to find individual sellers?

The reason may not be as complicated as imagined. Because many products sold by large manufacturers still have a high usage threshold for ordinary people.

For example, a small business owner wants to build an AI customer service for his online store. He may need to buy a cloud server first, then select a model, configure API, connect to the knowledge base, and finally debug the business process. Even if cloud vendors provide a visual interface, for people who do not understand technology at all, the learning cost still exists.

But if an individual on Xianyu tells him: 300 yuan, I will help you connect the AI customer service, it can answer product questions, and debugging is included. He is very likely to place an order directly. Of course, 300 yuan is just an example, the actual quotation for complex projects will be much higher.

Similar things happened in the software industry in the past. WordPress is free, but some people make money by installing WordPress; open source e-commerce systems can be downloaded for free, but some people make money by building websites, configuring payment and plug-in maintenance. Now it is AI's turn.

Today, there are more and more model manufacturers and more and more AI tools. After the technology supply is abundant, users' attention begins to turn to specific problems: can I make money with it? Can it save labor? Can it help me make a finished product?

This creates opportunities for a large number of small service providers.

Moreover, Xianyu has a unique