Why Kuaishou Matters for Brands Targeting All of China
When international brands plan their China market entry, the conversation typically centers on Douyin, Tmall, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu. These are Tier 1 city platforms where urban, affluent consumers discover and purchase international products.
Kuaishou (快手) is the platform that reaches the rest of China.
With 725 million monthly active users and 410 million daily active users, Kuaishou is China’s second-largest short-video platform. Its user base is concentrated in the Tier 3 to Tier 5 cities, towns, and rural areas where over 600 million Chinese consumers live, work, and spend money. These markets represent the largest untapped growth opportunity in Chinese consumer retail, and Kuaishou is the most efficient way to reach them.
The “Old Iron” Trust Economy
Kuaishou’s defining characteristic is its community culture, known as “old iron” (老铁) culture. The term translates roughly as “trusted buddy” and describes the personal, reciprocal relationship between Kuaishou creators and their audiences.
Unlike Douyin, where the algorithm constantly surfaces content from new creators and trending topics, Kuaishou’s feed gives more weight to followed accounts. Users build personal connections with creators over time, returning to watch the same people daily. This creates a dynamic where creator recommendations carry exceptional weight.
The commercial implication is significant. When a trusted Kuaishou creator recommends a product during a livestream, their audience buys with a level of confidence that approaches in-person recommendation from a friend. Livestream commerce conversion rates on Kuaishou frequently exceed those on Douyin, particularly in lower-tier markets where personal trust is the primary purchase driver.
Livestream Commerce: Kuaishou’s Core Revenue Engine
Kuaishou’s e-commerce GMV reached approximately 1.6 trillion RMB in 2025, growing 15% year-over-year. While the growth rate is slowing (down from much higher rates in previous years), the absolute volume makes Kuaishou one of China’s largest e-commerce channels.
Livestream commerce is the dominant sales format. Kuaishou creators run daily livestream sessions where they demonstrate products, negotiate prices in real time with their audience, and close sales during the broadcast. The most successful Kuaishou livestreamers have built multi-million RMB monthly sales operations with loyal repeat customer bases.
For brands, the challenge is that Kuaishou’s livestream ecosystem is heavily creator-driven rather than brand-driven. Unlike Douyin, where brands can build effective self-broadcast operations, Kuaishou sales are primarily generated through creator partnerships. Finding the right creators whose audience matches your product and price point is the critical success factor.
The User Profile: Scale Beyond the Tier 1 Bubble
Kuaishou’s users are concentrated in demographics and geographies that most international brands struggle to reach through other channels. Lower-tier city consumers, factory workers, agricultural communities, small business owners, and middle-aged and older users form the platform’s core audience.
Average spending per user is lower than Douyin or Tmall, but aggregate spending power is massive due to the sheer number of users. Products priced for mass-market accessibility perform best on Kuaishou: affordable cosmetics, household essentials, food and snacks, clothing under 200 RMB, agricultural products, and practical everyday items.
This does not mean premium products cannot succeed on Kuaishou. Select categories with strong aspirational appeal (certain beauty brands, branded electronics, health products) can find receptive audiences through the right creator partnerships. But the pricing strategy must acknowledge Kuaishou’s value-conscious user base.
Advertising on Kuaishou
Kuaishou’s advertising platform, Magnetic Engine (磁力引擎), offers core formats that mirror Douyin’s: in-feed video ads, search ads, splash screen ads, and livestream traffic boosting. The key differences are cost and audience.
CPM and CPC rates on Kuaishou are generally 20-40% lower than Douyin for comparable targeting criteria. For brands with limited advertising budgets, Kuaishou offers better reach-per-yuan in lower-tier city markets. Geographic targeting is particularly useful on Kuaishou, allowing brands to focus spending on specific provinces, cities, or regional markets where distribution and logistics are in place.
Kuaishou’s advertising system also supports direct commerce integration, allowing users to tap through from ads to purchase within the app. Combined with livestream traffic boosting (paying to increase the audience size during a creator’s livestream), advertising on Kuaishou can deliver strong return on ad spend for appropriately priced products.
Kuaishou vs. Douyin: Complementary Platforms
The simplest way to think about Kuaishou and Douyin is geographic and demographic segmentation. Douyin skews toward Tier 1-2 cities, younger and more affluent users, and algorithm-driven content discovery. Kuaishou skews toward Tier 3-5 cities, broader age ranges, and relationship-driven content consumption.
Brands that operate on both platforms can cover essentially all of China’s digital consumer base. The content strategy, creator partnerships, and pricing approach will differ between platforms, but the infrastructure (ad accounts, e-commerce stores, content production) can be managed in parallel.
We recommend Kuaishou for brands that have already established a presence on Douyin and want to expand their geographic reach, or for brands whose products are naturally suited to mass-market pricing and lower-tier city distribution.
Practical Considerations
Kuaishou’s Q4 2025 MAU growth of only 0.7% year-over-year indicates the platform has reached a domestic growth plateau. The opportunity is not in user growth but in deepening commercial engagement with the existing user base.
The platform’s international version, Kwai, operates in select markets (primarily Brazil and other Latin American countries) but is not a significant factor for brands focused on the Chinese market.
Content production for Kuaishou should feel authentic and relatable. Polished, high-production brand content performs less well than on Douyin. Kuaishou audiences respond to straightforward product demonstrations, honest reviews, and creators who speak in an accessible, non-pretentious style.
