Your order says shipped and you want to see where the parcel actually is. To track an AliExpress order: open My Orders, open the order, copy the number listed under Tracking Number, and read the shipment timeline on that same page first. Only then take the number elsewhere. Almost every tracking problem is one of two things, and neither is usually a scam: the number does not exist yet, or you are asking a site that has never heard of it.
Where the tracking number is
Log in, open My Orders, and click into the order. Once the seller has dispatched it, the order detail view shows a Tracking Number and a Track Order link with the shipment history underneath. AliExpress also emails a dispatch notice with the number and a tracking link when the order ships, so search your inbox for the order if the app is being awkward.
Two things trip people up here.
The order number is not the tracking number. The order number identifies your purchase inside AliExpress. Carriers have never heard of it. If a tracking site rejects what you pasted, check you did not copy the long number at the top of the order page.
One number per shipment, not per order. If your basket held items from two sellers, you get two parcels and two numbers, on two order entries. That is normal marketplace behaviour, not a split or a cancellation.
Why there is no number yet
While the order sits in processing, the seller has not handed anything to a carrier, so no number exists anywhere. That stage commonly runs a few business days.
After dispatch there is a second gap. The seller creates the shipping label first and the parcel gets physically scanned afterwards, and the first scan can take 24 to 72 hours to register. A number that returns nothing on the day it appears is the most ordinary thing in this whole process.
So: wait 72 hours before messaging the seller about a number that shows nothing. Messaging on day one gets you a copy-paste apology and no information.
The three places to check, in this order
Each of these is the right site at a different stage of the journey. Checking them in the wrong order is what makes tracking look broken.
| Where | Use it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The AliExpress order page | Always, first | It shows whichever number is currently valid, plus the timeline, with nothing to paste |
| Cainiao Global | While the parcel is still in China or in transit | Cainiao is Alibaba Group's own logistics arm and handles the first mile for most AliExpress Standard Shipping parcels |
| Your destination carrier | Once the parcel has landed in your country | The national post or express carrier owns the final delivery scans and updates them first |
Cainiao's tracking box takes up to 100 numbers at once, separated by Enter, a comma or a semicolon, which is the fastest way to check a month of orders in one go.
When two of these disagree, trust the one closest to the parcel's current leg. A destination carrier saying nothing while Cainiao shows movement means the handover has not happened yet, not that the parcel is lost. Decoding what each individual line in that timeline means is a separate question from finding the number, and this post stays on the number.
When every site says the number is invalid
This is the part the tracking-tool pages skip.
Parcels moving on AliExpress Standard Shipping are typically issued an internal Cainiao reference first, usually starting LP or UM followed by digits (something like LP00123456789012). That code exists so Cainiao can move your parcel from the seller to a consolidation warehouse in China. No national postal service and no express carrier has that code in its database. Paste it into Royal Mail, USPS or DHL and you get "not found", because it was never their number to begin with.
When the parcel enters the destination country's postal network, it is commonly issued a second number in the UPU S10 format: two letters, nine digits and a two-letter country code, like RR123456785GB. That one your local carrier does recognise.
Read "invalid" as a stage problem, not a fraud signal. You most likely have a real number that belongs to a leg of the journey the parcel has not reached yet. Go back to the AliExpress order page, because that is where the current number is surfaced; sources differ on whether the newer number replaces the old one or sits alongside it, so if you can see both, try both.
Third-party aggregators will not rescue you here either. 17TRACK's own help pages explain that a marketplace reference number is not a tracking number local carriers can resolve. The cheapest shipping options are also partly untracked by design, described there as economy surface mail without full tracking capability, so some parcels show a dispatch scan and then nothing at all until they arrive.
What *is* worth acting on is a number that never appears at all, or a timeline that stops dead for weeks after the first scan. That is a lateness question rather than a tracking question, and the AliExpress shipping times guide covers when a stalled parcel is late enough to do something about.
Why a Choice item tracks separately from the rest of your basket
AliExpress Choice, the platform's own curated section launched in 2023, ships through AliExpress's chosen logistics lanes rather than through each seller's individual arrangement. Your Choice items are consolidated with each other.
Mix a Choice item and a regular listing in one basket and you get two shipments with two tracking numbers on two order entries. Nothing went wrong at checkout. The two items were never going to travel together, because they are on different logistics rails.
Combined Delivery does not rescue this either: it merges parcels within a single seller's orders, never across sellers. So the rule for a mixed basket is to check every order entry rather than hunting for one number that covers everything.
Checking the seller before tracking becomes your problem
Most tracking misery traces back to the seller, not the carrier: a store that dispatches late, or uploads a number that never moves, usually has a history of doing it. Before you buy, read the store's recent feedback, negatives first, and look for repeats. One "never arrived" is noise. Five, with the same story about a number that stayed frozen, is a pattern. Our guide to reading seller ratings has the thresholds.
AliScore does not follow parcels. Nothing in it tracks a shipment. What it does is the check that comes before the order: on an AliExpress product page it shows a seller trust score, built from the store's positive feedback rate on a strict 85 to 100% scale plus its follower count, next to the product's own 0 to 10 score and a plain verdict. The scoring is written out on the site. It is a heuristic over public data, not a promise, so read the recent negatives yourself before you spend anything.
Free, no account needed: Add AliScore to Chrome.
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