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Temu’s lack of transparency is a big red flag. Here’s why it rated “We Avoid”, our lowest rating. This article is based on the Temu rating published in December 2025 and may not reflect claims the business has made since then. Our ratings analysts are constantly rerating the thousands of brands you can check on our directory.
Why is Temu so bad?
The growth of Temu—a marketplace founded by Chinese company PDD Holdings—has snowballed since its US launch in 2022 and subsequent expansion to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe in 2023. In the same year, The Guardian noted the circumstances around the retailer’s popularity: “Its appeal is clear. In the midst of rising inflation around the world, Temu has attracted customers through its seemingly limitless range and incredibly low prices.” Three years later, little has changed as geopolitical crises drive up costs for everyone, and meanwhile, Temu’s prices, gamified shopping experience, and products continues to reach new lows.
Despite this, Temu might still be a new name for many people in the fashion space, so here’s what you need to know: Temu is a marketplace that sells everything from clothes to electronics and car parts. It says it’s “committed to offering the most affordable quality products to enable consumers and merchandise partners to fulfil their dreams in an inclusive environment.” It also says it’s dedicated to helping consumers “live their best lives” by connecting them with “millions of merchandise partners, manufacturers and brands.”
Everything about this and Temu raises a red flag. We must question the marketplace’s impact on the environment and animals, not to mention the people creating these products. In short, how ethical is Temu?
Millions of merchandise partners? Affordable products? Temu’s business model sounds similar to SHEIN’s (with which it’s been engaged in legal battles for years)—the business sells vast quantities of cheap products that are the opposite of sustainable. For the record, Temu says it’s different from SHEIN because it’s a marketplace, not a retailer, and draws on a huge network of external suppliers. The reality is that both businesses push overconsumption, unethical user interface shopping practices, and drive exploitation of the Earth’s resources and people.
And if you’re looking for information on the Temu’s practices? Good luck, because they’re nowhere to be found. Temu doesn’t provide enough information about its business, impact, or sustainability efforts for our analysts to award it any points against our ratings methodology.
Environmental impact
Temu’s only details about its impact are on a brief page that talks about tree planting. The platform is partnering with Trees for the Future for an initiative “planting trees across sub-Saharan Africa”, which it claims has planted over 25m trees. Not only does this sound like greenwashing, but it’s also very unlikely this sole strategy has any significant impact, especially as the responsibility falls to the shopper to choose to plant a tree at checkout.
And as we mentioned earlier, Temu is also responsible for promoting overconsumption and overproduction.
A congressional report estimated that packages from Temu and competitor Shein were likely responsible for roughly 600,000 packages shipped to the US on a daily basis under the de minis provision (a rule that meant packages of $800 or less weren’t be subject to import duties or required to provide information about the contents). While the rule has now been scrapped, this number of packages still demonstrates just how much these ultra fast fashion businesses are producing.
Temu has also been criticised for its constant discounting, promotional offers, referral schemes, and gamification of the shopping experience through its app, which all encourage users to keep purchasing and have been likened to online gambling.
Labour conditions
Temu does not share information about its labour practices, so it’s impossible to know if workers employed by its suppliers are treated and paid fairly. However, it is safe to assume that $5 garments aren’t priced high enough to cover the cost of living wages for the garment workers who made the item.
Temu says it prohibits forced labour, but there’s no explanation of how it enforces this across its thousands of suppliers. And in May 2023, a US congressional committee wrote to Temu requesting information about its compliance with the US anti-forced labour laws, after an investigation found that the company’s business model allowed it to avoid complying with US regulations blocking imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where there is a significant risk of human rights abuses. The report noted that Temu doesn’t have any audit processes in place to assess that risk.
Animal welfare
Like the rest of Temu’s practices, animal welfare is a similarly shady subject with little evidence of any policies to ensure the protection of creatures in and around Temu’s sellers’ supply chains.
Why ‘We Avoid’ Temu
It should come as no surprise that Temu received our lowest score of “We Avoid,” making it one of the worst-rated businesses in our listings. The excessive product range on its platform and the potential for labour rights abuses in its supply chain are particularly concerning.
Temu’s lack of transparency means no one can know what is going on behind the scenes of the ultra fast fashion platform, and that’s bad news. Transparency—and publicly available information—are essential in holding businesses accountable for their actions and helping consumers make more informed choices about where they buy from.
You have a right to know how the products you buy affect the issues you care about, so our recommendation is to steer clear of Temu.
Note that Good On You ratings consider hundreds of issues, and it is not possible to list every relevant issue in a summary of the marketplace’s performance. For more information, see our How We Rate page and our FAQs.
Good swaps
In these articles we give you a handful of “Good” and “Great”-rated alternatives. However, in the case of Temu, there isn’t really an equivalent alternative that we can recommend, because it’s simply not possible to find an ethically made t-shirt for $5. And few retailers offer as many products with as many discounts as Temu does.
If you’re looking for a variety of items on a budget, we’d suggest secondhand platforms such as eBay, Vinted, or Depop, or checking out your local thrift stores.
We’re also sharing a few top-rated brands here whose pricing is on the lower end of the scale. However, it’s important to note that fast fashion has distorted our view of clothing prices, and products made more ethically will always have a higher upfront price point than the likes of Temu, SHEIN, and the like. That’s because more goes into a price tag than the cost of fabric. Fast fashion prices are often low because workers are not paid living wages and sustainable practices are not followed in production. With that in mind, scroll on to meet a few of the brands that are taking responsibility for their supply chains and all those affected by their manufacturing.
