Carbon rims alone more expensive than complete wheels?

[bobobox]

I'm a little puzzled by the pricing of rims vs wheels on AliExpress. Maybe I'm searching wrong, but it seems like often it's the same price, sometimes actually cheaper to buy a complete wheelset from Elitewheels as it is to buy a pair of unbuilt rims with similar specs - and the brands of rims are more confusing, in terms of what is trustworthy and good quality (Elitewheels has a good reputation but doesn't sell rims alone).

Am I looking in the wrong places or is this just the cost of buying parts a-la-carte?

[CycOps]

Building a wheel set yourself for the price of a complete cheap chinese wheel set can be quite challenging.
But you find rims for unter 100 USD or EUR. Look out for timetec and carbon beam for example. Both are said to be reliable. I've build wheels with rims from both of them.

[Serge_K]

Wheels are very, very commoditized. And they have machines to build them (i've manually built wheels and very strongly advise against it). It's not surprising to end up paying the same for a complete package because they probably sell 20 wheelsets for every pair of rims, maybe even more. "they" in a very wide sense.

[Pedaldancer]

Am I looking in the wrong places or is this just the cost of buying parts a-la-carte?

It's not a 1:1 comparison.

So elite is having a quite strong package

Why do I prefer buying only rims
The elite free hub is very loud. And I mean. Very loud. I wouldn't want to have this on my road bike.
Elite uses Pillar Spokes and nipples. Whereas the spokes may be fine,  I just don't know how to get replacements if needed. The nipples are much worse than Sapim with regards to corrosion resistance.

And then I like to have a bit of customized options...coloured nipples , coloured hubs.
That's something you can't get at "ready from shelve" wheels.

So yes , elite is less money. But it's also less options.

[Tijoe]

LOL!   On my last group ride, I just received a complaint from a fellow rider that my ratcheting rear Elite wheel hub on my gravel bike was the loudest he has ever heard.   He said it sounds like a 747 landing at an airport.

Regarding carbon rims.   When I was purchasing and building my current wheelsets for my latest generation bikes,  I purchased most of my Carbon rims for $95 to $120 each.  The same rims sold to the US are now priced at $140 to $200 each.   

To date, for rims only, I have had no failures of problems with:

- Fiberin
- Clannad
- Velove Bike Store (Their prices have nearly doubled versus when I purchased my pair.)

Regarding price differences between purchasing rims only versus a wheelset,  shipping is probably a factor.   Rims only, versus wheelsets are both oversize packages. It probably costs about the same to ship 2 rims as it does a set of built wheels, so proportionately they have to bake in the same shipping costs, making wheels sets a better deal regarding overall prices.