Did you know that it’s quite easy (and fairly inexpensive) to order individual LEGO® bricks? We often hear from readers who want to build one of our projects but don’t have all of the pieces needed. Or maybe your kids are wanting to order more lightsabers, some Technic elements like gears, or a bunch of bricks in a certain color. People often know about the Pick-a-Brick section on Lego.com, but I want to show you what I think is an even better option… Brick Link!

This post was updated in November 2023.

Bricklink.com is a marketplace for buying and selling LEGO®.  You can buy sets (current or retired), minifigures, and individual bricks of all types and colors.  The way it works is very similar to eBay, except that there is no bidding.  Sellers post their items for sale, and you can sign up for a user name and start purchasing.

Benefits of Brick Link vs. Lego.com:

  • Wider selection of both current and retired bricks and minifigures.  You can find Star Wars minifigures that are only sold in large sets, for example.
  • Orders arrive more quickly.  Lego.com’s Pick-A-Brick orders ship from Denmark and can take up to a month to arrive. I usually receive Brick Link orders in about 5 days, depending on how far away they are coming from.

Brick Link can be overwhelming at first!  Here are some tips for efficient ordering on Brick Link.

Register for an account.  Whatever you choose for your username will show up whenever you leave feedback for a seller, so choose accordingly!

Buy as much as possible from one seller.  Each seller charges shipping separately, so it’s best to find a seller that has several different things you want.  I start by searching for one of the pieces I want.  Then I look for a seller who has that piece available and who also has a high feedback number next to his or her name.  If a seller has received a lot of feedback, then they most likely have a lot of bricks available for sale, and I am likely to find several things I need.  While writing my LEGO book, I often had a shopping list of several specific things to order, and sometimes I needed to order from more than one seller.  LEGO® bricks are not heavy to ship, though, so shipping charges are usually low.  Still, you don’t want to order 8 things from 8 different sellers and pay 8 shipping fees!

Be aware the prices are related to supply and demand.  Many common bricks are for sale at around 5 cents each, but a collectible hard-to-find minifigure might go for $10 or more.

Browse by categories.

Using the search bar on Brick Link is a little bit of a challenge, unless you happen to know the name for a particular LEGO® brick, which most people don’t!  In the beginning, I was quite frustrated trying to search.  So here’s what I do…

This is what the home page looks like. From here, click on “Parts.”

You will then see this screen:

As you can see, there are a LOT of categories.  I couldn’t get all of them on my screen at one time to do a screen shot!  Here are the basics:

Bricks – Regular square or rectangle bricks.  They are labeled by counting the number of studs.  For example, 2 x 4 or 1 x 6.

Bricks, modified – Bricks that have something different about them.  Could be a stud on the side, a handle, an axle, etc.

Plates – These are the flat bricks.

Plates, modified – This is where you can find flat bricks that have a handle on the end, clips, a socket, a ball joint, etc.

Slope – These bricks are sloped like roof pieces.  The tiny slope pieces (see the C3P0 photo below) are in this category too.

Slope, inverted – These are slope bricks that slope the opposite direction.

Wedge, plate – This category is where you find all the “wing” pieces, so take notice!  Just order tons of wings in different sizes and colors, and your kids will be happy building endless space ships, LOL.  These are flat bricks that are triangle or “wing” shaped.

Many of the functional LEGO® elements are found in the Technic categories.

So, let’s say we were going to try to order some of the pieces to build C3P0.

(You can see the instructions for C3PO here:  LEGO C3PO)

The 2 x 2 yellow plate would be under “plates.”

The curved pieces are 1 x 3 curved slopes.  They would be under “slope, curved.”  If you click on that category, you would see this on the first page:

(By the way, I tried searching “1 x 3 curved slope” and it didn’t find the right result.  You have to get the names exactly right, which is hard… I should have searched slope, curved 3 x 1 no studs.)

Click on the part number to the left of the piece we want – the slope, curved 3 x 1 no studs.  This will take you to this page which shows all the MANY colors that this piece is available in.  Scroll down until you see yellow on the “lots for sale” column at the left. Click on yellow.

By the way, the item number is a number given by LEGO®.  You can find this number on the underside of each brick.  Look carefully – they are really tiny!  This is a great way to find bricks online if you have one already and want to order more.

That will take you to this screen, which has a long, long list of all the sellers who have this piece available.

Now, this step is important.

While deciding who to buy from, you need to look at what country they live in (this will affect shipping costs), and whether or not they have a required minimum buy.  In other words, is there a minimum that you need to spend with them in order to buy anything at all.  Some sellers don’t have a minimum purchase, but many require you to spend $5 or $10 which makes sense since it’s not really worth their time to pack up 75 cents worth of LEGO® bricks.

If you click on “more options” right under the blue search button, you can refine your search by country.

Also – look at where it says “condition.” You can choose to purchase only new pieces, or look at used options as well. (I always go with new, but a big part of that is that I am photographing our LEGO® projects, and I don’t want dents or scratches on the pieces!)

After you have chosen a high volume seller who lives in the same country as you (or at least on the same continent), you can look to see what else they have for sale.

Complete your order.  After submitting your order, wait for an invoice from the seller.  Some sellers accept payment right on the Brick Link site, but many will have you just send over the total amount via PayPal.

Then wait for your bricks to arrive! For my kids, this means listening for the mail truck coming up the street every single day until they come!

Order several different types of bricks by creating a wanted list!

This is a huge time-saving tip! You can create a wanted list and Brick Link will filter through all the stores for you, to find a seller that has all or most of the things you need. WOO HOO!

Below is a screenshot of a wanted list I created. As I made the list, I selected the colors and the number of pieces I wanted, plus the condition (new). When I’m ready to buy, I can click the “buy all” button, and Brick Link will help me order from the least number of stores possible. So handy!

Often, readers ask me for parts lists for our projects. This is a great place to address that, so I will! Parts lists are very time consuming to write. Looking up the names of all the pieces is time consuming. Counting the parts and make sure that we used the most “ideal” parts is time consuming. I try to offer as many step-by-step instructions on this site as possible, but I have not written very many parts lists. But – I have good news! All of our LEGO books are loaded with parts lists and instructions! You can see them all here: LEGO Idea Books.

Have fun building!  You can browse through all of our LEGO® project ideas here:  LEGO Projects

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO® group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this site. 

8 Comments

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  1. Tove Maren Jul 23, 2016

    Sarah - this is an awesome resource. I am doing a post on a custom LEGO build and I will link to your tutorial.

    Reply
  2. mama rachael Jun 3, 2017

    We sell on bricklink and on brickowl. Note that to get the shipping charge, you have to wait for the invoice on bricklink. And also note that bricklink uses an organization system different from the Lego User Group such that you might see on the Lego Digital Designer (and different color names!)

    I think your tutorial here is great and glad to see something like this. buying Lego pieces can be overwhelming if you are not certain about what you are doing.

    Reply
  3. Menucha Jul 11, 2018

    Hi! I checked this out as per your suggestion, and started a purchase from one seller for a lot of basic bricks at pennies a piece. The seller has a good rating and is in the US but my shipping charges were like $90 for ~300 pieces. Have you had this happen to you? Is there a good way to pinpoint which sellers have fair shipping rates?

    Reply
    1. Sarah Jul 11, 2018

      In my experience, I have never seen a seller who charges unfairly for shipping. When you make a purchase, the sellers send an invoice with combined shipping. I would expect to pay $6-8 to ship that many bricks. You can try messaging the seller and ask what the shipping would be before proceeding. Most respond to messages within the same day. Another thing to try is to see if this seller has an information page - most do. That would explain the shipping rates, for example most will tell you what weight of bricks can ship for what price. I hope that helps!

      Reply
  4. Elizabeth Nov 22, 2019

    You can also make a wishlist of all the pieces you need, and bricking will tell you which vendors you can get your pieces from (sometimes it will take more than one vendor to order everything on your wishlist). I find this takes less time, especially if you are ordering many bricks.

    Reply
    1. Elizabeth Nov 22, 2019

      Bricklink not bricking

      Reply
  5. Veronica M Woll Apr 9, 2020

    What is the board game that has octagonal? spaces into which fit pieces that connect trails for marbles lauched from an octagonal piece you push down on? It showed on the video that goes continuously on you site...but it won't seem to come up again...been watching for awhile...thanks!

    Reply
    1. Sarah Apr 11, 2020

      That game is called Gravitrax! It's so much fun. Here's a link to my full review on it: https://frugalfun4boys.com/gravitrax-review-starter-set/

      Reply
  6. Julia Apr 22, 2020

    Thank you so much for this great tutorial! I wanted to order from BrickLink but couldn’t figure out how to maneuver around the site. I just placed my first order!

    Reply
  7. LAura Jun 17, 2020

    Thank you thank you thank you!!!!
    I have been trying to get my sons' Legos in order but we have SO many missing pieces, and the availability on Bricks & Pieces on the Lego website was very disappointing. It did take me 3 hours, but I just placed 5 different orders and I should have ALL of the pieces we need!

    Reply
  8. Erik Apr 30, 2023

    We sell on Bricklink too (and I buy a lot from other sellers for personal builds). We currently have over 800,000 items in stock and have shipped over 3,800 orders in the ~4 years we've been selling. Bricklink is a great place to buy LEGO. In fact, one of the largest changes since this blog post was written, is that Bricklink was acquired by The LEGO Group back in late 2019!

    If you are trying to order a lot of items, I'd recommend creating a wanted list, and then shop from that wanted list. It will be a much easier way to shop than picking a seller for each item individually. If you shop from a wanted list, the system will suggest a store for you (or multiple, depending on how much you're looking for and how hard to find the items are).

    Before you check out, I would recommend always reading each store's terms, and check their feedback. Most Bricklink sellers are awesome, but you want to make sure there are no red flags that jump out at you, for example there are a few stores that might take 3-4 weeks to ship, or that don't have great customer service if you have a problem with the order. Ourselves on the other hand, most orders ship within 1-2 business days, and if someone messages us that there's a problem, we respond and make it right a.s.a.p.

    Also, if the store has enabled Instant Checkout, you won't need to wait for an invoice to know the shipping amount, you'll see the final total during checkout, and can pay right away.

    Reply

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