E-commerce worldwide statistics and facts

E-commerce worldwide at a glance

In little more than two decades, e-commerce has gone from a novelty to one of the largest forces in global retail. Buying and selling goods online now accounts for roughly a fifth of all retail spending worldwide, with sales of about $6.4 trillion in 2025. Behind that number sit billions of shoppers, millions of merchants, and a handful of giant platforms that have reshaped how the world buys.

A quick note on definitions. Most figures in this report measure retail e-commerce, meaning physical and digital goods sold to consumers online. Broader measures that add travel, services and business-to-business trade produce much larger totals, which is why estimates of the e-commerce market range widely from source to source. The numbers here follow the most widely used retail measures and should be read as the best available consensus rather than a single official figure.

The story of e-commerce is really several stories at once: the steady rise in online sales, the shift of shopping onto mobile phones, the dominance of Asia and especially China, the concentration of sales among a few marketplaces, and the spread of online buying into every category and country. The sections below cover each in turn, from market size and growth to the leading countries and companies, the mobile shift, the shoppers themselves, and the trends that will shape the years ahead. E-commerce also touches every consumer industry, from groceries to the cosmetics industry in the US, where online channels have become a main route to market.

How big global e-commerce is

Global retail e-commerce sales have climbed steadily for years, pausing only briefly. From about $5.1 trillion in 2022 they rose to roughly $6.4 trillion in 2025, and they are forecast to keep growing toward $7.9 trillion by 2028. The chart tracks retail e-commerce sales worldwide by year.

A steady climb: global retail e-commerce grew from about $5.1 trillion in 2022 to roughly $6.4 trillion in 2025, on track for $7.9 trillion by 2028.

The scale is easier to grasp with a comparison. Total retail sales worldwide, online and offline combined, run above $30 trillion a year, so e-commerce already represents around a fifth of everything sold at retail. The pandemic in 2020 gave online shopping a sharp, one-time boost, pulling forward years of growth as stores closed and consumers turned to their screens. Growth then cooled as shoppers returned to physical stores, but it never reversed, and online sales have continued to outpace total retail growth every year since.

The geography of e-commerce is lopsided. Asia is the center of gravity, generating close to half of all online retail sales, with China alone responsible for the bulk of that. North America and Western Europe follow, while Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are smaller today but growing fastest. This concentration means global e-commerce trends are shaped disproportionately by a handful of Asian markets, especially China, where online shopping habits, live commerce and mobile payments often appear years before they reach the West.

It is also worth putting these consumer figures in context. The retail e-commerce measured here is only part of total online commerce. Business-to-business e-commerce, in which companies buy from one another online, is several times larger again, running into the tens of trillions of dollars, though it is tracked separately and rarely makes headlines. Digital services, travel and food delivery add still more. When people talk about the e-commerce market they usually mean the retail goods measured in this report, but the full digital economy is far larger and touches almost every transaction in modern business.

Growth is steady, not explosive

The headline-grabbing growth rates of the pandemic years have given way to a steadier pace. Annual growth in global e-commerce has settled into the high single digits, still comfortably faster than traditional retail. The chart shows the yearly rate of change.

High single digits: after the pandemic spike, annual growth has settled near 7 percent, still well above the pace of total retail.

Two forces explain the slowdown from the frenzied growth of 2020 and 2021. First, the pandemic pulled a huge amount of demand forward, so the following years were always going to look slower by comparison. Second, e-commerce is now large and relatively mature in its biggest markets, so percentage gains naturally shrink as the base grows. Even so, adding roughly $500 billion of new online sales a year is a remarkable pace, and emerging markets in Asia, Latin America and Africa are keeping the global figure growing faster than retail as a whole.

A rising share of all retail

Perhaps the clearest sign of e-commerce maturity is its rising share of total retail. In 2021 online accounted for under 19 percent of retail sales worldwide; by 2025 the figure had passed 21 percent, and it is projected to keep climbing. The chart tracks the online share of global retail.

One in five and rising: the online share of global retail climbed from under 19 percent in 2021 to about 21 percent in 2025, heading toward 23 percent.

This rising share matters because it shows e-commerce is still taking ground from physical stores, not just growing alongside them. Yet the shift is gradual, and the great majority of retail still happens offline. Even by 2028, most forecasts expect over three-quarters of retail sales to take place in physical stores, which is why the smartest retailers focus on blending the two channels rather than betting on one. The online share also hides enormous differences between countries, which the next sections explore.

The biggest e-commerce markets

E-commerce is heavily concentrated. A single country, China, accounts for close to half of all online retail sales worldwide, and the top few markets together make up the large majority. The chart ranks the leading countries by e-commerce sales.

China in a league of its own: at about $3.45 trillion, Chinas online market is larger than the next several countries combined.

China became the worlds largest e-commerce market around 2013 and has never looked back, driven by platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo, and by near-universal mobile payments through Alipay and WeChat Pay. The United States is a clear second at roughly $1.38 trillion, home to Amazon, Walmart and a deep bench of direct-to-consumer brands. After the top two, the gap widens sharply: the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and Germany each sit below $200 billion, while India, though still small relative to its population, is among the fastest-growing large markets in the world. The top five markets have barely changed in rank for years, underlining how entrenched the leaders have become.

How much shopping is online, by country

Total sales tell only part of the story. Just as important is penetration, the share of a countrys retail that happens online, which reveals how deeply digital shopping has taken hold. Here the ranking looks very different, as the chart shows.

Penetration surprise: nearly half of Chinas retail is online, and the UK, South Korea and Indonesia are near a third, while the US sits around 16 percent.

China leads on penetration as well as size, with close to 47 percent of its retail happening online, an extraordinary figure for such a large economy. Behind it come markets that punch above their weight: Indonesia, the United Kingdom and South Korea all sit near or above 30 percent, helped by mobile-first shoppers, dense cities and fast delivery. The United States, despite being the second-largest market in dollar terms, has relatively low penetration at about 16 percent, a reminder that its huge total comes from the sheer size of its retail economy rather than an unusually digital one. That low penetration also signals substantial room for further online growth in the US and other large but less-digital markets.

The companies that dominate

A small group of companies handles a huge slice of the worlds online commerce. Measured by gross merchandise value, the total worth of goods sold across their platforms, the leaders are a mix of Chinese and American giants. The chart ranks them.

China on top: Alibaba leads by company GMV, and four of the top five are Chinese; Amazon is the largest single marketplace and the biggest non-Chinese company.

Alibaba, whose Taobao and Tmall platforms anchor Chinese online retail, tops the ranking by company gross merchandise value at about $1.26 trillion. PDD Holdings, owner of Pinduoduo in China and the fast-expanding global bargain app Temu, has surged into second place, narrowly ahead of Amazon. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok Shop and Douyin, has become a major force through live and social commerce, while JD.com rounds out the Chinese contingent. Amazon remains the largest single marketplace in the world and the dominant player across the Americas and Europe, and Walmart has built a sizeable online business on top of its stores. The clear theme is Chinese scale: four of the five largest e-commerce companies are Chinese, reflecting both the size of the home market and the global ambitions of its platforms.

The dominance of these platforms reflects a broader truth about online retail: most of it flows through marketplaces rather than individual brand websites. A large share of global e-commerce is transacted on third-party marketplaces, where sellers gain instant access to millions of shoppers in exchange for fees and intense price competition. The newest disruptors are cross-border discount apps, led by Temu and the fashion retailer Shein, which ship low-cost goods directly from Chinese factories to shoppers around the world. They have grown at extraordinary speed, drawing both huge user numbers and rising regulatory scrutiny over tax and low-value import rules.

Shopping has gone mobile

The single biggest shift within e-commerce is the move to mobile. Most online purchases worldwide now happen on a phone rather than a computer, and in the most advanced markets the smartphone is almost the only screen that matters. The chart shows the mobile share of e-commerce across major countries.

Mobile-first Asia: in China about 92 percent of e-commerce runs on mobile and India is close behind, well ahead of the US at around 45 percent.

Globally, mobile commerce accounts for roughly 59 percent of all e-commerce sales, and that share is still climbing. The gap between regions is striking. In China and India, where many shoppers came online for the first time on a smartphone, the overwhelming majority of purchases are mobile, often through super-apps that combine shopping, payments and messaging. Western markets are less mobile-heavy, with the United States around 45 percent, partly because desktop shopping remains common and partly because tablets and computers are widely used. For retailers, the lesson is universal: a fast, simple mobile experience is no longer optional, and in much of the world it is the entire storefront.

The numbers behind the shift are large in their own right. Mobile commerce sales worldwide reached about $2.5 trillion in 2025 and are projected to climb past $3.3 trillion by 2028, growing faster than desktop-based online sales. Smartphones now serve as storefront, payment terminal and marketing channel all at once, and features such as one-tap checkout, mobile wallets and in-app shopping have removed much of the friction that once slowed online buying. As younger, mobile-native shoppers make up a larger share of the market, the balance will tilt further toward the phone.

Billions of digital buyers

Behind the sales figures are the shoppers themselves, and their numbers keep rising. Around 2.77 billion people, roughly a third of everyone on the planet, now buy goods online. The chart tracks the growth in digital buyers worldwide.

A third of humanity: digital buyers rose from about 2.37 billion in 2020 to roughly 2.77 billion in 2025, around a third of the worlds population.

The growth in shoppers has been steady rather than dramatic, adding tens of millions of new online buyers each year. Most of the growth now comes from emerging markets, as rising incomes, cheaper smartphones and better logistics bring first-time buyers online across Asia, Africa and Latin America. China alone has well over 900 million online shoppers, the most of any country. In mature markets the story is different: almost everyone who wants to shop online already does, so growth there comes from people buying more often and across more categories rather than from new shoppers joining. Average spending per online shopper is highest in wealthy markets, with US shoppers among the biggest spenders in the world.

Spending patterns differ as sharply as shopper numbers. China has well over 900 million online shoppers, the most of any country, while the United States has close to 300 million. In value terms, though, American shoppers are among the biggest spenders anywhere, generating some of the highest average online sales per buyer in the world. This combination of a huge total market but relatively modest penetration is what keeps the US the second-largest e-commerce market despite having far fewer shoppers than China or India.

The trends shaping e-commerce

Several forces are reshaping online retail at once. The first is social and live commerce. Shopping is increasingly woven into social media and short video, with platforms such as TikTok Shop and Chinas live-streaming channels turning entertainment directly into sales. This blurs the line between browsing and buying and has become a powerful engine of growth, especially in Asia.

The second is artificial intelligence. Retailers are using AI for personalized recommendations, search, chat-based shopping assistants, dynamic pricing and fraud detection, and a new wave of AI-driven discovery is beginning to change how shoppers find products in the first place. For more on how quickly these tools are spreading, see our overview of generative AI users worldwide. The third is the enduring power of marketplaces: a large share of all online sales flows through a handful of platforms such as Amazon, the Alibaba sites and Pinduoduo, which offer merchants instant reach in exchange for fees and fierce competition.

Other important shifts include cross-border commerce, as apps like Temu and Shein sell directly from factories to shoppers around the world; quick commerce, promising delivery in minutes for groceries and essentials; and the continued rise of direct-to-consumer brands that sell straight to shoppers through their own sites and social channels. Payments are evolving too, with digital wallets and account-to-account transfers replacing cards in many markets. Together these trends point to an online retail landscape that is faster, more social, more global and more automated than ever. The same forces are visible across traditional retail, as detailed in our look at the largest US retailers by worldwide sales.

Categories are shifting online at different speeds. Fashion and apparel is the single largest online category worldwide, with hundreds of billions in annual online spend, followed by consumer electronics, and both have long been comfortable purchases to make on a screen. Groceries, by contrast, were slow to move online but have accelerated sharply, helped by quick-commerce delivery and click-and-collect. Higher-consideration categories such as furniture and cars remain more offline, though even these are steadily gaining digital share as augmented reality, better returns policies and online financing reduce the risks of buying big-ticket items unseen.

Where e-commerce is heading

The outlook is for steady, resilient growth. Global e-commerce sales are forecast to rise from about $6.4 trillion in 2025 toward $7.9 trillion by 2028, with the online share of retail continuing its slow climb past 22 percent. Growth will be led less by the mature markets of North America, Western Europe and China, where online shopping is already common, and more by emerging economies in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, where rising connectivity and young populations offer huge headroom.

Among the fastest-growing large markets, India stands out. With a massive, young, increasingly connected population and low current penetration, it is widely expected to become one of the top handful of e-commerce markets within a decade. Southeast Asian markets such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are also expanding quickly, often skipping desktop shopping entirely and going straight to mobile and social commerce. For global brands and platforms, these emerging markets are the next great battleground, and many of the biggest companies are investing heavily to establish early leadership there.

Risks remain. Economic uncertainty can dent discretionary spending, logistics and returns are costly, and regulators in several markets are scrutinizing the power of the largest platforms, cross-border tax rules and low-value imports. But the fundamentals are firm: shopping habits formed during the pandemic have stuck, mobile and social channels keep lowering the barrier to buy, and technology keeps making online retail more convenient. E-commerce is now a permanent, central part of the global economy, and its share of the way the world shops will only keep growing. Its rise is one of the clearest examples of how digital technology is reshaping the broader global economy.

Global e-commerce in numbers

A few figures capture the market. It is worth about $6.4 trillion, roughly a fifth of all retail, led by China, with some 2.77 billion people shopping online and most of them buying on mobile.

Together these numbers show a large, still-growing market where scale, mobile shopping and a handful of dominant platforms all define how the world now buys.

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