Ecommerce continued to account for larger portions of U.S. retail sales in 2025, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis of data from the Department of Commerce.
Both the dollar amount and percentage of sales that ecommerce accounted for in 2025 set new records — a norm. Digital Commerce 360 analysis indicates that since the Commerce Department began releasing ecommerce sales data in 1999, both metrics have only increased each year.
2025 featured the first quarter, Q4, that ecommerce represented 25% of sales. For the full year, ecommerce penetration of total sales hit 23.1%. However, Q4 ecommerce sales skewed that full-year penetration higher. Each of the other three quarters in 2025 had ecommerce penetration between 22% and 23%.
2025 U.S. online retail sales were more than triple those of 2015 (when they were about $338 billion), Digital Commerce 360 analysis shows.
And 2025 ecommerce sales in the U.S. were also more than 10 times greater than those in 2005 (which were about $91 billion). In 2000, the first full year that the U.S. government began releasing ecommerce sales, consumers had spent about $27.6 billion online.
Impact of Q4 holiday season on 2025 online retail sales
But in Q4, U.S. consumers spent in record amounts online, using deferred (buy now, pay later (or BNPL)) payments and generative artificial intelligence (AI) to capitalize on promotions during the holiday shopping season.
During the 2025 holiday season, from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, online sales in the U.S. reached $257.8 billion. That’s 6.8% growth compared to $241.4 billion in the same period of 2024, Digital Commerce 360 previously reported. And of the $257.8 billion, consumers completed 56.4% of transactions on mobile devices.
Additionally, more than half of U.S. online sales during the 2025 holiday season occurred between Nov. 1 and Dec. 1. During that time, U.S. consumers spent $137.4 billion online.
The Cyber 5, or the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, generated $44.2 billion in ecommerce sales in 2025. Cyber Monday drew the most online spending in a single day during 2025 at $14.25 billion. Black Friday online sales reached $11.8 billion.
Consumers spent $20 billion online using BNPL in the last two months of 2025. And generative AI-powered chat services and browsers accounted for 693.4% more traffic to retailers’ websites in the 2025 holiday season than the prior year, Digital Commerce 360 previously reported.
That came as ecommerce sales as a whole grew 5.4% in 2025, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis.
U.S. ecommerce sales in 2025
Ecommerce sales in the U.S. totaled about $1.234 trillion in 2025, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis. That’s 5.4% more than in 2024, when U.S. online retail sales were $1.170 trillion.
That was the second-lowest year-over-year ecommerce growth rate since the Great Recession. The slowest growth rate was 4.9% in 2022. It’s also an indication of a general slowing trend in ecommerce sales growth as the total dollar amount that consumers spend online continues to increase. 2025 marked one of just six years since the Commerce Department began tracking ecommerce sales that online growth was not in double-digit percentages:
- 2008: 3.8% year-over-year online retail sales growth.
- 2009: 2.8% growth.
- 2022: 4.9%.
- 2023: 9.0%.
- 2024: 7.6%.
- 2025: 5.4%.
Notably, since the Commerce Department began tracking online retail, there has never been a year with fewer ecommerce sales than the year before. That is not the case with quarters, as Q1 and Q2 of 2009 experienced year-over-year declines in ecommerce sales. To date, those are the only two quarters to have experienced year-over-year decreases in online retail sales.
And until the COVID-19 pandemic, the fastest that ecommerce sales had grown year over year was in the early days of the internet (2002), reaching a 30.2% growth rate. 2002 and 2020 (42.0%) remain the only years to have experienced U.S. ecommerce sales growth of at least 30%. And until the Great Recession, ecommerce sales had grown at least 20% year over year. With the 2020 exception, they have not reached 20% growth since then.
Although ecommerce’s growth rate slowed, its penetration of total sales has steadily increased. As with total ecommerce, the share of online retail sales has never decreased year over year. The COVID-19 pandemic saw 2020’s share of ecommerce sales surpass 20% for the first time.
Meanwhile, total retail sales reached $5.339 trillion in 2025, or 4.0% more than the $5.134 trillion in 2024. Unlike ecommerce, total retail sales had gone flat (0.3%) in 2008 and then declined in 2009 (-3.3%).
How is ecommerce penetration calculated?
U.S. ecommerce sales accounted for 23.1% of total sales in 2025, and 22.8% of total sales in 2024, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis of Commerce Department data.
However, not factoring in certain exclusions that Digital Commerce 360 calculates, Commerce Department data indicates ecommerce sales accounted for 16.4% of total sales in 2025. In 2024, that rate was 16.1%, according to the Commerce Department.
Digital Commerce 360 studies non-seasonally adjusted commerce department data and excludes spending in segments that don’t typically sell online. These segments include:
- Restaurants
- Bars
- Automobile dealers
- Gas stations
- Fuel dealers
U.S. ecommerce penetration reflects the share of dollars consumers could potentially spend online.
The commerce department defines ecommerce sales as the sales of goods and services where an order is placed by the buyer or price and terms of sales are negotiated over:
- Internet
- Extranet
- Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) network
- Electronic mail
- Other online system
Payment may or may not be made online. The Commerce Department publishes estimates it adjusts for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.
Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Here’s last year’s update.
