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Online marketplaces have become one of the dominant structures in ecommerce, giving buyers access to large product catalogs and sellers access to traffic, payments, and fulfillment tools. A current category page should focus on marketplace share and ecommerce scale rather than old 2024-era projections.
Quick Answer (2026): Forrester says online marketplaces account for 63.5% of all online sales in 2025. That means marketplaces remain the dominant format inside global ecommerce as online retail continues to grow into the multi-trillion-dollar range.
| Metric | Figure | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace share of online sales | 63.5% | 2025 |
| Worldwide retail ecommerce sales | $6.4T+ | 2025 forecast |
Forrester says marketplaces account for 63.5% of all online sales in 2025. That makes them the dominant format in ecommerce, ahead of direct-to-consumer and single-retailer online storefronts.
Marketplace platforms shape search behavior, seller economics, digital advertising, payments, and fulfillment. Because of that, a 2026 category page should emphasize marketplace share and total ecommerce scale rather than older pandemic-era projections.
Forrester says marketplaces account for 63.5% of all online sales in 2025.
They aggregate large numbers of buyers and sellers, which makes them central to modern ecommerce growth.
Updated Whatnot stats for 2026: 2025 GMV topped $8B, 20M+ new accounts created, Series F raised $225M at $11.5B valuation, plus key marketplace and seller benchmarks.
