Reviewed by the SEOPointz team · Last reviewed June 2026. Company figures below mix gross merchandise value (GMV) and reported revenue — we label which is which, because the two aren’t interchangeable. SEOPointz may earn a commission from some links; it never changes what we recommend.
When people talk about “the leaders in ecommerce,” they usually mean Amazon and stop there. That misses the more interesting story. Global ecommerce moved well over $10 trillion in sales in 2025, and the companies fighting for it are split into very different camps: Western marketplaces, Chinese giants, infrastructure platforms that don’t sell anything themselves, and a new wave of cross-border disruptors that barely existed a few years ago. This article maps who actually leads the digital marketplace today, how they measure their size, and why comparing them by a single number is misleading.
Why “biggest” is a trick question
Before naming names, it’s worth being honest about the metric. Companies report their size in different ways. GMV is the total value of everything sold through a platform, including third-party sellers — so a marketplace can post an enormous GMV while collecting only a fraction of it as revenue. Reported revenue is the money the company actually books. Amazon, for example, generated roughly $847 billion in GMV in 2025 but reported around $638 billion in revenue, and even that includes huge non-retail businesses like cloud computing. So when one company brags about GMV and another about revenue, they’re not playing the same game. Keep that in mind as you read the table.
The established giants
Amazon remains the single most dominant player in Western ecommerce, holding an estimated 37.6% share of US online retail — more than the next several competitors combined. Walmart is its most credible challenger, with around 6.4% of the US market and a total business revenue of roughly $681 billion in 2025, most of it from physical stores but increasingly weighted online. In China, Alibaba still commands the largest slice of global GMV at around 23%, with JD.com close behind on logistics-heavy operations. These are mature companies with deep moats: fulfillment networks, payment systems, and advertising businesses that are extremely hard to replicate.
The cross-border disruptors
The fastest-moving story in ecommerce is the rise of Temu and Shein. Temu, part of PDD Holdings, pushed its share of cross-border ecommerce sales to roughly 24% in 2025 and reported around $35 billion in GMV in the first half of the year, growing about 50% year over year, with an ambitious full-year target near $100 billion. Notably, Europe overtook North America as Temu’s largest market. Shein, the fast-fashion specialist, posted around $27 billion in GMV in the first half of 2025. Both have grown despite tightening tariffs and regulatory scrutiny — but that same scrutiny is the clearest risk to their trajectory, and it’s fair to be skeptical that 50% growth rates continue indefinitely.
The platforms behind the stores
Not every leader runs a marketplace. Shopify is a leader of a different kind: it powers millions of independent merchants without selling much of its own product. Its importance comes from aggregate scale — the combined sales of stores built on it rival those of major marketplaces. This is a genuinely different model. Where Amazon and Temu compete to own the customer relationship, Shopify’s pitch is that the merchant owns it. For a brand deciding where to sell, that distinction — marketplace reach versus owned-store control — matters more than any leaderboard ranking.
| Company | Reported scale (2025) | Metric | What it’s known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | ~$847B GMV / ~$638B revenue; 37.6% US share | GMV & revenue | Marketplace + logistics + cloud |
| Alibaba | ~23% of global GMV; ~$137B revenue | GMV share & revenue | China marketplace ecosystem |
| JD.com | ~$547B GMV | GMV | Logistics-led Chinese retail |
| Walmart | ~$681B total revenue; 6.4% US share | Revenue | Omnichannel retail at scale |
| Temu | ~$35B GMV (H1); ~24% cross-border share | GMV | Cross-border discount marketplace |
| Shein | ~$27B GMV (H1) | GMV | Fast-fashion direct-to-consumer |
Sources: company filings and industry estimates, 2025. GMV and revenue are not directly comparable — see the section above.
Where the leaders are concentrated
Geography explains a lot of the leaderboard. China is the largest single ecommerce market at roughly $1.47 trillion in annual sales, ahead of the United States at about $1.2 trillion, with Japan a distant third. That’s why so many of the biggest names are Chinese: they were forged in the world’s most competitive online retail environment and are now exporting that intensity outward through cross-border platforms. For Western retailers, the practical takeaway is that the next wave of competition increasingly comes from companies that grew up optimizing for razor-thin margins and viral acquisition.
What this means for a smaller business
Studying the giants is useful, but copying them is a mistake. You will not out-logistics Amazon or out-discount Temu. The lesson from the leaders is about focus: each one wins on a specific advantage — Amazon on convenience and selection, Shopify on merchant ownership, Temu on price and discovery. A smaller business succeeds by choosing its own narrow advantage — a niche, a brand story, a service level the giants can’t economically match — rather than competing on the dimensions where scale always wins.
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon really the world’s biggest ecommerce company?
By GMV in Western markets, yes — and by US market share it’s dominant. Globally it’s more contested: Alibaba leads on share of worldwide GMV. The answer genuinely depends on whether you measure GMV, revenue, or regional share.
Are Temu and Shein a threat to established retailers?
They’ve taken real share in price-sensitive categories and grown fast across Europe and North America. But both face significant tariff and regulatory pressure, so their long-term position is less certain than their headline growth suggests. Treat the growth rates as impressive but not guaranteed to persist.
Should a new store sell on a marketplace or build its own site?
It’s a trade-off, not a verdict. Marketplaces offer instant reach but own the customer; an owned store on a platform like Shopify gives you control and data but requires you to drive your own traffic. Many successful businesses do both, using a marketplace for discovery and their own store for loyalty.
To see where these trends are heading, read our look at the growth and future of the ecommerce industry. And if you want concrete inspiration rather than giants, our roundup of ecommerce business examples and success stories shows how smaller players carve out a real advantage.
