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The growth rate of online sales in Q4 2025 was slower than in each of the prior two Q4s, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis.

For the first time in a single quarter, U.S. ecommerce sales exceeded $350 billion in Q4 2025, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis of data from the Department of Commerce.

And they did so by about $15 billion, reaching about $365 billion, based on the historical data that Digital Commerce 360 tracks. Q4 capped a year in which each quarter’s ecommerce sales grew at a rate between 5% and 6%.

At the same time, total retail sales reached $1.461 trillion in Q4, growing 3.6% year over year. Offline retail sales grew 3.0%, the lowest year-over-year growth of each quarter in 2025. Still, that offline retail sales growth rate was higher than almost every quarter of 2023 and 2024. The highest in 2024 was Q4, at 3.6%. In 2023, it was Q1, at 4.7%.

Until 2022, it was typical for ecommerce to grow at least twice as fast as total retail sales in a given quarter. In Q1 2022, ecommerce and total retail sales grew at the same rate, 5.6%, before total retail sales outpaced ecommerce in Q2 that year. That was largely a result of the U.S. loosening pandemic restrictions. From Q3 2022 through 2024, the trend of ecommerce growing at twice the rate of total retail sales resumed.

However, in each quarter of 2025, ecommerce sales grew faster than total retail sales, yet far shy of double the rate.

“While ecommerce growth in Q4 2025 improved slightly over the prior two quarters, and online sales continued to grow faster than total retail sales, tariff uncertainty and concerns related to inflation and global conflict clearly continue to impede economic growth — including ecommerce,” said Jon Love, research data manager at Digital Commerce 360.

U.S. ecommerce sales in Q4 2025

In Q4 2025, U.S. ecommerce sales reached nearly $365.17 billion. That’s up from $345.87 billion in Q4 2024.

And in 2025, online holiday sales accounted for more than 70% of ecommerce in Q4, according to previous Digital Commerce 360 reporting. In November and December alone, U.S. consumers spent $257.8 billion online. The Cyber 5, or the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, generated $44.2 billion in ecommerce sales.

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.

Although there have been several quarters in which U.S. ecommerce sales fell below 5%, this was the first year that none of the quarters had grown by at least 7% year over year. The closest such scenario was in 2022, when the highest quarterly ecommerce sales growth rate was 7.4%. The lowest that year was 3.4%, which followed recurring growth-rate gains during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Q2 2020, U.S. ecommerce sales had grown 54.1% year over year. That remains the highest single-quarter growth rate for online sales in the country. Sales have continued to build on that growth since.

The last time a quarter’s ecommerce sales declined year over year was in Q2 2009, during The Great Recession.

Furthermore, 2025 marked the second straight year that each quarter’s ecommerce sales growth rate was slower than that quarter in the prior year. Regarding fourth quarters, specifically, the 5.6% growth in 2025 fell short of the 8.8% growth in 2024, which was slower than the 9.8% in 2023.

 

How is ecommerce penetration calculated? 

Digital Commerce 360 analysis indicates ecommerce represented 25.0% of total retail sales in Q4 2025. That’s the highest ecommerce penetration in a quarter since the Commerce Department began tracking online sales in 1999. The next-highest quarterly ecommerce penetration was a year prior, in Q4 2024, when it was 24.5%.

Including all retail and food-service sales, U.S. ecommerce accounted for 16.6% of total sales in Q4 2025, according to the Commerce Department. Unadjusted figures show U.S. ecommerce sales represented 18.3% of total sales in Q4, the Commerce Department said. It estimates that total, unadjusted U.S. ecommerce sales in Q4 2025 reached $365.2 billion.

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 that 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 quarter’s update on U.S. ecommerce sales.

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