AliExpress, Etsy, Amazon lead European cross-border e-marketplace ranking

Europe’s cross-border e-commerce market across all sectors is dominated by three major marketplaces, China’s AliExpress and the USA’s Etsy and Amazon. According to the annual ranking drawn up by Cross-Border Commerce Europe (CCE), e-marketplace sales are constantly growing: they were worth €141 billion in 2021, up from €115 billion in 2020, and grew again in 2022, reaching €167 billion, virtually double the figure of €84 million recorded in 2019. In 2022, the top 100 e-marketplaces accounted for 84% of the total volume, generating sales worth €140 million.

The top three e-marketplaces, AliExpress, Etsy and Amazon, were followed by US e-tailer Ebay and musical content specialist Discogs, owned by Zink Media. Behind them, Dutch company Naspers, with its generalist marketplace OLX, and music portal Bandcamp (owned by Epic Games), followed by Uber Eats.

China’s Temu, a generalist e-tailer specialised in very low-price items with a focus on apparel, like Shein, entered the ranking in ninth place, leapfrogging Lithuanian second-hand clothes specialist Vinted, which lost three places compared to the previous year.

“Of the 498 marketplaces (up by 14%) that are selling across Europe via 1,000 domains, 175 are considered to be cross-border operators (up by 35%)”, noted CCE. “By 2025, it is estimated that approximately 50% of international marketplaces selling in Europe will be considered as cross-border operators, equivalent to between 250 and 300 companies,” added CCE.

Leaving aside Amazon, which generated a sales volume of €55 billion, and Ebay, with €23 billion, European and non-European e-marketplaces generated a similar volume of sales in 2022, with a combined total of €44 billion and €45 billion respectively. In terms of business type, the sales volume of the 100 top e-marketplaces is split almost equally between B2C (49.5% of total volume) and C2C (43.7%). Notably, 80% of this top 100 consists of pure marketplaces.