U.S. e-commerce grew 12.2% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026, its fastest pace in five years, and reached a record 17.1% of all retail spending, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by Marketplace Pulse. It was the second straight quarter of double-digit growth after four years without one, and the fourth consecutive quarterly record for e-commerce’s share of retail — a share that took five years to reclaim its pandemic-era peak.
The headline reads like a turning point. The more useful read is narrower: growth resumed roughly to where it was running in 2024, and the platforms already largest before the rebound are capturing more than their share of it.
2025 Wasn’t a New Normal — It Was a Pause
Through 2025, e-commerce grew around 5% a quarter while physical retail held its usual pace, and it looked at the time like the market settling permanently into a 5–8% growth range. Shoppers never actually stopped spending during those quarters. What paused was the rate at which they kept moving purchases online, in a window when tariffs and the end of the de minimis exemption hit hardest in exactly the categories where online spending had been gaining fastest. With that pressure easing, growth has resumed — not accelerated past its old trend, resumed it.
How Much of This Is Just Higher Prices
Total retail (online and in-store combined) grew 6.7% in Q2, its fastest pace since 2022. When every part of retail speeds up at once, price is usually doing more work than demand. Goods prices were flat or falling through 2024 and are rising again now, which lifts sales figures without a single extra order being placed. Marketplace Pulse estimates that roughly a third of the recent acceleration is higher price tags rather than more volume, putting real (unit) growth closer to 8% — essentially back to where it ran in 2024. Measured against a stagnant 2025, that’s the best market in three years. Measured against 2024, it’s a return to the previous trajectory, not a break above it. For sellers, protecting margin as prices rise matters more here than it sounds — a sales chart that’s climbing partly on price alone can mask a margin picture that isn’t actually improving.
The Growth Is Going to Platforms That Were Already Winning
The largest platforms all grew faster than the market they sit in — some at close to double its rate:
| Platform / Metric | Q2 2026 Growth |
| Walmart U.S. online sales | +24% |
| Walmart advertising business | +38% |
| Walmart total U.S. business (all channels) | +3.5% |
| Shopify North American merchant sales | +28% |
| Amazon online store sales | +15% |
Growth running above the overall market rate has to come from somewhere else in that same market. This is the same dynamic already visible in seller-level data — Amazon’s own third-party GMV keeps concentrating toward a shrinking share of top sellers — showing up again one level up, at the platform level: dollars leaving smaller retailers and independent sites are landing disproportionately on Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify rather than spreading evenly across the recovery.
What the 17.1% Figure Actually Overstates
The record 17.1% share describes how large online retail has become, not how fast it’s still growing — the growth rate itself is back to a normal, not historic, pace. It also overstates the market sellers actually compete in, because the Census Bureau’s total retail figure includes categories like cars, gas, and restaurants that sell online in essentially no real volume. Strip those out and the effective online penetration of the categories an Amazon or e-commerce seller actually competes in is meaningfully higher than 17.1% already — useful context when the headline number gets used to argue how much room is still left to capture.
What This Means Heading Into Q4
Genuine demand has returned, which is the real news here — but it’s returning to a market that already rewards its largest platforms and sellers disproportionately, and Q4 is where that concentration shows up hardest. A few things follow directly:
- Treat the resumed growth as a return to 2024-level demand, not a new baseline to extrapolate forward — planning inventory or ad budgets off the 12.2% headline risks over-ordering against a rate that’s already normalizing.
- Category performance varies sharply underneath the headline number: general merchandise and sporting goods/hobby categories were growing well above 20% in Q2, while apparel grew under 4% — which category you sell in matters more than the aggregate figure.
- Because growth is concentrating on already-large platforms, a seller’s own growth increasingly depends on winning share within Amazon specifically, not just riding a rising market-wide tide.
With demand genuinely stronger heading into peak season, Q4 peak season preparation and inventory planning tighter than a normal year both matter more than usual — a real demand rebound colliding with under-forecasted inventory is a worse problem to have than a market that stayed flat.
The Bottom Line
E-commerce’s fastest growth in five years is genuine and worth planning around, but it’s a return to trend rather than a breakout, and roughly a third of the acceleration is price rather than volume. The sellers positioned to benefit most are the ones already competing effectively on the platforms capturing more than their share of the rebound — which for most consumer brands still means Amazon, alongside Walmart and Shopify. Reading this quarter as “the market got bigger” is accurate. Reading it as “growth is easy again” isn’t.
