The Maze: Temu, Shein and AliExpress received an estimated €49.7 billion of the €55.1 billion EU consumers spent online at stores outside the bloc in 2025. That is 90.2% of outbound spending on physical goods. ECDB's new cross-border analysis, summarized on October 2, puts a number on the concentration facing European retailers. The scale is striking, but its boundary matters: the share describes money leaving the EU, while most online physical-goods spending stayed within it. A large slice of a specific market is not the whole market.
Three platforms dominate a €55.1 billion outbound market. The spending estimate puts Temu, Shein and AliExpress together at €49.7 billion in 2025. It does not break that amount down by platform. Nor does it count shoppers, orders or parcels. For retailers, the useful finding is concentration: the three names form the central competitive set when EU customers choose these overseas shopping channels. Calling the figure a share of all EU purchases would radically exaggerate their position. It would also turn a measure of euros into a measure of buying frequency.
Most EU online spending still stays inside the bloc. ECDB estimates total EU online spending on physical goods at €421 billion in 2025, with 86.9% staying in EU-based stores. The 13.1% outbound share is substantially higher than the 2.3% estimated for 2020. That comparison shows the overseas segment becoming more important within the same spending measure. It does not identify which domestic retailers lost sales, how much each platform gained, or which product categories drove the increase. Those distinctions matter before a merchant applies a European aggregate to its own sales plan.
The storefront can change the classification. The dossier explanation says purchases through local Amazon and eBay domains count as domestic, while Temu, Shein and AliExpress connect European consumers with Chinese sellers and manufacturers through global platforms. This makes their contribution to measured imports particularly visible. Domestic here is a classification of the shopping channel; it does not mean every company is European-owned. Equally, the outbound total should not be treated as a warehouse map showing the shipping origin of every parcel. Competitor benchmarks need the same definition before their shares can be compared.
An estimate should inform decisions without pretending to be a census. ECDB, an ecommerce market-data provider, describes its published market figures as model-based estimates. Its general methodology uses transactions alongside retailer disclosures and other inputs. The complete cross-border dossier was not available for inspection, so this summary cannot establish its uncertainty bands or individual platform totals. ECDB also projects a 15.2% outbound share for 2026; that is a forecast, not a completed-year result. The verified finding remains the reported 2025 concentration, rather than a claim that this year's trajectory is already settled.
Why it matters: European retailers have a more precise benchmark for the overseas channels competing for their customers' wallets. The commercial response starts with the relevant category and customer, then the complete offer: price, delivery, returns and trust. This dataset does not prove which of those factors caused the shift. It does show why treating all foreign platforms as one diffuse threat misses the concentration. Watch whether the outbound share changes, using a consistent definition and observed spending rather than a forecast.
Sources: Ecommerce News Europe; ECDB dossier author; ECDB methodology.
