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The latest 2026 figures point to social commerce becoming a significant selling and discovery channel, but they measure different things: surveys of past purchases, business adoption, estimates of sales influence, and forecasts. The clearest read is to keep those measures—and their geographies—separate.
What are the latest social commerce statistics for 2026?
Social commerce is the use of social media platforms to promote and sell products or services, as Shopify defines it in its 2026 explainer. A purchase may happen in the app or after a social post, video, livestream, or creator link sends the shopper to a retailer’s website. That distinction matters: a social platform can influence a sale without processing the checkout.
Here are the headline figures and what each one measures:
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- 63% of businesses sell on social, while 45% of shoppers say they buy through social-commerce channels. These are different measures from separate business and shopper respondent groups in DHL eCommerce’s 2026 survey across 29 countries. The gap is not a conversion rate.
- 51% of U.S. social buyers are forecast to shop on TikTok in 2026. This is EMARKETER’s January 7, 2026 forecast for the share of U.S. social buyers—not TikTok’s share of all ecommerce sales.
- Nearly $102 billion is the global social-commerce market value projected for 2026 in an EMARKETER forecast relayed by Shopify. It is a projection, not a measured 2026 result.
- TikTok Shop is estimated to influence about 1% of total U.S. retail sales and 3% of U.S. ecommerce sales. These are Circana’s 2026 estimates; “influence” is not the same as sales completed through TikTok Shop.
DHL describes its 2026 survey as covering 29,000 online shoppers and 5,800 ecommerce businesses across 29 countries. The platform figures below are shoppers’ self-reported answers to whether they had ever purchased items on each platform. They are not transaction logs, market shares, spending shares, or mutually exclusive preferences.
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Which social media platform has the most social shoppers?
In DHL eCommerce’s 2026 survey, Facebook had the highest global “ever purchased” response, followed by TikTok and Instagram. U.S. responses put Facebook and TikTok closer together. Since a respondent could have purchased on more than one platform, the percentages do not add up to 100%.
| Platform | Global respondents who had ever purchased | U.S. respondents who had ever purchased |
|---|---|---|
| 63% | 70% | |
| TikTok | 50% | 67% |
| 48% | 47% | |
| YouTube | 29% | 41% |
| Snapchat | 11% | 19% |
| 10% | 16% | |
| Twitch | 5% | 8% |
These are DHL’s 2026 survey responses, not a ranking of platform sales or current user counts. The global and U.S. columns describe different respondent groups, and neither should be treated as a forecast.
How many people buy products on TikTok Shop?
The available 2026 figures describe TikTok in two different ways, neither of which gives a count of unique TikTok Shop buyers. DHL reports that 50% of its global online-shopper respondents and 67% of its U.S. respondents had ever purchased items on TikTok. The question is about past purchasing on the platform, not necessarily TikTok Shop checkout.
Separately, EMARKETER forecasts that 51% of U.S. social buyers will shop on TikTok during 2026. That population is U.S. social buyers, not all U.S. shoppers, and the figure is a forecast rather than an observed outcome. It cannot be directly compared with DHL’s “ever purchased” survey answers.
Circana’s 2026 estimate that TikTok Shop influences a portion of U.S. retail and ecommerce sales is a sales-influence measure, not a buyer count. Circana also cites an estimated $6.5 billion in U.S. sales, but the period covered is not clear in the cited passage, so that dollar figure does not support a time-bounded annual sales comparison.
What trends are shaping social commerce in 2026?
Creator recommendations and social discovery
Creators can introduce products through videos, posts, and affiliate links. The social interaction may lead to a purchase inside the app, or the creator’s link may send the shopper to a separate retailer site. For example, Shopify’s 2026 explainer describes product tags in YouTube livestreams, Pinterest product tags, and creator affiliate links in Instagram Stories alongside native TikTok Shop checkout.
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Built-in checkout and live shopping
EMARKETER’s public 2026 forecast page frames creators, younger shoppers, and built-in checkout as forces behind social commerce’s growth; its report outline also covers TikTok Shop, Instagram, Facebook Marketplace, Pinterest shopping, and live shopping. The public forecast page provides the TikTok headline figure, but not detailed supporting percentages for each of those trends.
More than one purchase path
Social commerce is broader than buying without leaving an app. Native checkout makes the platform the point of sale; social-led discovery can instead send a shopper to the retailer’s ecommerce site. Those paths affect how a seller tracks attribution, coordinates inventory, fulfills an order, and handles returns.
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How is social commerce different from ecommerce?
Ecommerce is the broader activity of buying and selling online. Social commerce is the part of that activity in which a social platform helps promote or sell the product. A sale may be completed through a platform’s checkout or on an external store after discovery on social media. So, a social-commerce sale can also be an ecommerce sale; the terms describe different aspects of the purchase.
What the 2026 figures mean for sellers
DHL’s business and shopper results suggest that businesses report social-selling adoption more often than shoppers report buying through social-commerce channels. Because the survey asks different questions of separate respondent groups, that difference is a reason to measure a seller’s own funnel—not evidence that social posts are failing to convert.
- Choose channels for the audience and product. The platform survey varies by geography, and “ever purchased” does not show which channel is most effective for a particular business.
- Keep product information coordinated. If items are sold through both social channels and a retailer’s store, product details and inventory need to remain aligned across those paths.
- Track the full route to purchase. Native checkout and outbound links create different attribution paths. Monitor referral traffic and completed purchases on the destination where checkout occurs.
- Plan operations beyond checkout. Orders from any route still need inventory handling, fulfillment, customer support, and returns processes.
How to compare social-commerce statistics responsibly
Before comparing two figures, check five things: geography, respondent population, metric, time basis, and purchase path. A global survey of online shoppers who have ever bought on a platform is not interchangeable with a U.S. forecast for social buyers or an estimate of sales influenced by one platform.
- Survey responses describe what respondents report; they are not necessarily verified transactions.
- Forecasts describe expected future behavior or market value, not outcomes already measured.
- Sales-influence estimates do not automatically mean the platform processed that amount through native checkout.
- Adjacent online-shopping data should not be relabeled as social commerce. Circana’s Annual Holiday Survey reported that 81% of consumers shopped online during the 2025 holiday period and 47% used a smartphone to browse and buy. Those are general online-shopping measures, not social-shopping statistics.
Read together, the 2026 data show social commerce’s reach and commercial relevance, while also illustrating why no single percentage can stand in for total social-commerce sales, buyer numbers, or platform market share.
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