Australian Online Shopping Statistics 2026: The Key Numbers

Australians spent a record $82.6 billion online in 2025, 14% more than in 2024, and online now accounts for roughly a quarter of all retail spending. Growth has continued into 2026: online spend rose 17% year on year in the July to September quarter. The pattern behind the totals matters as much as the totals themselves: more frequent, smaller orders, spread across more retailers and marketplaces.

How big is Australian e-commerce in 2026?

The most detailed annual picture comes from the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026, which combines Australia Post parcel data with CommBank iQ transaction data. It puts 2025 online spend at $82.6 billion, up 14%. On that measure, online made up about 24% of total retail spending, 1.6 percentage points higher than the year before. Other measures give lower shares; we explain why in what share of Australian retail is online.

That is a sharp change from the flat years after the pandemic peak. The 2025 edition of the same report recorded $69 billion in 2024 and described it as a return to growth after three flat years. Two consecutive years of double-digit growth suggest online spending is again rising faster than retail overall.

The latest quarter keeps that trend going. Australia Post's FY27 Q1 update reports $25 billion spent online from July to September 2026, up 17% year on year, with online at 26% of total retail across the quarter.

Who is shopping online, and how often?

Reach is close to saturation, so growth now comes mostly from frequency. A record 9.8 million households shopped online in 2025, equal to 82% of all households. Australia Post also reports that 41% of households shopped online at least fortnightly, and that Australians made four more online purchases each in 2025 than the year before.

Generational differences are large. Weekly online shopping ranged from 47% of Millennials and 44% of Gen Z down to 23% of Baby Boomers and 10% of Builders. Millennials were the biggest spenders at $29.7 billion. The older groups grew fastest: Builders' online spend rose 16.9%.

Payment data supports the same story. The Reserve Bank's 2025 Consumer Payments Survey found that online payments made up around 20% of all consumer payments, up from 18% in 2022 and 4% in 2007. The share of respondents making at least one online payment in the survey week rose to 68%.

Smaller baskets, more retailers

Baskets are getting smaller. The average online basket was $96 in 2025, down 0.4%. By the September 2026 quarter it had fallen to $90, down 6.8% year on year. Shoppers are buying more often but spending less each time, which Australia Post links to discount-led buying, private label and free-delivery subscriptions.

Loyalty is also thinner. The average household bought from 16 different retailers in 2025, a number Australia Post says has more than doubled over the last decade. For sellers, each order is worth slightly less and each customer is easier to lose. Margins depend more on low cost per order and on being visible wherever the shopper happens to search.

Marketplaces are the largest single category

Pure online marketplaces such as Amazon and Temu took $18.9 billion in 2025, up 13% and equal to 23% of all online spending. That figure excludes retailer-owned marketplaces like BIG W Market and Kmart Marketplace, so marketplaces' real share of online spend is larger. Australia Post also found that 69% of shoppers buy through marketplace apps, close to the 78% who buy on retailer websites.

Shopper numbers point the same way. Roy Morgan estimates Temu had 5 million Australian shoppers in 2025 (up 17%), Shein 2.9 million (up 28%), and that Amazon's Australian retail sales reached nearly $7.1 billion. Over the same period, legacy online retailers such as eBay and Kogan lost shoppers.

Where the growth is coming from

By state, Western Australia grew fastest in 2025 (online spend up 18% to $9.1 billion), ahead of Queensland (up 15%). Outer regional and remote areas recorded the highest growth rate of any area type, at 14.4%. We cover what that means for fulfilment in regional Australia online shopping.

By category, books, stationery and multimedia grew fastest (up 24.1%), while department stores (up 19.5%) and hobbies and recreational goods (up 17.1%) also beat the market. In the September 2026 quarter, hobbies and recreational goods grew 22% and food and liquor 21%.

Key figures

• Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 14% year on year (Australia Post, 2026).
• 9.8 million households shopped online in 2025, 82% of all households (Australia Post, 2026).
• Online was 26% of total retail in the July to September 2026 quarter, with spend of $25 billion, up 17% (Australia Post FY27 Q1, 2026).
• Pure online marketplaces took $18.9 billion, 23% of online spend, in 2025 (Australia Post, 2026).
• Online payments made up around 20% of all consumer payments in 2025, up from 4% in 2007 (RBA, 2026).
• The average household bought from 16 different retailers in 2025 (Australia Post, 2026).

How eComChannels helps

These numbers favour sellers who can be present in many places without their workload growing at the same rate. eComChannels is built for that.

• Be listed where the spend is. With AI listing optimisation, you keep one master product record and the AI drafts listings that follow each marketplace's rules for Amazon, BIG W Market, Bunnings Marketplace, Kmart Marketplace, eBay and others. Your team approves the drafts before they go live. Reaching more of the marketplaces where Australians already shop puts your range in front of more buyers.
• Handle more, smaller orders without adding staff. Order management brings orders from every channel into one place and syncs stock, so a falling basket size doesn't mean more manual handling per dollar of revenue.
• Ship quickly at a lower cost per parcel. AI auto shipping creates labels and manifests for Australia Post, StarTrack, CouriersPlease and Allied Express and pushes tracking back to each marketplace. That reduces the admin on each order and helps keep marketplace dispatch metrics healthy.

To see how this would work with your range and channels, book a demo or start a 30-day free trial.

FAQ

How much do Australians spend online each year?

Australia Post and CommBank iQ data put 2025 online spending at $82.6 billion, up 14% on 2024. Spending was $25 billion in the July to September 2026 quarter alone.

What percentage of Australian households shop online?

About 82%. A record 9.8 million households shopped online in 2025, and 41% of households did so at least once a fortnight.

Are online marketplaces growing faster than retailer websites?

Pure marketplaces grew 13% in 2025, slightly below overall online growth of 14%. They are still the largest single category at $18.9 billion, and in the September 2026 quarter they grew 20%.