Quick answer: As of the end of 2025, there are 121,138 live ecommerce businesses registered with Companies House in the United Kingdom. That’s actually a fall from 166,052 at the end of 2024, the first annual decline in the UK’s ecommerce business population since we started tracking this data in 2020. A further 45,791 new ecommerce businesses were registered in 2025 alone, but closures outpaced them for the first time on record.
This is our annual report into UK ecommerce business statistics, built from our own database of Companies House company data. Every year, we strip out the non-ecommerce noise from the full UK business register (companies house) so we can see exactly how many ecommerce retailers are trading, how many are closing, and what that tells us about the health of the industry.
The UK's Ecommerce Business Population: Full Data (2020–2025)
Below is the complete picture of the UK’s ecommerce business population since 2020, new company registrations each year, and the cumulative (live) total of ecommerce businesses on the register.
Since 2020, 280,270 ecommerce businesses have been registered in total across the United Kingdom, and 163,202 of those have already closed down. That means well over half, around 58%, of every ecommerce business registered since 2020 no longer exists. This
New E-commerce Business Registrations in 2025
45,791 new ecommerce businesses were registered on Companies House in 2025. That’s down 19% on 2024’s total of 56,616, and well below the record set in 2023, when 67,186 new online businesses launched. Even so, 2025 is still the third-biggest year for ecommerce business formation since we began tracking the data, people are still starting online shops, just more cautiously than during the 2023 boom.
Registrations don’t tell the whole story on their own, though. To understand what’s really happening in the ecommerce industry, you need to look at how many of those businesses are actually still trading a year or two later, which brings us to the real headline of this year’s report.
The 2025 Shakeout: Why the Number of Live Businesses Fell
For five years, the number of live ecommerce businesses on the register climbed to a new record every year. In 2025, that streak broke for the first time. Despite another 45,791 new ecommerce businesses being formed, the live total fell from 166,052 to 121,138, a drop of 44,914 businesses, or 27%, in a single year.
New company formation slowed, but it didn’t collapse. Closures did the damage. Based on the movement in our live-company count, we estimate that as many as 90,000 ecommerce businesses closed in 2025 alone, more than half of all the closures we’ve recorded across the entire 2020–2025 period.
This lines up closely with the timing of previous booms. 2023’s record 67,186 registrations are now two to three years old, exactly the window where, as the data below shows, most ecommerce businesses fail. The 2025 numbers look very much like that cohort hitting the wall all at once.
UK Ecommerce Market Statistics: Online Sales Share of Retail
Company formation numbers are only half the picture, it also matters how the wider ecommerce market and online sales are performing. For years, online sales ate into traditional retail’s market share every quarter. That trend has clearly slowed. Office for National Statistics data shows online sales made up 28.3% of total UK retail sales in December 2025, and 28.7% in March 2026 , a long way short of the 37% peak seen during the pandemic, and only a modest rise on prior years.
In other words, e-commerce’s share of the wider retail market has plateaued rather than continuing to climb. That’s consistent with the company data above: this looks like a maturing e-commerce industry, not one still in a land-grab phase. UK online sales are still growing in absolute terms, but the era of runaway market-share gains looks to be over, at least for now.
The Rise of Social Commerce Among UK Ecommerce Retailers
One part of the ecommerce industry that hasn’t slowed down at all: buying directly through social media. Between 2020 and 2023, growth was largely driven by traffic to established players like Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Shopify. That’s shifted, UK shoppers are increasingly buying directly from TikTok and Instagram, using in-app shops that let influencers and content creators sell straight to their followers.
Research from TikTok and Retail Economics puts the UK social commerce market at £7.4 billion in 2024 , around 6% of total online commerce, growing at roughly four times the rate of ecommerce overall. It’s projected to nearly double to £16 billion, or 10% of the online market, by 2028. More than half of UK shoppers (56%) have now bought something through social media, rising to 73% among under-45s, and 44% of TikTok users have completed a purchase directly on the platform.
We’re seeing this reflected directly in our own client base: more new ecommerce retailers are building their businesses around TikTok Shop or Instagram first, rather than a traditional marketplace like Amazon or Etsy. We expect social commerce to keep taking share through 2026.
Mobile Commerce: The UK's Default Way to Shop Online
Mobile-first shopping isn’t a prediction anymore, it’s simply how most people shop. Recent estimates suggest smartphones now generate close to 80% of UK ecommerce traffic, account for over 70% of online orders, and make up around 55–57% of ecommerce revenue by value. The gap between traffic share and revenue share matters: mobile baskets tend to be smaller, so ecommerce retailers who optimise their mobile checkout and average order value still have real room to gain.
Ecommerce Business Failure Rate in the UK
We’ve tracked ecommerce company data from Companies House for years specifically so we can understand how tough this industry really is, and the numbers are stark. Among ecommerce businesses that reach two years old, 70% have failed. Even within the first year alone, 34% fail , roughly 3 in 10 online businesses don’t make it to their first birthday.
The flip side is genuinely encouraging: survive those first two years, and you’re far more likely to stick around long-term. The 2025 closure spike we’ve described above looks exactly like the 2023 registration boom running into that two-year wall.
We’ve spent years combining this Companies House data with thousands of conversations with ecommerce business owners to understand why so many fail, and what the survivors do differently.
Why Do UK Ecommerce Businesses Fail?
Our accountancy firm works with ecommerce businesses at every stage of the lifecycle, and one pattern keeps showing up: many people entering the industry don’t fully understand their own operations. They watch a YouTube video or read an article about making money on Amazon, Etsy, eBay or Shopify, jump straight into registering a limited company, and then struggle to generate any sales at all. Three factors come up again and again.
Lack of Time or Commitment
Many never even get as far as listing a product, life gets in the way. They assume they can build a successful ecommerce brand in their spare time, but that time never actually materialises once the business is registered.
Oversaturated Markets & Weak Marketing
New ecommerce retailers often pile into crowded markets without a genuine marketing strategy. We regularly speak to five or more new businesses a week all selling the exact same products, a massage gun is a classic recent example. Chasing the latest trending products tends to fail fast, because the market oversaturates within months.
Limited Business Experience
Even ecommerce retailers who find a decent product and market it well often struggle here. Most new owners have never run a business before, so they don’t understand core financial metrics, profit and loss, balance sheets, and have no reliable way of knowing whether:
- Their business model actually makes sense
- They are genuinely profitable
- Their business can scale
For us, this is problem number one. Plenty of business owners find the right product and run a solid marketing campaign, but without a grip on their numbers they can’t make the decisions needed to build a sustainable, profitable business. Most end up flying blind, hoping rather than knowing.
How to Be the Ecommerce Business That Survives
Our focus over the last year has stayed exactly where it needs to be: teaching clients to build successful online stores through genuine financial literacy. Too many ecommerce business owners have no real view of their own numbers or profitability, and end up making decisions on hope rather than fact, chasing the next marketing trend or trending product instead of getting the fundamentals right.
When we take the time to walk clients through the core concepts behind their ecommerce accounts, their success rate jumps noticeably. They start making better decisions: doubling down on a genuinely profitable product, pivoting away from one the numbers show will never work, and building businesses that actually last beyond that two-year danger zone.
They do this by reviewing their numbers consistently and acting on what they find. If a PPC campaign is eating 50% of revenue, that’s a signal to interrogate the ad account, cut what isn’t converting, and bring down cost-per-click. If the cost of goods sold isn’t covered by the current price, that’s a signal to revisit pricing before the business runs out of cash.
We keep giving our clients the tools to understand their financials properly, so they know exactly when to change price, pivot away from a product, or tighten up a paid marketing campaign. Getting a genuine grip on the numbers removes one of the single biggest reasons ecommerce businesses fail, and our clients who learn these fundamentals consistently show a lower failure rate than the wider industry average.
Our Methodology: How We Track UK Ecommerce Company Data
We’ve had access to Companies House data published since 2017, and we maintain our own database that strips out every non-ecommerce company from the full UK business register. That gives us a much cleaner view of the ecommerce industry than looking at UK company registration numbers as a whole, which are dominated by every other type of business under standard company regulations.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many ecommerce businesses are there in the UK? As of the end of 2025, there are 121,138 live ecommerce businesses registered with Companies House in the UK, based on our own analysis of the national company register. This is down from 166,052 at the end of 2024, the first annual fall we’ve recorded since we began tracking this data in 2020.
What are the statistics for e-commerce in the UK? Online sales currently make up around 28% of total UK retail sales, down slightly from the levels seen through 2024, and well below the 37% pandemic peak. Since 2020, 280,270 ecommerce businesses have been registered in the UK, of which 163,202 have already closed. Around 70% of ecommerce businesses fail within two years of being formed.
How many ecommerce companies close down each year in the UK? It varies significantly year to year. We estimate that around 90,000 UK ecommerce companies closed in 2025 alone, a sharp jump on previous years and more than half of all the closures we’ve recorded since 2020.
What are the major e-commerce companies in the UK? The UK’s largest online retailers span both pure-play ecommerce businesses and traditional retailers with a large online presence, including Amazon UK, eBay, Asos, Very, Argos, Next, Tesco and John Lewis. The vast majority of the businesses in our data, however, are small and medium-sized ecommerce retailers rather than these large household names.
What are the 7 types of e-commerce? The commonly cited categories are: business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), consumer-to-business (C2B), business-to-administration (B2A), consumer-to-administration (C2A), and mobile commerce (m-commerce). Most of the UK ecommerce businesses we track and work with sit in the B2C category, selling directly to consumers through their own online shops or marketplaces.
Key Takeaways
- There are 121,138 live ecommerce businesses registered with Companies House in the UK as of the end of 2025; down 27% from 166,052 in 2024, the first annual fall since we started tracking this data.
- New ecommerce business registrations slowed for the second year running, to 45,791 in 2025, but this is still the third-highest year on record.
- Online sales’ share of total UK retail sales has plateaued at around 28%, suggesting a maturing ecommerce industry rather than one still expanding rapidly.
- Social commerce is the standout growth story; the UK market is worth £7.4bn and growing four times faster than ecommerce overall, driven by TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping.
- Mobile is now the default way UK shoppers buy online, generating close to 80% of ecommerce traffic.
- The ecommerce failure rate remains brutally high: 34% fail in year one, 70% by year two, and 2025’s wave of closures lines up almost exactly with the 2023 registration boom hitting that window.
- Ecommerce business owners who get a genuine grip on their numbers consistently outperform those relying on hope and trends — and that gap matters more than ever in a market that’s now shaking out its weaker businesses.
If you want to talk to us about the data behind these findings, get in touch and we can share our full research.
