Amazon’s seller marketplace grew and shrank at the same time in 2025. Only 165,000 new sellers launched their first product listing on Amazon.com all year, the lowest annual total Marketplace Pulse has recorded since it began tracking the metric in 2015. At the same moment, third-party sellers pushed their share of Amazon’s total sales to 69% of gross merchandise value, an all-time high. Fewer people are getting in, and the people already inside are selling more than ever.
That split, fewer new entrants against record concentration among the sellers who remain, is the real story behind every Amazon statistic below. Here is the current data on how many sellers Amazon has, how much they sell, and who actually captures that revenue.
How many sellers does Amazon have in 2026?
Amazon carries roughly 9.7 million total registered seller accounts worldwide, but only a fraction are actually selling. Marketplace Pulse puts the count of genuinely active sellers at 1.65 million globally at the end of 2025, down from 2.4 million in 2021, a roughly 31% decline over four years. In the US specifically, active sellers, defined as those with at least one seller feedback in the past year, fell from 584,000 in January 2025 to about 500,000 by March 2026.
Figure 1: Worldwide active Amazon sellers, year end, 2021 to 2025. Source: Marketplace Pulse, seller registration and activity tracking.
The overwhelming majority of registered accounts, roughly 80%, never list a product or go dormant after a short trial. Amazon’s marketplace is not shrinking in dollar terms, but the number of people willing to compete inside it is.
Why did new seller registrations hit a decade low?
New seller registrations on Amazon.com dropped to 165,000 in 2025, down 44% from the prior year, according to Marketplace Pulse, which has tracked this figure since 2015. Rising fulfillment fees, tariff pressure on imported inventory, and a marketplace already crowded with established sellers all raised the bar for a first-time listing to become profitable.
The nationality mix of the sellers who did launch also shifted. Chinese sellers accounted for 59.9% of new launches in 2025, down 2.4 percentage points from 62.3% in 2024, while American sellers made up 16.3% of new entrants.
Figure 2: Geographic origin of new Amazon.com seller launches, 2025. Source: Marketplace Pulse.
A slowing pipeline of new sellers does not mean a slowing marketplace. It means the marketplace is consolidating around sellers who are already established, which is exactly what the revenue concentration data below confirms.
What share of Amazon sales comes from third-party sellers?
Third-party sellers generated 69% of Amazon’s total gross merchandise value in 2025, an estimated $575 billion out of $830 billion in total GMV, according to Marketplace Pulse’s analysis of Amazon’s disclosures. That share has climbed steadily from 60% in 2019. By unit count rather than dollar value, third-party sellers accounted for 61% of items sold in 2025, a figure that has plateaued across the last five quarters after years of steady growth.
Figure 3: Third-party seller share of Amazon’s total gross merchandise value. Source: Marketplace Pulse, based on Amazon financial disclosures.
Amazon’s own marketplace has effectively become a third-party-majority business. First-party retail, the portion Amazon buys and resells itself, made up just 31% of GMV in 2025, down from 40% six years earlier.
How does Amazon compare to the rest of US ecommerce?
Amazon controlled 40.5% of all US ecommerce sales in 2025, according to eMarketer estimates reported by Statista, more than four times the share of its closest competitor. Walmart held second place at 9.2%, followed by Apple at 3.2%. No other single retailer reached double-digit share.
| Retailer | Share of US ecommerce sales, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Amazon | 40.5% |
| Walmart | 9.2% |
| Apple | 3.2% |
| All others (combined) | 47.1% |
Source: eMarketer / Statista, US retail ecommerce sales share, 2025.
Amazon’s US third-party GMV alone, an estimated $305 billion in 2025, is larger than most single retailers’ entire business. For a store owner deciding where to sell, that scale is exactly why so many still choose to list on Amazon despite rising fees and a lower first-time-seller success rate.
How concentrated is seller revenue on Amazon?
Revenue on Amazon’s marketplace has concentrated sharply among a shrinking group of top sellers. As of February 2026, Marketplace Pulse estimates that fewer than 8,000 sellers, about 1.6% of the active US seller base, generate half of Amazon’s roughly $300 billion in US third-party GMV. Three years earlier, in 2023, it took about 15,000 sellers to reach that same 50% threshold, nearly double the number.
Figure 4: Number of top sellers required to account for half of Amazon’s US third-party GMV. Source: Marketplace Pulse.
Warning
Treat the 1.6%-of-sellers figure as a snapshot, not a fixed ratio. Marketplace Pulse’s own tracking shows this threshold moving fast, from roughly 15,000 sellers in 2023 to under 8,000 by early 2026, so the concentration is still tightening each time it is measured, not settled at one number.
The sellers inside that top cohort now average close to $20 million in annual revenue each, roughly double what the equivalent group earned a few years earlier. The figure below puts that shift side by side: fewer sellers are needed to reach half of US third-party GMV, but each one now carries far more weight than the equivalent seller did in 2023.
Reaching that tier increasingly means treating Amazon operations, including a clear, current return and refund policy, as a core part of running the business rather than an afterthought. Sellers who generate a refund policy built for marketplace selling reduce disputes that eat into the margins those top accounts depend on.
How many Amazon sellers cross $1 million or $100 million in sales?
High-revenue sellers have grown even as the overall seller count shrank. More than 100,000 sellers surpassed $1 million in annual sales in 2025, up from roughly 60,000 in 2021, per Marketplace Pulse. At the very top, 235 sellers now exceed $100 million in annual sales, up from just 50 in 2021, a more than fourfold increase in five years.
Figure 5: Growth in Amazon’s highest-revenue seller tiers, 2021 to 2025. Source: Marketplace Pulse.
Amazon’s own 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report, published by the company, adds independent color to this trend: independent sellers averaged more than $375,000 in annual US sales in 2025, up roughly 30% from 2024, and more than 11,000 US-based sellers grew sales by over 10x during the year. Amazon states that selling partners, most of them small and medium-sized businesses, accounted for more than 60% of sales in its store.
The Bottom Line
Amazon’s marketplace in 2026 rewards sellers who are already inside it more than it welcomes new ones. Only 165,000 sellers launched their first listing in 2025, a decade low, while the sellers who stayed pushed third-party GMV to 69% of Amazon’s total and concentrated half of US third-party sales into fewer than 8,000 accounts. If you are one of the sellers competing for that share, the operational basics, a clear return window, transparent refund terms, and policies that hold up under Amazon’s account health rules, matter more as competition tightens around a smaller, higher-revenue seller base.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many new sellers joined Amazon in 2025? 165,000 new sellers launched their first listing on Amazon.com in 2025, the lowest annual total since Marketplace Pulse began tracking the metric in 2015 and down 44% from 2024.
What percentage of Amazon sales come from third-party sellers? Third-party sellers accounted for 69% of Amazon’s total gross merchandise value in 2025, worth an estimated 575 billion dollars, and 61% of units sold.
What share of US ecommerce does Amazon control? Amazon captured 40.5% of US ecommerce sales in 2025, according to eMarketer, more than four times the 9.2% held by second-place Walmart.
How many Amazon sellers make over 1 million dollars a year? More than 100,000 Amazon sellers generated over 1 million dollars in sales in 2025, up from roughly 60,000 in 2021, according to Marketplace Pulse.
Sources and References
- Marketplace Pulse. (2026). “Amazon New Seller Numbers Hit Decade Low in 2025.” Seller registration and revenue-tier tracking since 2015.
- Marketplace Pulse. (2026). “Amazon GMV Surpassed $800 Billion in 2025.” Analysis based on Amazon financial disclosures.
- Marketplace Pulse. (2026). “Top 1.6% of Sellers Drive 50% of Amazon’s 3P GMV.”
- Modern Retail. (2026). “Marketplace Briefing: Amazon’s seller count falls as revenue concentrates among top sellers.” Citing Marketplace Pulse data.
- eMarketer. (2025). “Amazon Will Account for 40.5% of US Ecommerce Sales in 2025.”
- Statista. (2025). “Largest online retailers in the U.S., 2025,” citing eMarketer estimates.
- About Amazon. (2025). “A record number of independent sellers in Amazon’s store surpassed $1 million in sales in 2025.” Amazon’s own 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. Amazon seller and marketplace data shifts quickly with fee changes and holiday-quarter volume, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year.
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