TikTok Shop Nears $23B in US Sales as Live Shopping Share Slips

TikTok Shop's growth now comes mostly from browsing, not livestreams

TikTok Shop has turned social commerce from an experiment into a core sales channel in the US. Its own numbers also show something less obvious: most of the growth is no longer coming from the livestreams that made the platform famous. eMarketer forecasts that TikTok Shop will reach about $23.41 billion in US e-commerce sales in 2026.14 Industry write-ups compare that figure to the online businesses of Target, Costco, Best Buy and Kroger and say it beats them.410 For a storefront that only opened in the US in late 2023, that is a remarkable rise.313

The best hard data comes from the first half of the year. A Momentum Works and Tabcut report found that TikTok Shop's US business grew 103% year over year to $11.8 billion in the first six months of 2026.159 The same report shows the sales mix changing. Livestreams made up 14% of US sales in 2025 but only 8.2% in the first half of 2026. Over the same period, the Shop tab, where people browse and buy without watching a stream or a creator video, grew from 36% to 51.4% of sales.1516

The main point of this article follows from those numbers. TikTok's commerce engine is starting to look more like a traditional marketplace. It still uses entertainment to find shoppers, but more and more of the buying happens on a storefront.

The forecasts disagree, but they point the same way

The forecasts vary more than the confident headlines suggest. Several sources repeat eMarketer's estimate that TikTok Shop will take about 22.8% of US social commerce in 2026, up from 18.2% in 2025.910 Estimates for the total market are less consistent. One analysis says US social commerce passed $100.99 billion in 2026, which would be 7.2% of all US e-commerce.6 A different guide puts 2026 US social commerce at about $80 billion, growing 37% a year.23

Even the growth rates are muddled. One source describes $100.99 billion as 48% growth for the whole market.2 But eMarketer's 2025 baseline is about $87.02 billion, which implies far slower growth.10 Other outlets attach the 48% figure to TikTok Shop alone.46

Global estimates are just as scattered. One figure puts TikTok Shop's worldwide GMV at $87 billion.2 Another forecast says $112.2 billion, building on an estimated $64.3 billion in 2025.7 A third says $123.5 billion, nearly double the prior year.9 One outlier claims US GMV could nearly triple to about $50 billion in 2026.8 Nothing else here supports that number, and readers should treat it skeptically.

Here is the most defensible reading. Credible trackers put TikTok Shop's US sales between the high teens and low twenties of billions of dollars this year. The platform is growing much faster than social commerce overall, and global volume is somewhere around $100 billion. All of the estimates agree on the direction, even where they disagree on size.

Live shopping is growing because sellers are streaming more

Livestream shopping is the most important case where the reports disagree. TikTok told CNBC that its US live shopping sales more than doubled in the first half of 2026. It also said live sessions grew more than 60% and total live hours grew more than 80%.11 One analysis did the math: sales growth divided by hours growth leaves only about an 11% gain in sales per live hour. In other words, most of the doubling came from more time on camera, not from streams becoming more productive.14

The Momentum Works figures look very different. They show live dollar sales rising only about 19%, from $812 million to $967 million, while live's share of the total fell.16 The two sets of numbers measure different things and periods, so they cannot be cleanly matched. Even so, the overall picture holds. Live is growing in absolute terms, but it is losing share inside TikTok to short videos and the storefront.19

Conversion figures complicate things further. Live shopping is often promoted with claims of up to 30% conversion, compared with 2–3% for regular e-commerce.423 But Jungle Scout's Q1 2026 seller survey found that TikTok Shop livestreams convert at just 1.8% to direct checkout. Amazon Live converts at 4.2% to add-to-cart, because it appears on product pages where shoppers already intend to buy.19 The 30% figures most likely describe already engaged viewers of streams that are working well. They do not reflect what happens when a stream reaches cold audiences in the For You feed.

The market estimates disagree too. eMarketer projects about $19.8 billion in US livestream sales for 2026, up roughly 35%.1611 Coresight Research uses a broader definition of purchases influenced by livestreams and gets about $68 billion.1913 A forecast attributed to McKinsey once suggested live could reach 10% to 20% of all e-commerce by now. In the US, it is closer to 1%.1512

Whatnot is winning the live-first niche

The US company that has fully committed to live selling is Whatnot, not TikTok. The Culver City startup raised a $545 million Series G in August at a $20 billion valuation, almost double its $11.5 billion valuation from the previous October.16 Whatnot says it passed $8 billion in gross merchandise volume in the first half of 2026, more than it sold in all of 2025, and it adds more than 650,000 users a week.15 The company claims about 60% of a live-commerce market it sizes above $22 billion. That is a market leader estimating its own market, so the figure deserves some caution.15

One analysis explains the difference by why people open each app. People open Whatnot to buy, while people open TikTok to watch.15 The money per hour of streaming reflects this. One estimate puts Whatnot's platform-wide average at about $560 per live hour. A founder-run TikTok stream by Beachwaver earned about $2,000 per hour. QVC's TikTok channels earned about $26,600 per hour.14 QVC now streams on TikTok more than 200 hours a week as it shifts toward digital after bankruptcy.11 That gap suggests TikTok live works best for practiced, professional TV-style sellers, not for the average merchant.

Top sellers can still make large sums. Simply Mandys founder Mandys Peña says she has passed $1 million in sales in a single TikTok session six times, and more than 90% of her customers buy through TikTok Shop.12 Stories like hers explain why sellers keep calling the platform a gold rush.1

Meta is chasing TikTok with shoppable video

Meta has responded more with shoppable video than with live streams. At Shoptalk in March, it brought back affiliate commissions. Instagram creators can now earn from products tagged in Reels, up to 30 products per Reel, with links pointing to single products in Meta's catalog.28 Meta also added in-app "buy now" checkout from ads and AI-generated product details, with Reels product links first rolling out in 22 countries.22 In June, it expanded Live Video Ads to Instagram through five US partners, including CommentSold, Firework and TalkShopLive. The format lets sellers pay to promote a livestream beyond their followers.23

Trade analyses say Instagram still treats live as an extra for big launches, with Reels tagging as its main shopping format.27 The conversion figures for that strategy depend on who you ask. One widely repeated comparison says TikTok Shop converts at 4.7%, Instagram Shopping at 2.1% and Facebook Shops at 1.8%.26 Another says 6.7% for TikTok versus 3.8% for Instagram, while giving Instagram the higher average order value, $68 compared with $52.26 The exact figures can't be trusted, but every source has the same ranking. TikTok converts impulse buys better, and Instagram wins on trust and higher prices.

What it means

The overall direction is clear even though the numbers are not. Social commerce in the US is now a major sales channel, and TikTok Shop is its main growth engine. That growth increasingly comes from the Shop tab and shoppable video, which TikTok can scale through its algorithm. Live shopping depends on hosts spending time on camera, and those hours are hard to multiply.1419

This matters for TikTok's rivals. Meta is betting on creator-tagged video and paid reach, which looks like the right bet based on TikTok's own sales mix. Whatnot has shown that live shopping can succeed in the US when buying is the reason people open the app.

The risks are real. A 12-hour TikTok Shop outage in January reportedly cost sellers 40% to 80% of a day's expected revenue.2 Counterfeit and stolen goods remain a problem on both TikTok and Whatnot.11 And by one count, 1% of TikTok Shop sellers drive 60% of its GMV.7

Social commerce is growing fast, but most of the money is going to a small group of large sellers.