Determining who the top 10 U.S. retailers are in 2025 depends on the criteria being used to compare them.
After all, retailers sell in different ways through different channels. However, looking at retailers who rank based on annual global ecommerce sales, as well as by total domestic retail sales, shows just how vital online sales are to some of the industry’s most recognizable brands.
Comparing two recent lists, which rank top retailers in the U.S. and North America overall by sales, shows which of these leaders are most dependent on physical stores and who the biggest players are in the ecommerce sphere. Digital Commerce 360, a news outlet and data company covering the ecommerce industry at large, recently released its 2025 edition of the Top 1000 Report. Similarly, the National Retail Federation, a trade association, released its list of the Top 100 retailers in the U.S. in 2025.
Both Digital Commerce 360 and the National Retail Federation use 2024 sales as the starting point in their criteria for determining the largest 10 U.S. retailers. However, Digital Commerce 360 focuses on global ecommerce sales, whereas the NRF uses total domestic retail sales. And even though the criteria vary, comparing the Top 10 retailers from both sets of rankings provides industry insights — and highlights market dominance.
The NRF’s Top 10 is part of a list of the Top 100 U.S. retailers, many of whom sell primarily offline. That list also includes gas station operators Exxon Mobil Corporation and Shell Oil Company. Digital Commerce 360’s list leads its Top 2000 Database — its ranking of North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales. That cohort includes retailers based in Canada and Mexico.
Top 10 U.S. retailers in 2025
Although all 10 retailers on each ranking list are U.S.-based, only six of them appear on both lists. None of the 10 ranks in the same position on both lists.
Four of them are Mass Merchants, meaning they sell in a variety of merchandise categories. In order of their NRF ranking:
The other two, Kroger (No. 4) and Home Depot (No. 5), sell products from specific categories (grocery and home improvement, respectively).
Consistent between both sets of rankings is that Amazon and Walmart far exceed the others in terms of both total U.S. retail sales and global ecommerce sales.
Comparing top retailer rankings
All retailers on each list — except for one — fall within the Top 50 of the other’s rankings. CVS places No. 6 based on NRF’s criteria because of its physical stores. Still, it lands just outside the largest 100 online retailers, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In fact, it’s the only Top 10 retailer on NRF’s list that doesn’t rank in Digital Commerce 360’s top 20. That indicates a relative overreliance on in-store sales, perhaps because of those from its pharmacies.
On the other hand, competitor Walgreens’s total 2024 retail sales were the next-largest after CVS. But it made about $8 billion more in web sales that year. Digital Commerce 360 data indicates that less than $1 billion of CVS 2024 sales came from ecommerce.
Meanwhile, Chewy and Wayfair — which rank at the bottom of Digital Commerce 360’s Top 10 — predominantly sell online. In doing so, they’ve managed to be the largest ecommerce retailers in their respective Top 2000 categories: Specialty and Housewares & Home Furnishings. Still, they lack the physical store presence to match their competitors in overall U.S. retail sales, based on NRF data, landing at ranks 44 and 46 of the association’s Top 100 list.
Do you rank in our databases?
Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.
Sign up
Stay on top of the latest developments in the online retail industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.
