17 Fabulous AliExpress Statistics to Buy For

Updated · May 20, 2023

When I got a new phone a few months ago, I had the option of purchasing a $49 official case on the spot.

Instead, I opted for one from AliExpress—for $0.02. It took three weeks to arrive, sure, but the delivery was free, so I can’t complain.

Don’t worry, though—this article isn’t an ad. It’s a collection of astounding AliExpress statistics that are sure to impress you.

After all, whether you’ve used it or not, it’s one of the largest online retail platforms in the world.

Trendy AliExpress Stats (Editor’s Choice)

  • AliExpress gets an average of 450 million visits monthly.
  • The website holds spot #73 in the global ranking.
  • A little over half of users are 18-34 years old.
  • Amazon boasts approximately five times the number of AliExpress’ visitors.
  • Alibaba started with an investment of $60,000 and a team of 18 people.
  • 60% of AliExpress referral traffic originated from YouTube.
  • AliExpress accounts for 10% of the ecommerce market activity in Russia.
  • The AliExpress app has 13.1 million reviews on the Google Play Store.
  • It also has over 600 million downloads across mobile platforms.

Basic AliExpress Information

In short, AliExpress is a Chinese competitor to Amazon on the international market.

It’s attracted a large following, as it sells goods in small quantities at what seem to be wholesale prices—that is, incredibly cheaply.

1. Alibaba started out with a $60,000 investment and a team of 18 people.

(Source: Forbes)

AliExpress’ history starts with Alibaba and a small team. Jack Ma and 18 friends of his secured a capital of $60,000 and founded the company in Hangzhou in 1999.

Today, it employs more than 100,000 people. Alibaba Group ranks #32 in the most valuable company worldwide list, with a market valuation of over $240 billion.

Fun fact: Alibaba Group reached $837 billion on October 22, 2020. This means that the tech giant has lost over half a trillion in value since the start of the pandemic.

2. AliExpress was founded in 2010.

(Source: China Plus)

By now, you’ve probably heard of Alibaba, the famous technology and retail company that Jack Ma established in 1999.

Alibaba owns several ecommerce platforms, dabbling in B2B, B2C, and C2C. AliExpress is one of the company’s two big B2C platforms, alongside Tmall. The main difference is that Tmall operates within China, whereas AliExpress caters to an international audience.

3. AliExpress entered Russia in 2012… and caused it to overhaul its postal service.

(Source: China Plus)

Just two years after its inception,  AliExpress opened a website in Russia. It was the company’s first foray into international territory.

It didn’t go well at first, but after a successful advertising campaign, AliExpress started to receive as many as 170,000 orders daily.

Alas, there were greater problems ahead.

The infrastructure and logistics of Russia Post were wholly inadequate to deal with such a big amount of orders and, therefore, deliveries could take up to three months!

Eventually—after replacing the CEO of Russian Post and implementing other measures to improve efficiency—the situation improved, and customers of AliExpress in major cities now get their items in 1-3 days.

AliExpressRevenue and Market Share

Hundreds of millions of people around the world do their online shopping on AliExpress, making it one of the largest online marketplaces. 

However, most shoppers use it to get a good deal and buy items at a low price. And expensive goods don’t sell much. So how does this translate into numbers?

Let’s take a look at some more AliExpress statistics.

4. Alibaba generated ¥34.5 billion ($5.2 billion) from international retail in 2021.

(Source: Alibaba Group Fiscal Year 2021 Annual Report)

Alibaba Group owns many subsidiaries, each engaged in a certain type of business.

AliExpress and Lazada are its leading international retail platforms. In case you haven’t heard of the latter, it’s similar to AliExpress but operates primarily within Southeast Asia.

In 2021, Alibaba made over $5 billion in revenue from these two businesses. Sounds like a lot, right?

And it is—but it’s also just 5% of Alibaba Group’s total revenue of ¥717 billion ($109 billion).

5. AliExpress takes a 5%-8% cut of sales.

(Source: AliExpress)

AliExpress sellers have to keep in mind they owe the platform a commission off the sale amount. The exact percentage depends on the product category, but it remains quite low even at its highest.

For comparison, Amazon charges a minimum fee of 8%, which can go all the way up to 45% for certain products. Additionally, it levies another $0.99 for each unit sold unless you get a professional seller plan that costs $39.99/mo.

In other words, AliExpress might be the better choice for small businesses looking to turn a profit.

6. The earphones product category on AliExpress has 720,000 followers.

(Source: AliExpress)

What are AliExpress’ top-selling products in 2022?

Earphones and headphones, followed by smartphone cases.

The former has a following of nearly 720,000 people, with individual top products reaching 30,000 reviews each. Phone cases are also doing well, boasting upwards of 50,000 orders per product.

Various accessories, such as sunglasses and makeup items, also rank high with hundreds of thousands of followers.

7. Alibaba boasts a 47.1% market share in the Chinese ecommerce space.

(Source: China Daily)

Ali-shopping is excellent no matter if you do it on Alibaba or AliExpress. But the Chinese behemoth offers much more than retail services. It’s also in the electronic payment business (through Alipay, the Chinese alternative to PayPal) and even provides cloud solutions.

All of this makes it the largest player in ecommerce in China. In 2021, Alibaba held a 47.1% share of the market, far ahead of its main competitor (JD), which had 17%.

AliExpress Goes Global

We already told you AliExpress is the international branch of Alibaba, but now, we’ll look at the details.

For instance, how many people use it?

Who are they?

How did they find out about it?

Keep reading to find out.

8. AliExpress gets an average of 450 million visits monthly.

(Source: Statista)

AliExpress is indisputably one of the most significant B2C online marketplaces in the world. It ranks among the top 10 in terms of monthly website visitors and routinely outperforms several other big names, such as Wish or Etsy.

However, it’s not #1—or #2 or even #3. Thus, we can’t really speak of an AliExpress vs Amazon war just yet.

While the Chinese platform draws respectable numbers of visitors each month, Amazon is playing a whole different game, hovering at about 2.5 billion.

9. AliExpress boasts over 150 million active users.

(Source: AliExpress)

The number of AliExpress shoppers has skyrocketed since the platform’s initial release abroad a decade ago. Today, it operates across 220 countries in 18 languages, serving over 150 million customers.

If all AliExpress users lived in the same place, their country would be the ninth most populous in the world, ranking above Mexico and Russia!

10. 60% of AliExpress referral traffic originates from YouTube.

(Source: Statista)

Picture this—you’re watching a video on YouTube, you look at the description, and it’s a whole list of links. You hear your favorite creator urging you to click on one of them and buy a product he or she is showcasing. Will you do it?

Turns out that, even if you won’t, many people will.

The latest AliExpress statistics show that 60.05% of referral traffic to the website originates from YouTube, whereas Facebook is responsible for another 20%. What about the remaining 20%?

It’s split among other platforms, but none of them gets a share higher than 4%, so you know where to do your advertising!

11. Only 4.57% of AliExpress traffic comes from referrals.

(Source: Similarweb)

YouTube referrals are a good source of traffic, sure. But how valuable are referrals as a whole?

Not that much.

According to AliExpress analytics data, just 4.57% of the website’s traffic originates from referrals, 23.60% comes from search engines, whereas 60.80% of it is direct—i.e., most users access the platform directly and not through links on third-party sites.

Fun fact: 75.57% of non-direct AliExpress traffic is organic. In other words, 24.43% of the traffic comes from paid keywords.

12. AliExpress was the fifth most visited online marketplace in 2020.

(Source: Statista)

When the pandemic struck in 2020, brick and mortar stores faced tremendous difficulties. Online marketplaces, on the other hand, prospered.

Amazon hit a record 3.7 billion monthly visits, which is 50% over its usual numbers. But AliExpress has a global presence, too, so it was similarly successful (sort of), reaching nearly 600 million monthly visits.

While these figures have subsided across the board since 2020, AliExpress remains one of the top ecommerce websites in the world. That said, Amazon, eBay, and the Japanese Rakuten still firmly hold the top three spots.

Fun fact: Amazon reportedly has over 200 million Prime members, and likely another couple of hundred million non-subscribers.

13. AliExpress hopes to control 20% of the Russian ecommerce space by 2025.

(Source: Protocol)

AliExpress is popular in Russia—so popular that it’s actually the #1 most visited online marketplace in the country, accounting for 10% of the national ecommerce market activity and expecting to double that figure within the next three years.

However, Western sanctions (following the war with Ukraine) have hit many of AliExpress’ partners in Russia, making business difficult.

For the time being, there hasn’t been a significant decrease in activity. Whether growth is possible, however, is a different matter altogether.

The Demographics of AliExpress

If you’re looking to set up shop on AliExpress, you should first think about what your target demographic is.

Then, you should consider whether AliExpress is the right choice. It’s an exceedingly versatile platform, true, but it has its quirks.

Let’s see what the platform’s user base looks like.

14. The AliExpress mobile app has over 600 million downloads.

(Source: AliExpress)

More than two-thirds of global online traffic happens on mobile devices. Naturally, many people also do their shopping through apps rather than desktop websites.

AliExpress stats show that over 600 million people have downloaded the retail service’s app, proving the prevalence of smartphones in much of the world.

Unfortunately for AliExpress, though, India recently banned a slew of Chinese apps over border disputes, citing “security concerns.” This ban includes AliExpress (though not Alibaba itself), likely costing the service at least a few million customers.

Regardless, it’s doing perfectly fine in other major markets.

15. Only 34% of AliExpress visitors are female.

(Source: Similarweb)

According to the statistics, the average AliExpress shopper is a 30-year-old male.

Typically, men seem to indulge in a little online shopping more than women do. Amazon draws 58.75% of its traffic from young men, and 65.78% of AliExpress visitors are male. The exception to the rule is Etsy, who mostly attracts women (of all ages), likely due to its focus on crafts and handmade goods.

Fun fact: Nearly a third of AliExpress users are millennials. Another 20% of them are 24 or younger.

16. 13.04% of AliExpress visits originate from Brazil.

(Source: Similarweb)

As we mentioned before, AliExpress doesn’t have a significant presence within China itself. On the contrary, it’s a service aimed at the rest of the world. 

In the United States, AliExpress boasts an audience of over 30 million people, accounting for 8.20% of total visits in March 2022. However, the service is most popular amongst Brazillians, who represent 13.04% of the site’s visitors.

In Europe, the site is particularly popular in Spain, France, and Russia, with the three countries making up nearly a fifth of AliExpress’ traffic.

17. 50% of Spanish people use AliExpress.

(Source: Statista)

AliExpress stats indicate that Spain is the company’s most lucrative region of operation in Europe, despite other countries having higher populations.

In fact, about half of the Spanish population use the Chinese retailer to buy goods. The only platform with more users is Amazon, which boasts an 80% market penetration.

At the same time, it’s important to note that the average amount a Spanish person spends on AliExpress is just €33 ($35), but they spend an average €56.1 ($60) on Amazon.

Wrap Up

It’s true that there are bigger marketplaces than AliExpress out there, but there aren’t any that are cheaper.

Whether you’re thinking about selling on AliExpress, or you’re simply interested in getting a good deal when buying, it’s worth a look. It’s a tried-and-tested service, so you needn’t worry about scams—we’ve yet to fall for any.

Just keep in mind that delivery times can be a tad slower than you might be used to.

Share:
Garan van Rensburg
Garan van Rensburg

Garan is a writer interested in how tech reshapes the environment, and how the environment reshapes tech. You'll usually find him inoculating against future shock and arguing with bots.