PYMNTS Intelligence estimates Amazon took 17% of US clothing spending in 2025 (double its 2019 share) to Walmart’s 6.2%; in H1 2026 Amazon grew 14.7% while Walmart stayed flat. Apparel was supposed to be where physical retail held the line.
Amazon now sells more than twice as much clothing as Walmart — and the gap is still getting wider.
Amazon now sells more than twice as much clothing as Walmart — and the gap is still getting wider. That single fact, drawn from a new PYMNTS Intelligence analysis, upends the pre-pandemic map of American apparel retail, where the two giants were roughly matched. Six years later they are not close, and the first half of 2026 shows the divergence still accelerating.
A doubling in six years
PYMNTS Intelligence estimates Amazon captured 17.0% of US clothing spending in 2025, double its 8.5% share in 2019. Walmart moved the other way, slipping from 7.3% to 6.2%. In revenue terms the split is stark: Amazon’s estimated clothing sales rose from $38.7 billion in 2019 to $109.4 billion in 2025, while Walmart edged from $33.5 billion to $39.1 billion. Amazon sold 1.15× as much clothing as Walmart in 2019; by 2025 it was 2.8×. The figures measure each company’s clothing revenue against US clothing-category retail sales using Census Bureau data.
2026 is widening the gap, not closing it
The trend did not plateau. In the first half of 2026, Amazon’s estimated clothing revenue climbed 14.7% year over year to $55.5 billion, while Walmart was essentially flat at $19.4 billion. The quarterly picture is the same story: Amazon generated an estimated $29.8 billion in Q2 2026 clothing revenue against roughly $10.1 billion for Walmart — a $19.7 billion gap, up from $15.3 billion a year earlier.
The holidays belong to Amazon
Seasonality has become an Amazon advantage. The two largest quarterly gaps in the analysis both fell in holiday quarters — $22.5 billion in Q4 2024 and $23.9 billion in Q4 2025. And Amazon’s holiday lift now dwarfs Walmart’s: from Q3 to Q4 2025, Amazon’s clothing revenue jumped roughly 30% while Walmart’s rose 4.5%. Back in 2020, Amazon’s Q3-to-Q4 increase was 2.3× Walmart’s; by 2025 the ratio had blown out further.
What it signals
Apparel was supposed to be the category where physical retail held the line — fit, feel and the fitting room. Instead it has become a showcase for how completely convenience, selection and logistics can reshape a market once considered stubbornly offline. Walmart is not shrinking; its clothing revenue still grew. It is simply being outrun. The story here isn’t a loser so much as a winner compounding — Amazon’s apparel machine keeps widening a lead that was supposed to have a ceiling, and 2026 has yet to find it.
Written for Red Robot with AI assistance and human editing. Based on reporting by PYMNTS.
