While much of the industry debated live shopping, you were building businesses. You went live, grew audiences, learned what sold, and turned shows into real operations. In the process, live shopping moved from experiment to a proven way to build a business. The conversation has shifted from whether it works to who is building it well, and last year made that shift clear.

In 2025, users spent an average of 95 minutes a day on Whatnot globally, more than most people spend on social media. For the first time, Whatnot ranked as the number one Shopping app in both the U.S. and the U.K., spending 144 days in the App Store’s top 20. Audiences showed up for sellers who know their categories deeply, communicate value clearly, and run consistent, compelling shows.

Some sellers launched in categories that had never been sold live before and scaled them from the ground up. One business crossed $1M in sales in their first 19 days on the platform. Another joined in April to sell Labubus and hit $5.4M by year’s end. They weren’t outliers. New categories drove some of the highest growth in sellers as they built businesses in spaces that didn't exist here a year ago. Those categories also drove our highest growth in new buyers, up 650%, as shoppers joined Whatnot for the first time to buy in entirely new spaces.

That momentum is global. New customers in the U.K. grew more than 400%. Orders in France increased 500%. Germany became one of our fastest-growing markets as new categories took hold, including fashion, where new buyers grew 650%. That kind of performance doesn’t happen by accident. It reflects a strong platform and sellers who know how to use it.

What we’re seeing is a platform where businesses win, at every size, from a first show to seven-figure operations, because sellers are building something real here.

New Categories, New Communities, New Buyers

In 2025, you tested new categories and proved demand was there. With over 35 new categories launched, you turned new opportunities into real businesses.

Food & Drink grew more than 40x, fueled by live-friendly formats like candy hauls, freeze-dried snacks, viral drinks, and global treats. Golf became a breakout, with the average buyer now spending $350 a month on gear. Wholesale launched in March and quickly hit $1.5M in weekly sales, giving small businesses new ways to scale. We also expanded internationally, launching in Australia and seeing hundreds of Australian shows cross $10k in sales.

At the same time, buyer demand surged. On Black Friday, while traditional ecommerce grew 9%, Whatnot sellers grew 185%, earning over $100M in live sales in 48 hours. New buyers grew 285% over the year, bringing a lot more demand to every category.

We focused on making sure that demand found you. Deep investments in discovery, ranking, and recommendations helped new sellers, new categories, and new show formats get seen faster. We invested ten times more in marketing and showed up in new places, including TV for the first time. As buyers joined and explored more of the app, cross-category buying grew 75%, connecting you with audiences beyond where you started.

In 2026, we're adding more than 50 new categories, including Farm to Table, where you can buy fresh food directly from the source. Think a farmer selling crates of just-picked oranges or a fisherman selling the day's catch straight off the boat. We're expanding what's possible to sell live so expertise and passion always find an audience here.

We'll also keep expanding into new countries and make our biggest marketing investment yet, so you'll see Whatnot in more places than ever. Every new category brings new buyers to the platform, and those buyers find their way to sellers across all categories.

Tools to Help You Grow

Running a business on Whatnot should get easier every year, and in 2025, we pushed that further.

We rolled out Flash Sales across the platform, letting you apply limited-time discounts to Buy It Now items during live shows. With countdown timers and flexible pricing options, Flash Sales help convert viewers while you’re live. In 2025, 12 million sales were made using Flash Sales alone.

We invested heavily in shipping and fulfillment. Shipment Scanner lets you confirm shipments in seconds and is now used by over half of all sellers. The redesigned Shipments tab makes managing a full year of order history faster and more intuitive.

These tools add up. They reduce friction, free up time, and make it easier to grow. Globally, the number of Whatnot sellers earning $10,000 or more per month more than doubled in 2025.

In 2026, we're building new ways to help you manage and grow your business, including merchant tools that let you manage inventory and fulfillment across other platforms you sell on. More on that soon.

AI That Solves Real Seller Problems

With more than five million listings created on Whatnot every day, there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes before anyone goes live. Titles, descriptions, inventory – most of it is repetitive and takes time away from selling.

In 2026, we’re building AI to help take care of the tasks that slow you down while keeping your business personal, authentic, and human. We’ll roll out smarter listing tools, expanded integrations for inventory and shipping, AI-assisted support during and after live shows, and updated policies that give you the flexibility to experiment with AI in ways that work for your business.

Bringing Small Businesses Together

Last year, you hosted more than 500,000 hours of live shows every week. We amplified that energy with on-platform events like Whatnot Card Show, the first Whatnot Coin Show, and Beyond the Cons experiences from SDCC and NYCC, helping sellers reach larger audiences through shared moments.

We showed up in person at events across the U.S., Europe, and Australia, from The National and NYCC to the PGA Show, ASD Las Vegas, Salon du Vintage, and CollectFest. This year, we’re going further. We’ll host our first Whatnot seller conference with a full day of panels, workshops, and sessions and direct access to our team.

We’ve also launched the Whatnot Meetups Hub, a place to discover, join, and host in-person seller gatherings. These events help sellers connect, share tactics, and learn from one another. More than 800 sellers have already participated. Our next event will be taking place in Las Vegas at ASD, and international expansion is coming later this year.

Earning Trust, Every Day

Trust is what makes live commerce work. Buyers need confidence in what they’re purchasing and who they’re purchasing from. You need to trust that Whatnot will keep raising the bar so your business can thrive here. In practice, this means clearer standards and trust-building tools in growing categories and high-quality support if things don’t go to plan.

As you've expanded what you sell, we've expanded how we support it. In trading cards, we tightened standards in areas like Professionally Sealed Surprise Products so buyers know what to expect. In Luxury Bags & Accessories, we launched pre-authentication with Entrupy and Real Authentication, making verification more accessible and giving buyers confidence at bid time. We invested in the people behind these efforts, more than doubling the size of our trust-focused teams in 2025.

We also built new tools for you. The Account Health dashboard puts your performance and policy status in one place: on-time shipment rate, fulfillment metrics, and any issues that need attention. It's designed to help you stay ahead, not just catch problems.

In 2026, we'll continue refining policies based on your feedback, including addressing concerns like misrepresented pricing and ensuring the right protections are in place as we expand into new categories.

Looking Ahead

Live shopping is how a growing number of people prefer to buy because of what you’ve built here. We saw nearly four times as many new buyers use Whatnot as the year before.

What started as a better way to sell Funko Pop! has become a new model for commerce built on expertise, personality, and real-time connection. Sellers here are building audiences who trust them, come back week after week, and bring their friends. That momentum is only growing.

Nearly six years ago, we started Whatnot with a clear vision. You’ve helped bring it to life, and we’re building it forward together every day. Thanks for being part of it. Let’s keep going.

Join me live on @whatnotsellers tomorrow at 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET to talk through what we’re building next. I hope to see you there.

— Grant LaFontaine

Whatnot Co-Founder & CEO

More businesses than ever are growing by going live. A Letter from our CEO.