Most "return rate statistics" pages recycle each other. This one goes only to the two primary studies published in the last twelve months, quotes their numbers as written, says who was surveyed and when, and then explains what each figure means when you hold it against your own store's rate.
Short answer: Retailers expect 19.3% of online sales to be returned in 2025, against 15.8% of all retail sales, according to the National Retail Federation and Happy Returns. Total returns are estimated at $849.9 billion. Holiday returns run at 17% of holiday sales. 9% of all returns are fraudulent. Among apparel and footwear brands surveyed by Radial and Two Boxes, 91% issue a refund or exchange before inspecting the item. Online returns are three times the volume of physical retail returns.
The headline numbers, with their sources
| Statistic | Figure | Source and basis |
|---|---|---|
| Share of all retail sales returned, 2025 | 15.8% ($849.9 billion) | NRF and Happy Returns, retailer survey, summer 2025 |
| Same figure, 2024 | 16.9% ($890 billion) | NRF and Happy Returns, prior-year comparison in the 2025 release |
| Share of online sales returned, 2025 | 19.3% | NRF and Happy Returns, 2025 |
| Share of holiday-season sales returned | 17% | NRF and Happy Returns, 2025, "consistent with previous years" |
| Share of all returns that are fraudulent | 9% | NRF and Happy Returns, 2025 |
| Estimated online return rate, retailer view | "about 30%" | Radial and Two Boxes, 200 retailers, July 2025 |
| Retailers who see returns staying flat or falling | 71% | Radial and Two Boxes, July 2025 |
| Retailers naming fraud and abuse as their biggest returns pain point | 44% | Radial and Two Boxes, July 2025 |
| Apparel and footwear retailers refunding or exchanging before inspection | 91% | Radial and Two Boxes, July 2025 |
The two studies do not agree on the online rate (19.3% versus "about 30%"), and that gap is the most useful thing on this page. The next section explains it.
Why the studies disagree, and which number is yours
NRF's 19.3% is an estimate of the share of online sales returned across all US retail, dominated in dollar terms by large merchants; its retailer sample was 358 professionals at merchants with more than $500 million in revenue. Radial's "about 30%" comes from 200 retailers surveyed in July 2025, skewed toward the apparel, footwear and consumer categories where a returns-processing 3PL sells, and it is a rate for online orders specifically.
So the honest reading is a range. A general-merchandise store selling online should expect a return rate in the high teens. An apparel or footwear brand should expect to sit well above that, often around 30%. If your rate is far outside the band for your category, the cause is usually one of the handful discussed in what is a good ecommerce return rate: sizing, product-page accuracy, damage in transit, or a policy that invites bracketing.
Consumer behaviour behind the rate
The NRF survey of 2,006 consumers who had returned an online purchase in the past year gives the behavioural side:
- Shoppers aged 18 to 30 made 7.7 returns of online purchases in the last 12 months, on average.
- 82% cite free returns as a major consideration when making a purchase, up from 76% a year earlier.
- 76% say they are more likely to choose a return option that provides an instant refund.
- About 71% say they are less likely to shop with a retailer again after a poor returns experience, up from 67% in 2024, and four out of five say they will share a negative experience with friends and family.
- Close to two-thirds admit to at least one costly returns behaviour, and just under half (45%) believe "bending the truth" is acceptable when making a return.
Two of those numbers pull in opposite directions for an operator. Free returns and instant refunds raise conversion; they also feed the 9% fraud share and the bracketing that inflates apparel rates. The way out is not a harsher policy but rules that vary by customer and by item, which is the subject of ecommerce return fraud.
What retailers say about the trend
Radial's July 2025 survey found that while nearly one-third of retailers see returns increasing, 71% perceive them as staying about the same or decreasing, which the report reads as return rates stabilising after the volatile period that began in 2020. The same survey puts fraud and abuse at the top of the pain-point list (44% of brands), and finds that 91% of apparel and footwear retailers refund or exchange before inspecting the returned item, which the report flags as the main exposure to fraud. Asked to estimate their own fraud rate as a share of returns, the largest group of respondents chose 5 to 10%, and about half of apparel and footwear brands put it at 10% or more.
Read together: the volume is no longer growing fast, but the cost per return is, and most of that cost is decided by process choices (refund timing, inspection, disposition) rather than by the rate itself.
Holiday and peak returns
NRF expects 17% of holiday sales to be returned, a figure it describes as consistent with previous years. For an operator the practical implication is timing, not rate: the returns from a November and December sales peak land in January, on top of the exchanges and the WISMO tickets from late deliveries. A returns process that works at normal volume can fail at three times that volume. The preparation checklist is in the peak season post-purchase playbook.
Turning the statistics into your own number
The averages above are useful for one thing: telling you whether your rate is a product problem, a policy problem or normal for your category. The number that decides your margin is different. It is the share of returns that end as a refund rather than an exchange or store credit, multiplied by your average order value and your cost to process a return. That figure is what the returns leak calculator computes from your own inputs.
One cleared example of what moving that share does: Switch Nails, a Nordic press-on nail brand running returns on Pango, now keeps 19% of returns as an exchange or store credit, up from zero before; 33% of customers who exchanged went on to place another order, against 20% of customers who took a refund; and one in ten exchangers spent more than they were owed. The full account is in the Switch Nails case study.
For merchants
Return rate is a lagging number. The levers that move it sit earlier in the journey: accurate delivery promises at checkout, tracking that prevents the "arrived damaged" and "arrived too late" returns, and a returns flow that offers the exchange before the refund. Pango runs those three as one system, with return and exchange rules written per merchant and per customer, so a brand can be generous to good customers and strict with serial returners without a manual queue. If you want to see where your own returns leak, the audit starts at the best returns management software.
The bottom line
Use 19.3% (online, all categories) and about 30% (online, apparel and footwear) as your bands, 17% for holiday sales, and 9% as the fraud share to plan against. Then stop watching the rate and start watching the share of returns that stay in the business as exchanges or credit, because that is the number a store can move this quarter.
