Shoppers in China spent 1.7764 trillion yuan (about $264.4 billion) during this year's Singles Day shopping festival, according to data firm Syntun, a total that implies growth of roughly 5% from last year and a sharp slowdown from the double-digit gain recorded in 2025.

Syntun, a third-party tracker of Chinese online sales, said in a report released on Thursday, Nov. 12, that the figure covers transactions from Oct. 7 to Nov. 11 across e-commerce marketplaces, instant retail services and community group-buying. A year earlier the firm counted 1.695 trillion yuan in festival sales, up 14.2%, according to a China Daily report carried by The Star. Comparing the two totals gives an increase of about 4.8%, though Syntun did not publish a growth rate in its release, and the length of the campaign window can shift from year to year.

For investors in Hong Kong and New York, the number is one of the few broad reads on how much Chinese households were willing to spend on goods in the fourth quarter. The platforms themselves release selected milestones rather than comparable sales totals, so third-party estimates such as Syntun's are the main yardstick.

Classic e-commerce barely grows

The main slowdown came in traditional online shopping. Sales on e-commerce platforms reached 1.679 trillion yuan this year, Syntun said, compared with 1.619 trillion yuan in 2025, when the segment grew 12.3%, according to The Star. That works out to growth of about 3.7%.

Alibaba's Tmall again ranked first among the platforms, Syntun said. Last year Tmall led, followed by JD's marketplaces and ByteDance's Douyin, The Star reported, and Syntun's first-round report for this year, covering Oct. 7 to Oct. 31, put the three in the same order, according to a tally compiled by Marketing China.

That mid-campaign report put sales in the first stretch of the festival at 1.026 trillion yuan across Tmall, JD, Douyin, Pinduoduo and Kuaishou. Home appliances made up the largest share of sales at 15.7%, followed by phones and digital products at 13.9% and apparel at 13.5%, Marketing China reported.

The heavy weighting toward appliances and electronics matters for the stock story. Those are the categories most exposed to Beijing's appliance trade-in subsidies. JD, which leans most heavily on electronics and appliances, said in an Oct. 30 mid-campaign update that more than 1,700 appliance and home brands had doubled their sales and that it had sold more than 20 million AI-enabled devices such as AI PCs and smart glasses, according to Marketing China.

Instant retail keeps the growth story alive

The fastest-growing piece of the festival was instant retail, the rapid-delivery services that have become the main battleground between Alibaba, Meituan and JD. Syntun put instant retail sales at 89.1 billion yuan this year. Last year the firm counted 67 billion yuan, which was up 138.4%, The Star reported. This year's figure implies growth of about 33%.

Syntun named Taobao Instant Commerce, Meituan Instashopping and JD Instant Delivery as the main players in that segment. The data suggest shoppers are still shifting orders toward quick commerce, but at a much slower pace than during last year's surge.

Community group-buying, the discount model built by Pinduoduo's parent PDD Holdings and Meituan, contributed 8.3 billion yuan, according to Syntun. The firm also pointed to Pinduoduo's 10 billion yuan subsidy program as part of the price competition during the festival, without giving a sales figure for the platform.

Platforms leaned heavily on AI shopping assistants this year, and Syntun said AI is moving from a back-office tool for merchants into how consumers choose products. It did not quantify the effect. Marketing China reported that 60,000 merchants joined Tmall's festival for the first time and that 124 brands passed 100 million yuan in sales during Tmall's first four hours on Oct. 20, fewer than the 174 that did so in 2024, according to its compilation of platform figures. Earlier, Tmall had said a record 1 million brands were taking part.

What comes next

The festival totals now give way to harder numbers. October retail sales data from the National Bureau of Statistics will show whether the early start of Singles Day promotions, from Oct. 7, lifted official spending figures. Investors will then look to the platforms' own quarterly reports for the cost of the instant-delivery push.