Romania’s ecommerce market is becoming increasingly difficult to describe simply as an emerging ecommerce market. In 2021, the country’s B2C ecommerce sector was worth €6.1 billion. By 2025, it had reached €12.9 billion. That is more than double the value in four years.

According to the European E-Commerce Report 2026, Romania’s B2C ecommerce sector grew another 10% in 2025, while the report forecasts a further increase to €13.5 billion in 2026. The report is produced by the Centre for Market Insights at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences for Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce and tracks B2C ecommerce turnover, internet use and eshopper penetration across 38 European countries.

But the size of the market is not the most interesting part of the story. The gap underneath it is. 95% are online. 60% are buying online. In 2025, 95% of Romanians aged 16–74 used the internet, while 60% of the same age group bought goods or services online. That 35-percentage-point gap points to something interesting: Romania is already highly connected digitally, but ecommerce participation still has room to grow.

Across Central Europe, internet penetration stood at 93%, while eshopper penetration reached 74%. Romania therefore finds itself in an interesting position: internet adoption is already very high, while ecommerce participation still has considerable room to catch up. And it’s catching up quickly.

In 2021, only 38% of Romanians aged 16–74 bought online. By 2025, that figure had reached 60%, an increase of 22 percentage points in four years. For 2026, the European E-Commerce Report forecasts eshopper penetration of 65%. The next phase of Romanian ecommerce growth, then, may not primarily be about getting more people online. They are already there. It is about getting more of that digitally connected population comfortable buying online.

Romania is already a significant ecommerce market

We cannot overlook the scale of it. Under the European E-Commerce Report’s regional classification, Romania had the largest B2C ecommerce sector in Eastern Europe in 2025, accounting for more than half of the region’s €23.3 billion total.

But there is an important geographical distinction here. The report classifies Poland, Czechia and Hungary as Central Europe. So the largest in Eastern Europe should not be interpreted as the largest in Central and Eastern Europe.

However, looking across both regions gives us a better sense of Romania’s scale. Romania’s €12.9 billion in B2C ecommerce turnover was comparable with Czechia’s €12.1 billion and above the figures reported for Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. Poland remains considerably larger at €47.4 billion.

And there is another thing that I must underline. The €12.9 billion figure represents B2C ecommerce across both goods and services. It should therefore not be directly compared with Romanian market estimates measuring only online sales of physical products. Goods accounted for approximately 65% of Romania’s ecommerce value in 2025, while services represented the remaining 35%.

That distinction matters when comparing market-size estimates. But it does not change the direction of travel. Romania is no longer simply a small ecommerce market with future potential. It is already a sizeable digital economy with future potential still built into it.

Growth changes what customers expect

A market becoming larger does not automatically become easier to operate in. Quite the opposite, in fact. As more customers move online, expectations begin to form around the entire buying experience: how clearly products are explained, how familiar payment methods feel, how predictable delivery is, how easy returns are, and whether a brand feels trustworthy before a customer ever reaches checkout.

Romania’s ecommerce infrastructure is evolving alongside the market. The European E-Commerce Report points to the continued expansion of locker delivery, alongside growing use of digital payments, electronic wallets and Buy Now, Pay Later, while cash on delivery continues to hold an important position.

These are not simply operational details because they shape the customer journey. A customer deciding whether to buy from an unfamiliar ecommerce brand is not evaluating the product alone. They’re also evaluating the signals around it, and asking more than one question:

Can I trust this store?
Do I understand what I am buying?
Can I pay the way I expect?
When will it arrive?
What happens if something goes wrong?

For brands entering Romania, answering those questions clearly can matter just as much as localizing the website and product catalog.

What this means for brands entering Romania

Romania’s growth makes the market increasingly difficult to overlook for European ecommerce brands looking toward CEE. But a growing market should not be mistaken for an automatically easy one.

As we saw before, the gap between 95% internet penetration and 60% ecommerce participation suggests something more interesting. Brands are entering a market where consumers can be highly digitally connected while ecommerce habits, expectations and confidence are still developing. That makes localization broader than language. Payment preferences matter just as much as delivery expectations, trust signals, returns, product information and customer support.

And the promise customers encounter in an ad needs to survive the journey through the product page, checkout, delivery and post-purchase experience. The opportunity is not simply to make an existing ecommerce operation available in Romanian. It is to make the buying experience make sense in Romania.

What comes next

Going from €6.1 billion to €12.9 billion in four years is impressive. It represents an increase of approximately 111%. But the more interesting number may be the 35-percentage-point gap between internet penetration and ecommerce participation.

Romania has already built significant ecommerce scale while a substantial part of its population has yet to participate in ecommerce. And this leaves room for further growth. As that growth continues, the brands best positioned to capture it may not simply be the ones that arrive first. They will be the ones that understand what Romanian customers need to trust them, buy from them, and come back.

Source of:

 European E-Commerce Report 2026 — EuroCommerce

European E-Commerce Report 2026 — EuroCommerce
AGERPRES — Romania’s ecommerce sector reached €12.9bn in 2025

————————————————

Written by Iusti Ikert, Founder of In Between the Lines — a messaging and customer experience alignment studio for scaling product-led brands. I work with growing DTC companies to align brand promise, marketing, and operational delivery so they can scale without friction.

Connect on LinkedIn or follow on Instagram for insights on sustainable growth, messaging clarity, and customer experience alignment.