Cart abandonment, by the numbers
The numbers behind cart abandonment, by device, industry, and season, each one traced to its source.
Seven in ten carts get left. That is the number to hold in your head before you read anything else here. Most stores sit somewhere around it, and knowing where you land against the benchmark is the difference between guessing at a fix and knowing which one to reach for first.
Below are the figures worth keeping, by device, by industry, and by season. Each one is traced to its source. None of it is ours to invent, so we have not.
The baseline: 70.19%
The average documented cart abandonment rate is 70.19%, averaged by the Baymard Institute across 49 separate studies. So for every ten shoppers who add something to a cart, roughly three check out and seven walk. That number has barely moved in years. It sits between 69 and 71 percent whichever study you read.
The month matters more than most people expect. Global abandonment peaked at 78.77% in August 2025 and bottomed out at 71.36% in December, when holiday intent is high and people finish what they start. The swing is roughly seven points across the year, driven by how much a shopper meant it when they added the item.
| Metric | Rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average cart abandonment | 70.19% | Baymard Institute, 49 studies |
| Global peak (August 2025) | 78.77% | Statista |
| Global low (December) | 71.36% | Statista |
By device: mobile is where carts die
The device split is the widest gap in the whole dataset. A phone abandons at 85.65%. A desktop at 73.07%. Same store, same prices, twelve points apart, and it comes down to a small screen and a keyboard nobody wants to use.
This is the one that should sting, because phones carry most of the traffic. If more than half your visitors arrive on mobile and they convert at a fraction of desktop, the mobile checkout is not a detail. It is the store.
| Device | Abandonment | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile | 85.65% | Barilliance |
| Tablet | 80.74% | Barilliance |
| Desktop | 73.07% | Barilliance |
By industry: the number you compare against
A single average hides how much the category matters. A cruise booking and a jar of coffee are not the same purchase, and they do not abandon at the same rate. Before you judge your own number, find your row.
| Industry | Abandonment | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cruise and ferry | 98% | SaleCycle |
| Finance | 83% | SaleCycle |
| Travel | 82% | SaleCycle |
| Fashion | 68% | SaleCycle |
| Consumer electronics | 50% | SaleCycle |
| Groceries | 50% | SaleCycle |
The pattern reads straight. The more a purchase costs and the more it gets compared, the more carts sit. Cruises top the list because the booking is long and the price is high. Groceries sit at the bottom because people came to buy, not to browse.
Why carts get left
The reasons are the useful part, because most of them are fixable. When Baymard asked shoppers who had abandoned a checkout why they left, the answers stacked up like this. A shopper can pick more than one, so the numbers add past a hundred.
| Reason given | Share | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 48% | Baymard Institute |
| Had to create an account | 26% | Baymard Institute |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 22% | Baymard Institute |
| Could not see the total cost up front | 21% | Baymard Institute |
| Delivery too slow | 18% | Baymard Institute |
| Did not trust the site with card details | 17% | Baymard Institute |
Read the top of that list again. The single biggest reason a cart gets left is a cost the shopper did not see coming. Nearly half of them. That is not a taste problem or a pricing problem. It is a timing problem: the number showed up too late, at the checkout, after they had already decided.
What it is worth to fix
The scale is large enough to be hard to picture. Statista puts the value of goods left in carts worldwide at over 4 trillion dollars a year. That is the ceiling, not the recoverable part.
The recoverable part is the number to act on. Baymard found the average large store can lift its conversion rate by 35.26% on checkout flow and design alone. Same traffic, same products, a checkout that stops leaking. For most stores that is the biggest single lever they have not pulled.
Here is one cart that did not become a statistic. The shopper stalled at the free shipping line, the most common reason on the list above. Linra answered where they stood, closed the gap, and the order went through. One recovered cart, from the example store, traced end to end.
A stalled cart became a €69.82 order
How to read your own number
Do not compare yourself to 70.19%. Compare yourself to your industry row, on the device most of your shoppers actually use, in the season you are in. A fashion store at 74% on mobile in August is doing fine. The same store at 74% on desktop in December has a checkout to fix.
The benchmark tells you where you stand. The reasons list tells you what to reach for. Start at the top of it, with the cost the shopper never saw coming, and work down.