Return rates in Germany 2026: figures by industry

If you want to know whether your return rate is “normal”, most of what you find online is numbers without a source. Sometimes half of all fashion orders supposedly come back, sometimes a third, sometimes “up to 70 percent”. Which figure is right depends on who was asked, whether parcels or items were counted, and which year the survey is from.

This article collects the return rates for Germany that can actually be documented, sorted by industry. There are two main sources: the Research Group Returns Management at the University of Bamberg, which has surveyed retailers for years and extrapolates market figures from the results, and the EHI Retail Institute, which surveys online retailers in the DACH region every year on shipping and returns. For each figure, you get one sentence on what it means for a small or mid-sized Shopify store.

One caveat up front: retailer surveys mostly produce ranges (“up to 10 percent”), not averages per industry. Where only ranges exist, you get ranges here. An invented average would be more convenient, but wrong.

The overall rate: one in four parcels comes back

The most reliable market figure comes from Bamberg. According to the Research Group Returns Management (2025), almost one in four parcels shipped in German B2C e-commerce is returned, 24.1 percent to be exact. For 2024 the group estimates around 530 million return parcels, for 2025 around 550 million, a new all-time high.

The second sentence of the same release matters just as much: since the last major survey in 2022, return rates have stayed at an unchanged high level despite many prevention measures. No decline is visible.

What this means for you: if your store sits at roughly a quarter across all product categories, you are at the market average. That is not reassurance, but it is an anchor. The comparison with your own industry matters more than the comparison with the overall market.

From the customer’s perspective, by the way, the figure looks smaller: according to Bitkom Research (2023), online shoppers say they send back about one in ten purchases on average, women 12 percent, men 8 percent, 16- to 29-year-olds 13 percent. The gap to the retailer view is explained by fashion: people who order a lot of clothing return a lot, and clothing dominates return volume.

Fashion and shoes: the industry that skews everything

A little over 80 percent of returned parcels and around 90 percent of returned items fall into the fashion segment, according to the University of Bamberg (2025). In other words, the return rate “in German e-commerce” is essentially the return rate of fashion.

How high it is there is shown by the EHI surveys of the last three years:

• According to EHI (2023), the fashion and accessories segment struggles with return rates of 26 to 50 percent on average, and up to 75 percent in individual cases.
• According to EHI (2024), 65 percent of fashion retailers say more than one in four items comes back.
• According to EHI (2025), 87.7 percent of textile retailers report return rates of up to 50 percent, and for a further 12.2 percent the rate is higher still. Only 12.2 percent get by with up to 10 percent. In EHI’s words: in the textile trade, one in eight retailers gets more than half of its orders back.
• TextilWirtschaft (2025) quotes from the same EHI study: for almost one in four fashion retailers (24.5 percent) the rate is between 36 and 50 percent, for 22.4 percent it is between 11 and 20 percent.

What this means for you: a fashion store with 30 percent returns is not badly run, it is typical. The question is not whether you have returns, but whether you process them cheaply and whether your support turns them into exchanges instead of refunds. How that works is covered in the returns process step by step.

Electronics: mostly under 10 percent

In electronics, according to EHI (2025), 85.7 percent of retailers report return rates of up to 10 percent. The rest get back at most 35 percent of ordered goods. As early as 2023, EHI noted that electronics and books have significantly lower rates than fashion.

What this means for you: if you sell electronics or accessories and sit above 10 percent, it is worth looking at the reasons. In electronics the most common trigger is not taste but a defect, the wrong model, or a product description that left a question open. Those are returns that better product pages and quick pre-purchase support answers can prevent.

Furniture and home: low rate, expensive return

Furniture retailers put their return rate at up to 10 percent in around 93 percent of cases, according to EHI (2025); only very occasionally is it higher. The problem in this industry is not volume but cost: according to EHI (2023), the cost per returned item in the home and furnishing segment averages between 10 and 20 euros, compared with 5 to 10 euros across all industries.

What this means for you: with bulky goods, every single avoided return counts for more than with a T-shirt. Dimensions, colour accuracy and assembly notes on the product page are support prevention here.

Books, media, toys, groceries

For these categories the EHI releases give no percentages, only a direction: according to EHI (2025), low return rates continue to dominate in toys as well as books and media. According to EHI (2023), the rate is lowest in food and beverages.

What this means for you: if you are in one of these industries, your return rate is probably not a strategic issue. Your support load comes from delivery questions and damaged goods instead, see reducing WISMO requests.

What a return costs

The rate is one half of the calculation, the cost per return is the other.

• According to the University of Bamberg (2022), the mean transport and handling costs are 2.85 euros per returned item and 6.95 euros per return shipment. That is a mean across retailers of all sizes, and large shippers pull it down.
• In the same research group’s Return-o-Meter 2018/2019, costs were still 11.24 euros per item and 19.51 euros per shipment, transport and handling combined.
• According to EHI (2025), 53.3 percent of retailers put the cost per returned item at up to 10 euros, a further 13.9 percent at up to 20 euros. 27 percent cannot quantify their handling costs at all.
• According to EHI (2024), 18 percent of retailers estimate up to 5 euros per return, 30 percent 5 to 10 euros, 26 percent 10 to 20 euros, 4 percent up to 50 euros.
• The biggest cost driver, according to EHI (2023), is the inspection, sorting and quality control of items, named by 56 percent of retailers.

A worked example, as an assumption: a fashion store with 1,000 orders a month and a 35 percent return rate has 350 returns. At 10 euros per return that is 3,500 euros a month, before the loss in value of goods that can no longer be sold as new, and before the support time for “Has my return arrived?” and “When do I get my money?”.

What this means for you: if you belong to the 27 percent who do not know their return costs, that is the first step. Add up postage, handling time and loss in value for one month. Only then do you know whether a measure from reducing your return rate: 9 measures pays off for you.

Who pays for the return shipment

Free returns are standard in Germany, but less of a given than they used to be.

• According to the University of Bamberg (2022), returns are free at 88.7 percent of surveyed German retailers, but at only 52.4 percent elsewhere in Europe. The average return window is 53.5 days in Germany and 29.6 days in the rest of Europe.
• According to EHI (2023), 64 percent of retailers covered return shipping costs.
• TextilWirtschaft (2025) reports from the EHI study 2025: 49.2 percent of retailers cover return costs in full, 32.8 percent have a mixed model, and at 18 percent the customer pays.
• An older retailer survey by the University of Bamberg (2019) estimates that a return fee could avoid around 16.2 percent of all returns. Retailers that had introduced a fee reported a minimal drop in revenue of 1.4 percent; earnings stayed unchanged for 67 percent and improved for 33 percent.

What this means for you: “free or not” is no longer a question of belief but of arithmetic. What customers expect and how you communicate a fee without producing abandoned carts is covered in return shipping: who pays.

What retailers do about returns

• According to EHI (2023), avoiding returns is the top priority for 74 percent of retailers. 86 percent see detailed product information as the decisive measure, 43 percent secure packaging, 42 percent contact options for personal advice, 40 percent address verification.
• According to EHI (2024), 81 percent of retailers record return reasons systematically, and 67 percent derive measures from them. 55 percent process returns within three working days.
• According to EHI (2025), 34.4 percent of retailers still record their returns data manually, and only 29.5 percent capture return reasons fully automatically. 7.3 percent use AI in returns management. A good 80 percent expect no improvement in return volumes over the next three years, and 17 percent expect a further increase.
• The University of Bamberg (2019) estimates the maximum savings potential of measures against size-related returns at 25 percent of all returns in the overall market.

Two things stand out. First: “contact options for personal advice” ranks third among the measures retailers consider effective. Pre-purchase support is returns prevention. Second: a third of retailers still record return reasons by hand, and more than one in four does not know their costs. If you measure both, you are already ahead of the average.

This is how it works at Humane: returns run through a returns portal where the customer states the reason. Rules for deadlines, goodwill and refunds are stored and checked against every reply, and refunds only go out after approval. The support questions around a return (“Has my parcel arrived?”, “When will I be refunded?”) are answered by the agent with the actual status from Shopify. What it cannot do is lower the return rate itself. That happens on the product page and in the size chart, not in the inbox.

A look at the US

For comparison: according to NRF and Happy Returns (2025), US retailers expect a return rate of 15.8 percent of sales across all channels for 2025, and 19.3 percent online. 82 percent of US shoppers name free returns as a major purchase consideration, and 9 percent of all returns are estimated to be fraudulent. The counting method (share of sales rather than share of parcels) is different, but the direction is the same: with 24 percent of parcels, Germany is near the top internationally, and fashion is the reason.

In short

• Across all industries, about one in four parcels in Germany comes back (24.1 percent), and the rate has not fallen since 2022.
• Fashion dominates: over 80 percent of return parcels, retailer rates mostly between 11 and 50 percent, and above 50 percent for one in eight textile retailers.
• Electronics and furniture are below 10 percent for most retailers, but furniture returns cost more per item.
• Books, media, toys and groceries have consistently low rates.
• For the majority of retailers, costs per return are up to 10 euros per item; 27 percent do not know their costs.
• Free return shipping is still standard, but only about half of retailers now cover the costs in full.

Which reasons sit behind the returns and how those reasons differ by industry is covered in return reasons 2026.

If your support still answers return follow-ups by hand today: try it free for 14 days, no credit card, with a returns portal and refund approval from day one.