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Who Is Amazon’s Biggest Competitor in 2026? Walmart Leads Retail, but the Answer Depends on the Business

Walmart is Amazon's clearest broad retail challenger, but Amazon's rivals change by business. Here are the named competitors, the reported figures and what they can and cannot show.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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Walmart is Amazon’s clearest broad retail challenger. That answer holds for shopping and retail, but not for every part of Amazon. The company runs cloud, advertising, logistics, devices and other businesses, and each has different rivals. Amazon’s 2025 revenue was $717 billion, up 12% from $638 billion in 2024, and most of that scale sits outside the retail business that Walmart competes with directly.

If you compare Amazon with other companies as an investor or a shopper, the choice of rival changes which numbers are comparable. This article explains who the named competitors are, where each one applies, and which comparisons the public figures can and cannot support.

Why “biggest competitor” depends on the business

Amazon’s FY2025 Form 10-K says the company faces competition across numerous industries and geographies. A single rival cannot cover all of that. The table below maps the main Amazon business areas cited in the evidence to the named rivals, where those rivals are stated.

Amazon business area Scale reported in the cited sources Named rivals in the cited sources
Retail (online shopping and fulfillment) Andy Jassy’s 2025 shareholder letter describes retail as approaching $600 billion in topline. This is management’s rounded characterization, not a separately audited segment figure. Walmart, Target, Costco and Kroger, named by Jeff Bezos in his statement to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee
Services that help traditional retailers sell and deliver online Not stated Shopify and Instacart, named by Jeff Bezos in the same statement
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jassy’s 2025 letter states a $142 billion revenue run rate. Amazon’s Q1 2026 earnings release reports AWS revenue grew 28% year over year in that quarter. Not stated in the cited sources
Advertising Amazon’s Q1 2026 earnings release reports advertising revenue above a $70 billion trailing-twelve-month run rate. Not stated in the cited sources

The rows show why one answer cannot fit all of them. A cloud customer comparing providers is not choosing between Amazon and Walmart, and an advertiser comparing ad platforms is not choosing a store.

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Walmart as the clearest retail challenger

Bezos named Walmart first among the established retail competitors in his statement to the House Judiciary Committee, alongside Target, Costco and Kroger. That is a statement by Amazon’s founder, not an independent ranking. It is still the most direct named retail comparison in the cited material, and it matches the business most shoppers think of when they ask this question.

Walmart’s annual figures cover its fiscal year ended January 31, 2026. Amazon’s FY2025 reporting covers the calendar year ended December 31, 2025. The two periods do not line up, so Walmart’s revenue cannot be set directly against Amazon’s total or its retail business without adjusting for the timing gap.

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Target, Costco and Kroger

These three appear in the same statement as Walmart. The cited material does not rank them against Walmart or against each other, so treat them as direct retail peers rather than as a second-place finish.

Shopify and Instacart

Bezos named these two in the context of services that help traditionally physical retailers open online stores and deliver orders to customers. They compete with Amazon less for the shopper’s attention and more for the seller’s business, which makes them relevant to Amazon’s retail and logistics services rather than to its storefront alone.

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Why revenue comparisons can mislead

Headline numbers from Amazon and its rivals often describe different things. Before comparing any two figures, check these points:

  • Fiscal period. Walmart’s filing covers the year ended January 31, 2026. Amazon’s FY2025 figures cover the year ended December 31, 2025.
  • Scope. Amazon’s $717 billion total includes AWS and other businesses. It is not a retail-only figure, and Walmart’s total is not a measure of e-commerce alone.
  • Period length. The AWS growth rate of 28% is for Amazon’s first quarter of 2026. It is not a full-year rate.
  • Source type. The “approaching $600 billion” retail figure is management’s rounded characterization in a shareholder letter. The statement that 85% of global IT spend remains on-premises is management’s broad market estimate, not an independently verified market-share statistic.

Judging rivalry by Amazon’s own retail criteria

Amazon’s FY2025 Form 10-K gives its own view of what drives competition in retail: “We believe that the principal competitive factors in our retail businesses include selection, price, and convenience, including fast and reliable fulfillment.” This is Amazon’s description of its criteria, not an outside verdict on which retailer wins on them. Use it as a checklist when comparing Amazon with Walmart or any other retailer:

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  • Selection: the breadth of products on offer, including third-party sellers. Compare the range a shopper can actually buy, not only the number of items listed.
  • Price: everyday prices and how easily a shopper can compare offers across sellers and retailers.
  • Convenience: delivery speed and reliability, store pickup options and how far a retailer’s fulfillment network reaches. Reliability matters as much as speed.

Scoring each criterion requires current, comparable price and delivery data for each retailer. The cited sources do not provide that comparison, so any conclusion about which retailer leads on selection, price or convenience would go beyond the evidence.

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What the evidence does not settle

No current, independently measured comparison of U.S. online product-sales share between Amazon and Walmart appears in the sources cited here. Because of that gap, this article does not name a market-share leader, and any claim that one company has a larger U.S. e-commerce share in 2026 would be unsupported.

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The figures here are the most recent company-reported numbers available in the cited material, and they change each reporting period. Check Amazon’s latest quarterly release and Walmart’s most recent annual filing before relying on any of them for a decision.

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