Resale fashion market size: what ThredUp's 2026 numbers say and what to check

Resale fashion market size is a number that changes depending on who is counting. ThredUp's 2026 Resale Report, produced with the research firm GlobalData, projects that the global secondhand apparel market will reach $393 billion by 2030 and that the U.S. market will reach $78.8 billion in the same year. Those are forecasts from a company that sells secondhand clothes, not audited sales. This guide lays out each figure, who produced it, how it moved from last year's report, and what to check before you quote it.

The 2026 figures, one by one

ThredUp's 2026 report was covered by Retail Dive on April 3, 2026. Here is what the two sources, read together, support:

• U.S. secondhand apparel by 2030: $78.8 billion, with an average annual growth rate of about 7.3%, per Retail Dive.
• Global secondhand apparel by 2030: $393 billion. ThredUp's report page says the global market is "growing 2X faster than the overall apparel market."
• U.S. growth in 2025: the secondhand market grew nearly four times faster than the broader retail clothing market, per Retail Dive's reading of the report.
• Who drives it: Gen Z and millennials are expected to account for more than 70% of resale growth through 2030, with new shoppers making up most of the spending.
• How people find items: 46% of shoppers find resale through social feeds, creators and in-person browsing; 48% say they use AI shopping tools during the secondhand journey; 63% say they are comfortable with agentic buying.

The last three bullets are survey results, which measure what people say, not what they spent. The first two are modeled projections, which depend on assumptions we could not inspect.

ThredUp's chief executive, James Reinhart, put the thesis in one sentence in a statement quoted by Retail Dive: "Resale is no longer just growing, it's taking direct market share." Treat that as the company's pitch. It is also a claim the data can test, because share shifts show up as resale outgrowing new apparel, which is what the report says happened in 2025.

What changed from the 2025 report

The previous edition gives a useful comparison. Retail Dive's coverage of the 2025 report said the U.S. secondhand apparel market grew five times faster than the broader retail clothing market in 2024 and was projected to reach $74 billion by 2029, with an average annual growth rate of 9%. The global market was projected at $367 billion by 2029, and U.S. online resale was projected to nearly double to $40 billion, growing 13% a year.

Set side by side, three things stand out.

First, the growth multiple fell. Resale grew about five times faster than retail clothing in 2024 and nearly four times faster in 2025, according to the same publication's two stories. Still faster than retail, but a smaller gap.

Second, the forecast growth rate came down. The 2025 report assumed about 9% a year in the U.S.; the 2026 report assumes about 7.3%. The end dates differ by a year, so the dollar totals ($74 billion by 2029 versus $78.8 billion by 2030) are not a like-for-like comparison, but the slower assumed rate is.

Third, the global figure rose by $26 billion ($367 billion to $393 billion) when the forecast window moved from 2029 to 2030. That arithmetic is ours. It shows what a one-year extension adds under the model, not an observed jump in sales.

None of this means resale is slowing in absolute terms. It means the people who build the forecast now expect a more competitive market with growth coming from taking share, not just from new shoppers, which is how ThredUp's own page frames it.

A hard number from one platform: The RealReal

A projection is easier to trust next to a reported figure. The RealReal, the luxury consignment marketplace, reported second quarter results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 in a press release dated August 7, 2026. The release is a company document, so read it as the company's account, but the numbers are reported, not forecast:

• Gross merchandise value (GMV) of $617 million, up 22% from the same quarter in 2025.
• Total revenue up 17%, to $193 million.
• Trailing twelve month active buyers of 1,107,000, up 11%, and average order value of $659, up 13%.
• Adjusted EBITDA of $13.5 million, a 7.0% margin, against a GAAP net loss of $27 million.

Chief executive Rati Levesque said the company "delivered a standout second quarter, with an all-time high quarterly GMV of $617 million, up 22% year-over-year." Two cautions apply. GMV is the value of goods sold through the platform, not the company's revenue, which is why revenue is much smaller than GMV. And a luxury consignor growing 22% tells you about the high end of resale, not the whole $393 billion.

Why tariffs keep appearing in resale stories

Retail Dive's 2026 piece includes one outside data point. Wells Fargo economists, in a December report on sales at "miscellaneous store retailers," a category the report ties in part to secondhand sellers, said: "We suspect at least some of the increased traffic in this category is attributable to households seeking to blunt the impact of tariffs by buying used merchandise." The same note reported an 8.5% year over year jump in that category. It is an inference from an economist, not a measurement of resale, and it is worth citing only with that wording attached.

How to quote these numbers without getting burned

Resale figures travel badly because the definitions are rarely printed with them. Before you repeat any of them:

• Name the source and the year. "ThredUp's 2026 report, produced with GlobalData" is a citation. "The resale market is $393 billion" is not.
• Say projection or reported. The 2030 totals are forecasts. The RealReal's $617 million is a reported quarter.
• Find the definition. Whether donation and thrift, peer-to-peer sales, consignment, rental and refurbished goods are counted changes the total enormously. We could not open ThredUp's methodology section this run, so we are not telling you which of those the totals include.
• Do not add them. A platform's GMV and an industry-wide estimate overlap, and the global number is not the sum of anyone's quarterly reports.

If you want to see how an individual marketplace actually earns money from these volumes, our explainer on how StockX and GOAT work, including fees and verification walks through the mechanics, and our piece on who sells luxury fashion and how, per Bain and Altagamma places secondhand inside the wider luxury channel mix.

Our take

Use the $393 billion global and $78.8 billion U.S. figures the way you would use any trade-body forecast: as a direction, with the author named. The direction is credible, because a reported platform grew 22% in a quarter and independent coverage backs the share-shift story. The precise totals are not something to build a business case on until you have read the methodology.