A new benchmark of marketplace businesses lands on an uncomfortable finding: on the same platforms, most sellers are not in healthy growth. According to the Marketplace Pulse Seller Index 2026, only 23% of sellers are thriving, meaning they are growing revenue and improving margins at the same time. The Index surveyed 181 marketplace sellers representing more than $2 billion in combined annual revenue, and it sorts them into four cohorts by how their revenue and margins are actually moving. More than three in four sellers fall outside that thriving group. For operators on Amazon and TikTok Shop, the number worth sitting with is not the 23%, it is what separates the 23% from everyone else.
We want to be precise about what this benchmark measures. It does not rank sellers by size, category or how long they have been selling. It ranks them by trajectory: whether revenue is rising, and whether margin is rising with it. That framing is the whole point, because it shows that on identical platforms, under identical fee structures and identical algorithm changes, businesses are ending up in very different places. The variable is not the platform. It is execution and margin discipline. Below we walk through each cohort figure by figure, then translate the pattern into a question you can answer about your own business this week.
The four cohorts, by the numbers
The Marketplace Pulse Seller Index splits the 181 surveyed sellers into four groups defined by the direction of two metrics at once, revenue and margin.
The Thriving cohort is 23% of sellers, defined by Marketplace Pulse as those “simultaneously growing revenue and improving margins.” This is the only group where both dials point up. It is roughly one seller in four.
The Grinding cohort is 31% of sellers. Marketplace Pulse describes them as sellers whose “revenue is up, but margins are flat or declining, putting them on a potentially unsustainable treadmill.” This is the largest single cohort, and it is the most dangerous one to be in without knowing it, because the top-line number looks like success while the economics quietly erode.
The Distressed cohort is 38% of sellers, the largest share of the survey. Marketplace Pulse defines this group as sellers where, at worst, “both revenue and margins are heading in the wrong direction,” and at best there is “no growth in sight.” Nearly four in ten sellers surveyed are stalled or shrinking.
A fourth cohort, Consolidating, completes the framework. Marketplace Pulse names it as one of the four distinct cohorts but does not publish a standalone percentage for it in the results; by arithmetic it is the small remainder once the three stated figures are counted. We flag this openly rather than assign it a number the source does not state. Directionally it describes sellers who are deliberately trimming, pruning unprofitable SKUs or channels to protect the health of the business rather than chasing top-line growth.
Put the stated figures side by side and the shape is stark. Thriving 23%, Grinding 31%, Distressed 38%. More than three in four sellers, 77% by the stated numbers, are not in the healthy-growth quadrant. That is the headline operators should carry, because it reframes a common assumption. On these platforms the default outcome is not steady, profitable growth. The default outcome is a treadmill or a slide, and thriving is the exception that has to be engineered.
Tool comparison · FastMoss vs Kalodata
Knowing which cohort you are in starts with knowing your real numbers, not your gut feel. If you sell on TikTok Shop, two tools help you see whether revenue growth is coming with margin or eating it. FastMoss leans toward broad product and shop discovery across a large catalog, useful for spotting which of your SKUs is actually moving. Kalodata leans toward deeper creator and video-level revenue analytics, useful for seeing which content drove the sale and at what effective cost. Compare both on your own products before you decide which one tells you the truth about your margins.
FTC disclosure: E-CommSphere may earn a commission if you subscribe through our links, at no extra cost to you. We only feature tools we would use ourselves, and our comparisons are editorial.
Grinding is the trap that looks like winning
Of the three cohorts with stated numbers, the Grinding group deserves the most attention, because it is the one most sellers would mistake for success. At 31% it is the largest single cohort in the Index, and its defining trait, per Marketplace Pulse, is revenue that is up while margins are flat or declining. Every external signal a grinding seller sees looks positive. Sales are climbing. Rank is holding. The dashboard is green on the metric most people watch.
The problem is the metric most people do not watch. When revenue grows and margin does not, the business is buying its growth, usually through some mix of heavier discounting, rising ad spend to defend rank, and creeping fulfillment or return costs. Marketplace Pulse calls this “a potentially unsustainable treadmill” for a reason: the faster you run, the more it costs to stay in place. A grinding seller can post a record revenue month and be closer to distress than a smaller, disciplined competitor.
This is where the Index quietly indicts a whole way of operating. If 31% of sellers are growing revenue without growing margin, then top-line growth has become the easy part and profitable growth has become the hard part. The 23% who are thriving are not simply selling more. By the survey’s own definition they are the ones who grew revenue and defended or improved margin at the same time. The gap between the two groups is not demand. It is discipline.
The operator move here is to stop reporting revenue to yourself as if it were health. Pull your last three months of gross margin per SKU alongside revenue. If revenue is up and margin per SKU is flat or down, the Index says you are grinding, whatever the top line looks like, and the treadmill is already running.
What separates the 23%: execution, not luck
The strategic reading of the Marketplace Pulse Seller Index is that cohort membership is earned, not assigned. Every seller in this survey operates on the same marketplaces, absorbs the same fee changes and rides the same algorithm. Yet 23% improved margins while growing and 38% are heading the wrong way. When the platform is a constant and the outcomes diverge this widely, the variable is what the seller does.
That is the through-line the Index draws, and it is worth stating plainly for operators who are tempted to blame the platform for their cohort. Distress at 38% is a large number, and some of it reflects genuinely hard conditions. But the same conditions produced a thriving cohort of 23% and a consolidating cohort deliberately choosing profit over size. The platform did not sort sellers into these groups. Execution and margin discipline did.
What does that discipline look like in practice, read against the cohort definition