- The UK and Germany are the deep markets: 860 to 930 drinks listings each in our scan, against 205 in France.
- Spain is the cheapest shelf (median €16.95).
- Germany has twice as many sellers per listing as the UK. France has the fewest, and the highest share of listings with five or more images.
- Of the UK brands we checked for mainland presence, most have no listing at all in Spain, Italy or France.
| Market | Listings in scan | Brands | Median price | Middle half of prices | Sellers per listing | Out of stock, last 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 863 | 415 | £20.25 | £13.00 to £29.00 | 5.4 | 4.7% |
| Germany | 925 | 483 | €20.99 | €13.85 to €29.94 | 10 | 7.4% |
| France | 205 | 114 | €22.45 | €15.50 to €34.02 | 3.5 | 5.6% |
| Italy | 576 | 284 | €21.30 | €12.90 to €30.60 | 7.2 | 7.2% |
| Spain | 562 | 226 | €16.95 | €11.23 to €27.36 | 5.1 | 6% |
Price: the same bottle, five price points
Median prices cluster between €17 and €22.50, with Spain lowest and France highest. The shape of the shelf differs more than the medians suggest. The UK and Germany both have a heavy £10 to £30 core, Italy skews cheaper with a long tail, and France is thinner at every price. For a brand that prices at £25 in the UK, the equivalent position in Spain is a premium product; in France it is mid-shelf.
- UK
- Germany
- Italy
- Spain
- France
Competition: who you are up against
Germany is the crowded one. An average listing there has ten sellers, double the UK and three times France. That matters because every extra seller is a chance to lose the buy box to someone discounting your product. If you sell through a third-party route, the mainland gives you more room; if you sell as first-party stock, the UK is the cleanest shelf.
Availability and presentation
Out-of-stock time is lowest in the UK (4.7% of the last 90 days on average) and highest in Germany and Italy (over 7%). Stock-outs cost rank as well as sales, so the mainland markets reward brands that can replenish from a hub rather than ship each order from the UK. Presentation is similar everywhere: about two thirds of listings carry five or more images, with France highest at 73%.
| Market | Average out-of-stock, last 90 days | Listings with 5+ images | Average rating | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 4.7% | 69.1% | not captured | not captured |
| Germany | 7.4% | 67.8% | not captured | not captured |
| France | 5.6% | 73.2% | 4.00 | 198 |
| Italy | 7.2% | 69.8% | 4.43 | 746 |
| Spain | 6% | 64.6% | 4.44 | 510 |
Where UK brands actually are on the mainland
We also run the brands we work with and watch through the same scans on the mainland. Of 56 brands checked in Spain, 50 in Italy and 38 in France, the median estimated monthly revenue in each market is zero: most UK drinks brands have no listing there at all. The ones that do are small. The 75th percentile is about €11,608 a month in Spain and €14,039 in Italy, and the top decile sits near €28,000. That is the gap the Netherlands hub route is built to close: one stock pool, in-country bond, duty paid locally, listed on each market from the same portal.
Breadth: listings per brand
How many listings the average brand runs tells you how a market is sold. In Germany and the UK a brand carries about two listings each (1.9 and 2.1), typically a 70cl and a litre or a flavour extension; in Spain it is 2.5, the widest ranges of the five, often because the same bottle appears in several pack sizes. France is the thinnest shelf on every measure: fewest listings, fewest brands, fewest sellers.
Where the volume sits in each market
Units follow a tighter band than listings do. In every market the £10 to £30 (or €10 to €30) bands take the overwhelming majority of estimated units, and nothing above £50 moves in volume. The UK core is the heaviest: the £10 to £30 bands account for roughly three quarters of all units in the scan.
| Market | Under 10 | 10 to 30 | 30 to 50 | Over 50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 12% | 73% | 13% | 2% |
| Germany | 9% | 64% | 21% | 6% |
| Italy | 15% | 63% | 20% | 2% |
| Spain | 24% | 66% | 9% | 2% |
| France | 5% | 65% | 28% | 2% |
Duty: what the bottle carries in each market
Excise is the other variable. For a 70cl spirit at 40%, the duty per bottle in 2026 is roughly £9.52 in the UK, €5.41 in France, €3.65 in Germany, €2.90 in Italy and €2.68 in Spain, before VAT. Our 2026 duty calculator runs the exact numbers for any product, ABV and size in all five markets.
How we gathered this
Shelfdrop Intelligence combines three feeds: a weekly scan of the drinks listings our brand finder tracks on each marketplace (sales rank, estimated monthly units, buy box holder, offer count, stock history), category leaderboards and weekly search volumes, and our own price-tracking of the listings we sell against, which has logged more than 420,000 offers since April 2026. Monthly unit figures are estimates and rounded. We never publish a client's own numbers. Figures are for the listings in our scans, not the whole category, so treat them as a large sample rather than a census.