- The typical drinks listing on the UK's biggest marketplace sells at £20.25. Half of all listings sit between £13.00 and £29.00.
- Amazon itself holds the buy box on 72% of this week's bestselling drinks listings. A brand that isn't supplied as first-party stock is competing for the remaining slice.
- Whisky and gin are the biggest spirits categories by units; tequila is small but has more sellers fighting over each listing than any other.
- Search for "rum" and "whisky" rose by roughly half between late June and mid September, with a dip in the first week of August across every term.
What a listing sells for
Across the 863 UK listings in our latest weekly scan, covering 415 brands, the median price is £20.25. A quarter of listings sell below £13.00 and a quarter above £29.00. Volume is even more concentrated than the listings are: the £10 to £30 bands account for the bulk of units, and almost nothing moves above £60.
The categories, side by side
Whisky is the largest spirits category in our scan by units and carries the highest median price among the big four. Gin is second by volume. Tequila is the smallest category and the most crowded per listing, with ten sellers on an average listing.
| Category | Listings | Est. monthly units | Median price | Sellers per listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whisky | 126 | 145,800 | £28.09 | 7.7 |
| Beer and cider | 131 | 139,900 | £13.70 | 2.2 |
| Gin | 81 | 83,200 | £22.00 | 6.6 |
| Wine and sparkling | 116 | 64,400 | £12.41 | 3 |
| Rum | 72 | 62,100 | £23.26 | 6.1 |
| Vodka | 53 | 61,200 | £20.95 | 6 |
| Bourbon and American whiskey | 43 | 59,600 | £25.00 | 9.4 |
| Liqueurs | 76 | 51,700 | £17.00 | 6.7 |
| Cognac and brandy | 24 | 19,300 | £29.38 | 7 |
| Tequila and mezcal | 21 | 11,900 | £25.50 | 10.1 |
How concentrated each category is
Our category leaderboards for the top 50 listings in each category show how much room there is for a new brand. Whisky is the most open: 30 brands share the top 50, the three biggest hold only a third of revenue, and the Herfindahl index (a standard concentration measure, where under 1,500 is unconcentrated) is 655. Vodka is the opposite, with the top three brands taking 70% of leaderboard revenue. Tequila sits in between and has the highest share of young listings, which is what a category looks like while it is still being decided.
| Category (top 50) | Brands | Top 3 share | HHI | Median price | New or young listings | Avg rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whisky | 30 | 34.1% | 655 | £35.63 | 6 of 50 | 4.78 |
| Vodka | 23 | 69.6% | 1,924 | £23.00 | 14 of 50 | 4.64 |
| Rum | 18 | 54.1% | 1,289 | £28.99 | 10 of 50 | 4.66 |
| Bourbon | 22 | 62.6% | 1,889 | £27.90 | 8 of 50 | 4.65 |
| Tequila and mezcal | 21 | 38.8% | 912 | £30.00 | 9 of 50 | 4.65 |
What drinkers are searching for
We track weekly search volume for the terms that matter to the brands we sell. Over twelve weeks from late June, searches for "whisky" rose from 17,971 to 25,607 a week, a 42% increase, and "rum" rose 48%. "Spiced rum" grew 21%. Every term dipped in the first week of August and recovered within a fortnight. Deal-related searches ("rum deals of the day") are a meaningful slice of category search, which is why promotions timed to the calendar move the numbers.
- whisky
- rum
- spiced rum
- sake
- dark rum
| Search term | Week of 28 Jun | Week of 13 Sep | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| whisky | 17,971 | 25,607 | +42% |
| rum | 11,083 | 16,389 | +48% |
| spiced rum | 4,147 | 5,026 | +21% |
| rum deals of the day | 3,342 | 2,886 | -14% |
| sake | 1,733 | 1,530 | -12% |
| dark rum | 1,508 | 1,603 | +6% |
| spiced rum deals of the day | 948 | 1,134 | +20% |
Who holds the buy box, category by category
Amazon itself holds the buy box on 72% of this week's bestsellers, but the share differs by category. Vodka, Whisky and Champagne & sparkling are almost entirely first-party; alcohol-free spirits and drinks advent calendars leave the most room for third-party sellers. The second chart shows the average number of sellers on a listing.
What number one looks like
From the weekly leaderboard: the number-one listing in each category, its price and how many sellers it has. The leaders are litre bottles of household names at £13 to £25, with one exception in tequila. A new brand is not competing with these for number one; it is competing for the slots from five to ten, where the volume is a tenth of the leader and the price a third higher.
| Category | Number one this week | Price | Sellers | Units index of #10 vs #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brandy | by Amazon Napoleon VSOP Brandy 1L · Oak-Aged French Brandy | £17.99 | 1 | 25% |
| Gin | Gordon's Gordon’s Special Dry London Gin · 37.5% vol · 1L · Award-Winning | £18.50 | 9 | 10% |
| Liqueurs | Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur · 17%, 1L | £13.00 | 11 | 2% |
| Rum | Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold · 35% vol, 1L | £18.50 | 1 | 14% |
| Tequila | Olmeca Altos Plata Tequila, 100% Blue Weber Agave, 38% ABV, 70cl | £22.50 | 6 | 10% |
| Vodka | Smirnoff No. 21 Vodka · 37.5% vol · 1L · Triple Distilled & 10 x… | £25.00 | 13 | 5% |
| Whisky | JACKDANIEL'S Jack Daniel's Gentleman Jack Tennessee Whiskey 70cl | £22.00 | 20 | 40% |
Reviews and ratings: the trust layer
Across the top-50 category leaderboards the average rating is 4.64 to 4.78 stars in every category, so a rating does not differentiate; a review count does. Whisky's top 50 carry 264,848 reviews between them, rum 212,428 and tequila only 49,194. A new tequila listing with 200 reviews is a serious contender; a new whisky with 200 reviews is invisible.
What this means for a brand
- Price for the band that moves. A 70cl at £22 to £28 sits where the volume is. Above £40 you are selling to a thin slice of the shelf and need a reason to be there.
- First-party stock is the default shelf. With Amazon holding the buy box on most bestsellers, a brand supplied as vendor stock is on the same footing as the category leaders. Third-party listings are fighting for the remainder.
- Open categories reward launches. Whisky, tequila and rum have room near the top. Vodka does not, unless you are prepared to spend on it.
- Follow search, not the calendar. The summer rum lift and the whisky build into autumn are visible weeks before they show in sales. Stock and promotions should be planned off these curves.
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.
Every brand we work with sees these numbers for its own category, updated weekly, in the Shelfdrop portal. The UK online spirits leaderboard shows who is moving this week.