British consumers spend more on beauty online than anyone else in Europe, and by a wide margin. The average Briton spend 224 euros on online beauty purchases per year, according to Nielsen’s European Digital Purchase e-commerce panel, dated end of April 2026 and published in their Beauty E-Commerce 2026 webinar. That is 82 euros ahead of Switzerland in second place, and more than double what Spanish consumers spend.
The UK figure comes from frequency, not basket size. British shoppers buy online 9.9 times a year on average, more than double the rate of every other country in the panel, while their average basket sits at 22.5 euros, one of the smallest on the list. Compare that to Switzerland, where shoppers buy less than four times a year but spend nearly 36 euros per order. Buying beauty products online has really became an habit for Britons with more than 50% of beauty purchases happening online in the country.
One of the forces behind it is notably TikTok. The UK was TikTok’s first Western market, launching in September 2021, right after Indonesia became the platform’s global debut market. Spain did not get TikTok Shop until the end of 2024, and Germany, France and Italy waited until spring 2025. According to Charm.io, TikTok Shop generated 523 million dollars in UK sales in 2025. Spain, Italy, Germany and France combined did not reach a fifth of that, at 108 million dollars.
By contrast Spain tells the opposite story of the UK. It sits at the bottom of the ranking, but Spanish consumers are among the highest per-capita beauty spenders in Europe when offline purchases are included. The Spanish market is not undersized but under-digitalized.
In Britain the online channel has become the default channel. Spain trails in terms of online beauty spending not because beauty matters less for Spanish consumers, but because the money is still walking into stores.