The global freight forwarding market was worth about €208 billion in 2025 (roughly $235 billion), according to Transport Intelligence, after growing 4.4% in real terms. Commercial research firms put 2025 at anywhere from $166 billion to $325 billion, because they define the market differently. The U.S. accounts for roughly $32 billion to $35 billion of forwarding revenue on the narrower definitions, and U.S. 3PLs booked $85.9 billion in gross international transportation management revenue in 2025.

This page pulls together the published estimates for the size of the freight forwarding market, explains why they disagree, and breaks the numbers down by mode, region, and company. Global figures are the default; U.S. data appears wherever it adds context. Data covers 2022 through 2025 actuals and forecasts out to 2035. Every figure links to its source.

Key Freight Forwarding Market StatisticsWhy Freight Forwarding Market Size Estimates Differ

Search for the size of this market and you will find numbers that differ by more than 60 times. That is not because anyone is wrong about the arithmetic. It is because "freight forwarding" has no single accepted boundary, and each firm draws its own.

Comparison of published estimates

Three choices explain most of the spread.

Scope of services. Some firms count only the forwarding service itself. Others fold in warehousing, customs brokerage, packaging, cargo insurance, and contract logistics. Fortune Business Insights, for example, explicitly includes warehousing and risk management in its definition.

Modes. Transport Intelligence focuses on international air and sea forwarding. Grand View Research counts domestic road forwarding and reports road as the largest mode at 48.5%. Mordor Intelligence puts ocean at 61.77%. Those are not small disagreements; they describe different markets.

Gross vs net revenue. A forwarder that books a $3,000 ocean shipment may keep only a few hundred dollars after paying the carrier. Counting the $3,000 (gross revenue) produces a much bigger market than counting the margin (net revenue). Armstrong & Associates shows the gap clearly for the U.S.: $85.9 billion gross vs $30.4 billion net in international transportation management in 2025.

Which figure should you use? For a single defensible global number, use Transport Intelligence's €208.1 billion and note the currency. If you need dollars and a long-range forecast, GM Insights (166.2billion)andGrandViewResearch(225.4 billion) bracket the mainstream view. Whatever you choose, state the source, the year, and what it includes.

Market Size History: The 2022 to 2025 Reset

The forwarding market shrank sharply after the pandemic, then started growing again in 2025. GM Insights estimates revenue fell from $202.7 billion in 2022 to $162.4 billion in 2024, a drop of about 20%, before recovering 2.3% to $166.2 billion in 2025.

Volumes did not collapse. Rates did. During 2021 and 2022, ocean and air spot rates rose so far that forwarder revenue ballooned on the same freight. As rates normalized, revenue fell even while forwarders kept moving cargo. That is why year-over-year revenue figures from this period say more about freight pricing than about demand.

The 2025 recovery was also stronger than expected. In mid-2025, Transport Intelligence forecast a 1.1% contraction because of tariffs and trade disruption. Its June 2026 data showed 4.4% real growth instead, helped by pre-tariff shipping, sea-to-air conversions, and Red Sea rerouting. Treat any single-year forecast in this market with caution.

Market Size by Mode

Ocean freight is the largest forwarding mode on almost every measure except Grand View's road-heavy definition. GM Insights sizes 2025 as follows:

Source: GM Insights. Road and rail share is derived as the remainder.

The underlying cargo kept growing in 2025. Transport Intelligence reports sea forwarding grew 4.6% and air forwarding 4.1% in real terms. IATA recorded record air cargo volumes, with demand up 3.4%, and noted a shift in air flows from Asia to North America toward Asia to Europe after the U.S. removed the de minimis exemption.

Market Size by Region

Asia-Pacific is the largest regional market, followed by Europe and North America. The only full public regional split comes from GM Insights:

Source: GM Insights. China alone accounts for an estimated $41.4 billion. Grand View Research, using its own definition, puts Asia-Pacific lower at 31.9%.

The U.S. freight forwarding market

The U.S. is the largest single-country market outside China. Estimates for 2025 range from $31.9 billion (GM Insights) to $35.1 billion (Grand View Research, which puts the U.S. at 15.6% of the global market and forecasts $48.8 billion by 2033).

Armstrong & Associates offers a different lens. It tracks what U.S. third-party logistics providers earn from international transportation management, which is essentially air and ocean forwarding. That segment reached $85.9 billion in gross revenue in 2025, up 7.7%, with net revenue up 11.0% to $30.4 billion. Evan Armstrong credited tariff volatility, which pushed more compliance and customs work to forwarders and brokers. Armstrong forecasts slower ITM growth of 4.1% in 2026.

For U.S. readers, the practical takeaway is that the $30 billion to $35 billion range is the best estimate of what U.S. forwarding actually keeps as revenue, while the $86 billion figure reflects the freight dollars flowing through forwarders.

Who Holds the Market: Largest Freight Forwarders

The market is moderately concentrated. GM Insights estimates the top five forwarders held 52.9% of global revenue in 2025, with DSV leading at 15.9% after closing its acquisition of DB Schenker.

Armstrong & Associates' 2026 Top 25 Global Freight Forwarders list ranks Kuehne+Nagel and DSV tied for first, followed by DHL, Sinotrans, Nippon Express, and CEVA Logistics. In air freight, Kuehne+Nagel handled 2,030,280 metric tons in 2025, only about 17,000 tons ahead of DSV.

The long tail still matters. Roughly half of global revenue sits outside the top five, spread across regional forwarders, NVOCCs, customs brokers, and digital-first platforms.

Key Trends Behind the Numbers

1. Growth now comes from volume and service, not rates. Between 2022 and 2024, revenue fell about 20% as pandemic pricing unwound. Transport Intelligence describes the new phase as one where the easy revenue from inflated rates has gone, and growth depends on efficiency, technology, and retention. For forwarders, margin per shipment matters more than headline revenue.

2. Consolidation at the top. DSV's purchase of DB Schenker in 2025 made it the largest forwarder by several measures. It followed DSV's earlier acquisitions of UTi Worldwide (2016), Panalpina (2019), and Agility's logistics business (2021), according to Armstrong & Associates. Large-shipper tenders are concentrating among a few global networks.

3. The giants are chasing small shippers. Kuehne+Nagel reported that small and mid-sized customers accounted for half of its sea freight volumes for the first time in 2025. GM Insights projects SME forwarding revenue to grow 5.9% a year, faster than the 4.8% for large enterprises. This is the customer base most independent forwarders depend on.

4. Tariffs and compliance became revenue. Armstrong & Associates tied U.S. ITM growth in 2025 directly to tariff volatility and the extra customs and compliance work it created. The end of the U.S. de minimis exemption also reshaped air freight lanes, according to IATA.

5. Digital forwarding is growing from a small base. Mordor Intelligence estimates traditional asset-light forwarders still hold 81.35% of revenue, but digital-first platforms are growing at 17.84% a year. In a GM Insights survey of 280 forwarding and logistics managers, 67% had deployed or were piloting AI-assisted TMS or rate tools in early 2025, up from about 31% in 2023.

6. Trade lanes are shifting. Transport Intelligence points to manufacturing moving from China toward Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. GM Insights calls Mexico the most strategically important Latin American market because of nearshoring on USMCA lanes. New lanes mean new partners, new documentation, and new rate structures for forwarders to manage.

Forecasts to 2030 and Beyond

All figures in this section are published forecasts, not actuals.

The specialist forecast (Ti) is less than half the growth rate of the commercial forecasts. Ti also expects sea forwarding to grow faster than air, at 2.9% vs 1.6% a year. For planning purposes, a low single-digit growth assumption is the safer base case.

What This Means for Small and Mid-Sized Freight Forwarders

If you run a forwarding business with a few dozen people, the headline market size matters less than three things the data says about your competitive position.

Revenue growth will not bail out thin margins. With specialist forecasts in the 2% to 4% range, most growth will have to come from winning share or doing more per shipment. Tracking gross profit per file, not just revenue, is the metric that tells you whether you are gaining ground.

Your customers are now someone else's target. When the world's largest forwarder says SMEs are half its ocean volume, it is telling you where it plans to grow. Independent forwarders keep those accounts through speed of quoting, responsiveness on exceptions, and specialist lane or commodity knowledge.

Compliance is a product. Tariff changes, the end of de minimis, and customs complexity pushed more value toward forwarders who can handle documentation and filing accurately. Treat customs and compliance capability as something you sell, not overhead.

CargoEZ Perspective

Most of the pressure in these numbers lands on operations: quoting faster when rates move, keeping shipment files accurate across more lanes, and giving customers visibility without adding headcount. That is the work freight forwarding software is supposed to take off a forwarder's plate. CargoEZ builds freight forwarding software for small and mid-sized forwarders, covering operations, rate management, customs filing, CRM, and finance in one system. If you are benchmarking your business against the trends above, our freight data and analytics tools are a practical place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the freight forwarding market? Transport Intelligence valued the global freight forwarding market at €208.1 billion (about $235 billion) in 2025. Commercial research firms estimate between $166 billion and $325 billion for the same year, depending on what they include.

How fast is the freight forwarding market growing? It grew 4.4% in real terms in 2025, according to Transport Intelligence, which forecasts 2.3% average annual growth to 2030. Commercial forecasts range from 5.2% to 6.0% a year.

How big is the U.S. freight forwarding market? Estimates for 2025 range from $31.9 billion to $35.1 billion. Armstrong & Associates reports $85.9 billion in U.S. 3PL gross revenue from international transportation management, which includes freight costs passed through to carriers.

Who is the largest freight forwarder in the world? Kuehne+Nagel and DSV share the top spot in Armstrong & Associates' 2026 ranking. DSV is the larger company by revenue after acquiring DB Schenker; Kuehne+Nagel leads on sea and air volumes.

Why do freight forwarding market size estimates vary so much? Publishers use different definitions. Some count only forwarding services, others add warehousing and customs brokerage, and some use gross revenue that includes freight paid to carriers.

Methodology and Sources

This page aggregates published data; CargoEZ did not conduct original market research for it.

How sources were selected. We prioritized specialist logistics research (Transport Intelligence, Armstrong & Associates), industry bodies (IATA), and company filings (DSV, Kuehne+Nagel). Commercial market research estimates are included for comparison and clearly labeled.

How conflicting figures were handled. We did not average estimates or pick the largest. We show each figure with its publisher, base year, and scope, and explain why they differ.

Currency. Original currencies are kept. Dollar equivalents for euro, Swiss franc, and Danish krone figures use approximate 2025 average exchange rates and are labeled "about" or "roughly."

Forecasts. Every forecast is labeled as a forecast and attributed. We make no forecasts of our own.

Update schedule. We review this page quarterly and fully refresh it each June, after Transport Intelligence and Armstrong & Associates publish annual data.

Sources: Transport Intelligence 2025 market data · Transport Intelligence 2025 outlook · Armstrong & Associates U.S. 3PL market · Armstrong & Associates Top 25 Global Freight Forwarders · Armstrong & Associates air forwarder ranking · IATA 2025 air cargo data · DSV 2025 annual report · Kuehne+Nagel FY 2025 results · GM Insights · Grand View Research · Grand View Research U.S. outlook · Fortune Business Insights · Mordor Intelligence · Straits Research · Market Data Forecast · Data Bridge Market Research