How to calculate cart abandonment rate

Cart abandonment is one of the clearest signs that checkout friction is slowing down sales and you don’t need a complicated analysis to understand it. A cart is not a purchase until payment goes through, and cart abandonment rate tells you how often shoppers leave before that happens. Once you calculate it, you can see whether the biggest issue is pricing, checkout friction, or weak follow-up.

A shopper who adds something to cart has already said “maybe yes.” Cart abandonment rate tells you how often that maybe turns into nothing at all. That gap between intent and completion is where eCommerce revenue leaks, and cart abandonment rate shows you how wide the gap is. The number can help you see whether the main problem is checkout friction, unexpected costs, or weak follow-up, and compare it across devices, traffic sources, or product categories.

This guide covers the formula, the key benchmark, what counts as abandonment, and what to do with the number.

What cart abandonment rate means

Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of shoppers who add an item to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. It is the mirror image of cart conversion rate, the percentage of shoppers who do complete checkout after adding an item.

Both metrics look at the same funnel step, but they answer different questions. Conversion rate tells you how many shopping sessions turn into revenue. Abandonment rate tells you how many turn into a missed sale, and where in the checkout flow you are losing people.

Cart abandonment statistics

Cart abandonment is high enough that most ecommerce teams should treat it as a core funnel metric, not a side note. The most useful benchmarks are the ones that point to likely friction points.

Global cart abandonment is 70.22% in 2026, which means roughly seven in ten online shopping carts are left without a purchase.
48% of carts are abandoned because shipping fees and taxes appear too late in checkout, making the final total feel higher than expected.
Mobile has the highest abandonment rate at 75.5%, compared with 69.04% on desktop and 68.55% on tablet.
Traffic source matters too: social media visitors abandon at 91%, while search engine traffic abandons at 76%.

(Source: SellersCommerce)

Calculate your cart abandonment rate

Calculate your brand’s cart abandonment rate to better understand how many shopping carts result in the number of completed purchases:

Formula for abandoned cart rate

Once you have collected the data, you can calculate the cart abandonment rate using the following formula:

Cart abandonment rate = (1 – completed purchases / carts created) x 100

For example:

Your store logged 350 carts and 100 completed purchases over the same month.

100 / 350 = 0.285

1 – 0.285 = 0.71

0.71 x 100 = 71%

In this case, your cart abandonment rate is 71%. Keep the same timeframe and data source each time so the number stays comparable week to week or month to month.

What counts as an abandoned cart

Before you trust the number, confirm what your analytics tool is actually counting. Most platforms track three checkout stages:

Cart created: an item is added to the cart, even if the shopper never opens checkout.
Checkout started: the shopper enters checkout but does not finish the contact, shipping, or payment steps.
Purchase completed: payment is processed and the order is confirmed.

Cart abandonment rate usually spans everything between cart created and purchase completed.

Some tools report a separate checkout abandonment rate that only counts sessions where checkout was started. If you compare your rate to a benchmark, make sure you are measuring the same stage.

How to use the metric

A high cart abandonment rate doesn’t always mean something is broken. Sometimes it means shoppers are comparing prices, checking shipping costs, or not ready to buy yet.

Look at the metric by device, traffic source, product type, and checkout step so you can spot where the friction starts. If mobile abandonment is much higher than desktop, the issue may be page speed, form friction, or a poor mobile checkout experience. If paid social performs worse than search, those visitors may need more trust-building before they buy.

Watch for sudden changes, too. A spike after a new shipping rule, payment update, or redesign usually points to a specific problem in the checkout flow.