Shoppers spend about $6.6 billion a year on plant-based meat
Shoppers around the world spent an estimated $6.6 billion on plant-based meat and seafood in 2025: burgers, sausages, nuggets, mince and fish alternatives, bought in shops1. For every dollar of it, they spent more than three on plant-based milk, yogurt, ice cream and cheese2.
The figure is an estimate. It comes from Euromonitor, a market research company, and is published by the Good Food Institute, a group that promotes plant-based food1. We found no government or research body that publishes a global figure, and Euromonitor’s model is not public. It counts only shop sales, not restaurants, and it leaves out tofu and tempeh (a fermented soybean cake)1. It is revised every year, too: the same company’s figure for 2023 moved from $6.4 billion to $5.9 billion between editions1. Treat it as the best available estimate, not a measurement.
That's how much more shoppers spend on plant-based dairy than on plant-based meat
Europe buys more than half the world’s plant-based meat
Europe is the biggest market by far: an estimated $3.6 billion of the $6.6 billion in 2025. North America follows with $1.9 billion, then Latin America with about $505 million, Asia-Pacific $357 million, and the Middle East and Africa $261 million1. Europe and North America together account for about 83% of sales1.
Part of the reason, by our reading, is what is counted. Tofu and tempeh are left out of the category1, so the figure measures Western-style meat substitutes, not how much plant protein people eat, which likely understates Asia most.
Plant-based meat sales are rising worldwide and falling in the US
On the global estimate, sales grew from about $2.2 billion in 2015 to $6.6 billion in 2025, roughly tripling before inflation1. Most of that growth came early. Sales jumped from $3.6 billion in 2019 to $5.8 billion in 2021, then sat almost still for three years, at $5.8, $5.9 and $6.1 billion1. 2025 brought the first real rise since: about 8%, or 4% after inflation, with 3% more sold by weight, mainly in Europe2.
The United States went the other way, and the two sources disagree on how big its market is. Euromonitor’s estimate puts the US at about 28% of world sales, which would be roughly $1.85 billion, by our arithmetic1. Scanner data from US checkouts count $1.04 billion3. The two watch different sets of shops, price products differently (Euromonitor includes sales tax) and draw the category’s edges differently, and in 2025 they even disagreed on direction: the global estimate rose while US scanner sales fell.
Why US sales are falling, and whether plant-based meat is replacing meat at all, is the subject of our article Is plant-based meat replacing meat?.
US shoppers spend about $1 billion a year on plant-based meat
On the scanner data, US shoppers spent $1.26 billion on plant-based meat and seafood in 2023, $1.17 billion in 2024 and $1.04 billion in 2025. In 2025 alone, dollar sales fell 10% and the number of packs sold fell 11%3.
Restaurants add more. US food distributors sold about $291 million of plant-based proteins to restaurants and caterers in 2025, on a data panel that sees about 48% of all US foodservice sales3.
$6.6 billion is money spent, not meat replaced
On its own, $6.6 billion says nothing about how much meat people did not eat. The world produced about 371 million tonnes of meat in 20244, and where plant-based meat’s effect on meat buying has been measured, in US shopping records, buyers kept buying meat5, as our article sets out.
Where plant-based meat spending is heading
If sales kept the 2021 to 2025 pace of about 3.3% a year, a rough projection rather than a forecast, this year’s total would be nearer $6.8 billion. The next global estimate is due in spring 2027.
Which way it goes depends on whether Europe’s growth keeps outweighing America’s decline. Either way, a bigger number would mean more money spent on plant-based meat, not, by itself, less meat eaten.
