Live selling platforms help lower barriers to visibility because brands and retailers can share their products without needing prime shelf space to get attention. Customers can ask questions and decide immediately on what to purchase instead of going through static images. This is why the global live commerce market size is projected to reach roughly $2.5 trillion by 2033 at a CAGR growth of 39.9%.
If you’re building a live sales tool, it needs to blend video, chat, payments, and real-time decision making, all in one place. Studying what existing platforms do well can help shape your strategies.
In this post, we share the best live selling platforms, along with actionable takeaways for you to take with you as you build your own product.
What Are Live Selling Platforms?
Live selling platforms, also called live shopping tools, allow retailers and creators to sell products through livestreams.
These platforms:
- Broadcast on their own site or app, to existing social media platforms (like TikTok or Instagram), or on a brand’s site or app.
- Feel more personal and interactive than traditional eCommerce.
- Make shoppers feel more confident about their purchases with social proof from live product demonstrations, known influencers, and viewer chat.
9 Best Live Selling Platforms: Key Features and Takeaways
Before we dive into the nine best live selling platforms, it’s worth noting that most share a core set of capabilities.
Here are the baseline features you can expect to compete with when building your platform:
- Live Video Streaming: High-quality, low-latency live streaming that allows hosts to showcase products in real time.
- Audience Interaction: Live chat, reactions, and pinned comments that enable direct interaction between hosts and viewers.
- In-Stream Product Tagging: Clickable product cards, pinned products, or on-screen overlays that let viewers explore items without leaving the stream.
- Integrated Checkout: Seamless in-app or in-stream checkout that reduces friction and improves conversion rates.
- Inventory Management Integration: Syncing with eCommerce systems to update stock levels in real time and manage orders efficiently.
- Payment Gateway Support: Secure integration with major payment providers to support multiple payment methods.
- Analytics and Performance Tracking: Metrics like viewer count, engagement rate, watch time, conversion rate, and revenue generated per stream.
- Replay and On-Demand Viewing: Automatic recording of live sessions so users can watch and shop even after the event ends.
- Moderation Systems: Built-in moderation tools to help manage comments, remove or ban users, filter inappropriate messages, and control the overall flow of the live session.
Now that we’ve covered the core features most platforms offer, let’s explore what truly differentiates the nine best live selling platforms on the market today.
1. Amazon Live
Amazon Live is built directly into the Amazon marketplace, combining live streaming with the platform’s built-in discovery, checkout, and creator ecosystem. The experience is supported by Amazon IVS, its streaming infrastructure, which enables scalable and reliable broadcasts.
Key features:
- "Rising Star" algorithmic tiering uses a gamified level system (like Rising Star, Insider, and A-List) that rewards consistent streamers with premium placements on the Amazon Homepage, effectively giving creators free organic ad real estate.
- FAST Channel Syndication pushes high-performing brand streams onto Amazon’s free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels on Fire TV and Prime Video.
- Off-platform support for brands that want to sell on Amazon Live but lack an Amazon storefront.
Key Takeaway for Builders: Amazon Live shows established eCommerce platforms the power of embedding live commerce inside an existing marketplace where traffic, payments, and trust are already built in.
2. Bambuser
Bambuser is the platform where brands go if they want to run large live shopping events while also offering more personal, guided selling.
Key features:
- Private video consultations allow hosts to connect directly with shoppers and guide them through products and purchases in real time.
- Social selling codes with UTM tracking help brands measure how live moments on social channels drive traffic and revenue back to their store.
- Floating action widgets turn regular site visitors into live viewers by promoting ongoing or upcoming shows across key pages.
Key Takeaway for Builders: You can use the same live infrastructure for brands that want typical, high-viewer-count streams, as well as luxury brands that want to provide bespoke experiences for larger purchases.
3. Instagram Live
Instagram Live Shopping lives within the app’s Shopping tab and video feeds. It uses Meta’s AI to push livestreams specifically to users who have already interacted with a host’s shop or similar products.
Key features:
- Live rooms allow up to four participants to co-host a single shoppable stream, such as a brand, two influencers, and a customer.
- AR filters let viewers try on jewelry or eyewear in real-time while the host provides their demonstration.
- Product drops are launch events with opt-in reminders for users. When the stream goes live, viewers get a notification, and the tagged product becomes shoppable the second the host announces it.
Key Takeaway for Builders: Instagram Live’s co-hosting is a powerful way for smaller brands or creators to get a follower boost from big names with existing followings. Giving your users more chances to make it big means more engagement and in-app transactions for you.
4. Whatnot
Whatnot is a live selling solution built around real-time auctions and community energy. It blends the bidding mechanics of eBay, the always-on listings of Amazon, and the live, creator-driven culture of Twitch.
Key features:
- Sudden death is an optional setting that ends bids when the timer hits zero, preventing automatic extensions and rewarding last-second bidding.
- Buy It Now storefront listings allow sellers to generate fixed-price sales, even when they’re not live.
- Trading card and mystery box breaks add a chance-based element to live shopping. In this format, viewers buy the item and watch the host reveal it live to the whole audience before it ships.
Key Takeaway for Builders: Unlike most live commerce tools that focus on brand storefront control or infrastructure depth, Whatnot creates an exciting atmosphere centered on high-velocity resale, collectibles, and competitive buying behavior. Gamification (when done right) can really make your platform stand out.
5. CommentSold
CommentSold pioneered simulcast live selling through chat and comment-based purchasing on social platforms like Instagram. Shoppers either claim products by typing specific keywords during a livestream or by clicking product links the traditional way.
Key features:
- Automated invoicing sends checkout links to shoppers as soon as their comment claim is confirmed.
- Real-time inventory reservation locks stock instantly when a claim is made to prevent overselling.
- AI clip creation turns live sessions into short, shoppable videos for continued selling.
Key Takeaway for Builders: If you design your platform with novel purchasing options, you can bring in a new customer segment that might be bored by the traditional add-to-cart flow.
6. Skeepers
Instead of forcing brands onto another app, Skeepers is an owned-media solution that turns their existing eCommerce site into a live shopping destination.
Key features:
- An integrated ratings and reviews system connects live sessions with verified customer reviews already collected on the site, reinforcing trust during product demonstrations.
- Shoppable user-generated content modules allow brands to embed customer videos alongside livestreams as structured commerce elements.
- Community content collection tools continuously gather customer photos and videos that can be reused inside future live sessions.
What This Means for Builders: Skeepers treats live shopping as one layer inside a broader social proof infrastructure. Even if you build a self-hosted platform, you can still find ways for brands to bring their reputation with them.
7. TikTok Live Shopping
TikTok Live Shopping is designed for speed and impulse, just like the platform’s signature short-form content. Streams can last for hours, but hosts and brands must capture viewer interest in the first few seconds to prevent them from scrolling to the next video.
Key features:
- Its algorithm-driven “For You” Feed pushes livestreams to people who are already interested in similar products. Sellers can reach large, new audiences, even without an existing follower base.
- Live Flash Sale Timers let sellers run limited-time deals with built-in countdowns on screen, creating urgency and encouraging quick purchases.
- Native Live Giveaways help boost engagement by automatically selecting winners and collecting their details, removing the need to manage giveaways manually in the chat.
What This Means for Builders: TikTok’s content form and algorithm shape who wins on the platform. Consider the types of creators and brands you want to attract to your product and design systems that will bring them in.
8. Channelize
Channelize is a video commerce infrastructure tool built for brands that want to stream on their own site or app, with full production control and scalable architecture.
Key features:
- Simulcasting with purchasing on the brand’s site, introducing new audiences to brands that want the reach of platforms like Instagram without giving up ownership of their customer data.
- Pre-recorded video broadcasts allow sellers to film a live selling stream beforehand, so they’re not limited to the spaces, equipment, or formats they’d normally go live with.
- Usage-based pricing with no commission rewards brands that sell high-value goods or run large-scale events that will pay Channelize less than they would fee-based platforms.
What This Means for Builders: Channelize proves that some brands would rather pay you for the stream itself than lose a preset percentage of their revenue. You can take this a step further and offer different monetization options to attract a wider selling user base.
9. Terrific
Terrific turns live shopping into an interactive, performance-driven experience. Instead of just streaming products, it builds mechanics that guide hosts and reward viewers.
- Host Buddy AI acts as a real-time teleprompter for presenters; it listens to the stream and provides live prompts if the host forgets to mention a key product feature or a time-limited discount code.
- Secret Items unlock hidden, limited-edition products for viewers who meet certain conditions, such as staying in the stream for a set time.
- Smart Discounts let sellers preconfigure discounts that kick in only when certain conditions are met, like a certain viewer count number or purchase volume.
What This Means for Builders: Terrific is built for engagement momentum with gated rewards. Alongside Whatnot, it shows that unique ways of gamifying your platform will reward you with committed audiences and creators who can’t find your product experience anywhere else.
Build vs. Buy: Choosing the Right Live Selling Setup
As you design your live selling platform, you’re going to have to choose to build or buy many of its components. You could try to create everything in-house, but even the biggest platforms rely on prebuilt solutions for some aspects of their app.
The choice is not build vs. buy, but what to build versus what to buy.
Unless you’re already an established name in the eCommerce world, you’ll likely want to use integrations for Shopify, Magento, or similar systems. Same thing for payment processing: PayPal, Stripe, and Adyen are some of the most popular.
Similarly, the actual video component of livestreaming is something that is usually too expensive and difficult for most teams to engineer in-house. APIs and SDKs are a faster and cheaper choice for most teams because the vendor provides the low-latency infrastructure and many of the core features, so developers are free to build the unique livestream features that define the platform.
Moderation is more of an open-ended choice, especially for established platforms with their own dedicated teams or small-scale marketplaces that serve low-count, higher-end clientele. Moderation APIs or outsourcing are viable options for most other cases.
These are the components that are generally worth building in-house:
- Marketplace logic
- Discovery algorithms
- Seller tooling
- Incentive systems
Frequently Asked Questions
How Does Live Selling Work?
Live selling blends real-time video with online shopping. A host showcases products in a live stream, answers viewer questions, and offers clickable buy options within the video. This shortens the typical shopping journey, from discovery to purchase, into one interactive session.
What Is the Best Platform for Online Selling?
There’s no universal winner because each platform is uniquely built for its target audience. For traditional eCommerce, established giants like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay tend to dominate in the U.S. For live selling, TikTok Live Shop, Instagram Live, Amazon Live, Whatnot, and CommentSold are some of the most popular.
What Are the Disadvantages of Live Selling?
Live selling relies on a host’s charisma and stable technology. If the presenter lacks energy or the stream glitches, conversions drop quickly. High-traffic moments can also trigger inventory errors without real-time backend sync.
What Is the Most Used Livestreaming Platform?
Globally, Taobao (via its livestream app Diantao), is the most used livestreaming platform for live commerce, with around 900 million monthly users.
What Is the Future of Live Selling?
Live selling is projected to grow globally with a CAGR of roughly 40% until 2033. As it soars in popularity, companies will likely integrate features from other emerging technological trends into their platforms. For instance, they might use vision AI agents for coaching novice sellers or agentic shopping assistants for automated purchasing.
What Is the Highest Selling Online Platform?
By gross merchandise value (GMV), Amazon is the highest-selling online marketplace—live or otherwise. In 2024, it generated approximately $800 billion in total sales volume.
Conclusion
In this guide, we looked at some of the most popular live selling platforms and tools available today.
Each one takes a different approach, from algorithm-led impulse buying to owned-site community building to gamified auctioning.
But beyond vendor differences, they all highlight important product lessons, like:
- Design for real-time engagement
- Build urgency intentionally
- Reward sellers and buyers
- Create the systems that attract the user base you want
If you’re adding live commerce to a pre-existing platform, adapt your existing strengths to the format to pull in your existing user base, like a successful content type or a unique commerce flow.
If you’re beginning from zero, start small and intentional with an MVP in a limited market; you won’t find your thing immediately, but with enough time and experimentation, you can find the defining feature that sets you apart, like TikTok’s algorithm or Skeepers’ social proof infrastructure.