German digital landscape shows rapid growth in sports, finance and retail platforms
Analysis of the fastest-growing digital platforms in Germany reveals sportschau.de leads with 72% growth in web traffic during 2024.

The annual Digital 100 ranking for 2025, released on January 22, 2025, by Similarweb (NYSE: SMWB), revealed substantial growth across Germany's web and mobile platforms. This comprehensive analysis of the German digital market demonstrated robust expansion in multiple sectors, with particularly strong performance in sports media, financial services, and retail platforms.
The comprehensive analysis, focusing on websites with over 30,000 average monthly visits, identified sportschau.de as the leading performer with a remarkable 72% year-over-year increase in unique visitors, growing from 4.3 million to 7.5 million monthly users. This growth underscores the increasing digital engagement with sports content among German consumers.
In the financial technology sector, the report highlighted significant market penetration, with bitget.com showing the highest growth rate of 380% among financial platforms. The platform's monthly unique visitors increased from 43,500 to 208,900, demonstrating the growing adoption of digital financial services in Germany.
The e-commerce sector also displayed notable growth, with kleinanzeigen.de maintaining strong performance with 49% growth, reaching 29.5 million monthly unique visitors. This represents an increase of nearly 10 million users from the previous year's 19.8 million visitors.
According to Or Offer, Co-Founder & CEO of Similarweb, "The Digital 100 celebrates brands with exceptional online growth. Since 2020, we've ranked the world's fastest-growing websites. This year, for the first time, we're also showcasing winning mobile apps."
The mobile application segment revealed equally impressive growth figures. Brawl Stars emerged as the leading app with a 97% increase in monthly active users, followed by Redcare: Online Pharmacy with 81% growth. This data indicates a strong shift toward mobile engagement across gaming and healthcare sectors.
The methodology employed by Similarweb involved analyzing web traffic and app usage across five categories. For web winners, the analysis focused on websites exceeding 30,000 average monthly visits, ranking them by year-over-year increase in unique visitors between 2023 and 2024. The Big Winners category expanded its scope to include both websites and apps, analyzing the top 10% of applications available on both Android and iOS platforms.
Among retail platforms, AliExpress emerged as the digital winner with combined growth of 37% across its platforms, showing 51% growth in web traffic and 23% increase in app usage. This performance establishes it as a significant player in Germany's cross-platform digital commerce landscape.
The news and media sector demonstrated substantial growth, with morgenpost.de securing the second position among web platforms with a 56% increase in unique visitors, growing from 4.4 million to 6.9 million monthly users. This growth reflects the continuing digital transformation of traditional media consumption patterns.
The artificial intelligence sector also showed notable presence, with chatgpt.com ranking seventh among web platforms, achieving 40% growth and reaching 8.3 million monthly unique visitors from 6.0 million in the previous year.
These findings emerge from Similarweb's analysis of multiple data sources using advanced methodologies. The company maintains a comprehensive database covering more than 100 million websites, 8 million apps across 190 countries, monitoring over 6 billion keywords.
The German digital market continues to evolve rapidly, with clear trends toward mobile engagement, financial technology adoption, and enhanced digital content consumption. This transformation spans across traditional sectors such as retail and media, while embracing emerging technologies and platforms.
This analysis reflects the digital consumption patterns of German users during the reported period, providing valuable insights into the evolving digital landscape of one of Europe's largest economies. The data indicates a mature digital market with continued growth potential across multiple sectors.