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Sell-through rate

Sell-through rate is the percentage of the stock a store received in a period that it sold within that same period.

How it works

The rate compares units sold with units received over the same period, most often a month. A high rate means the delivery is leaving the shelf. A low one means stock is piling up and may turn into dead stock. There is no single benchmark: the rate depends on the category, the length of the period and where the product is in its life cycle.

It is a warehouse metric: it needs deliveries and stock levels, and an ad account holds neither. An ad account offers a different number that looks similar: the share of advertised products with at least one sale. Sell-through rate and other assortment KPIs explains why it misleads.

Formula

Units sold in the period ÷ units received in the period × 100

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop receives 400 glass sets in September and sells 160 of them by the end of the month: 160 ÷ 400 × 100 = 40%. By the end of November it has sold 340 of the same 400: 340 ÷ 400 × 100 = 85%. The delivery is the same; only the period changed.

Not to be confused with

  • Inventory turnover — how many times the average stock was sold and replaced, counted at cost. Sell-through rate is a share of the stock received, in units.
  • New product hit rate — the share of new products that sold at least once. It counts products, not units of stock.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “The share of our advertised products with a sale is our sell-through rate.” Right: that share counts products, not units, and shifts with the period and with orders. In GetProfit data on 114 stores (June 2025 – June 2026), its median was 5.0% for a single month and 26.5% over 13 months. The monthly count of products with a sale closely tracked monthly orders (correlation +0.912 over 1,514 store-months).
  • Wrong: “40% in September is worse than 85% in November.” Right: both figures come from the same 400 sets; only the period differs. Compare rates over periods of equal length.

Sources