Germany, Austria and Switzerland already buy more than £93bn a year from the UK. But rising export values conceal a less comfortable fact: Britain’s share of these markets has fallen.
That is the interesting part of the story.
The German-speaking markets are not a speculative opportunity somebody has found in a trend report. UK companies are already doing substantial business there. In 2025, UK exports of goods and services to Germany, Austria and Switzerland reached approximately £93.2bn.
Yet the UK’s share of trade in all three countries was lower in 2024 than it had been in 2015. Export values have grown, but the competitive position is less reassuring.
For UK businesses, particularly those selling services, software or considered B2B products, the sensible conclusion is not that every company should rush into DACH. It is that German-language visibility deserves a proper commercial decision—not the usual assumption that an English website will somehow do the job.
£93bn is not a theoretical opportunity
The Department for Business and Trade’s country factsheets, based largely on Office for National Statistics data, put UK exports in 2025 at:
| Market | Total UK exports | Goods | Services |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | £62.4bn | £33.5bn | £28.8bn |
| Austria | £4.2bn | £1.9bn | £2.3bn |
| Switzerland | £26.6bn | £5.4bn | £21.2bn |
| DACH total | £93.2bn | £40.8bn | £52.3bn |
Germany alone was the UK’s second-largest export market. Switzerland was seventh. Austria is much smaller, but services still represented more than half of UK exports to the country.
There is an important qualification. These are total export figures, not a clean measurement of sales completed through websites. Official trade statistics do not provide a tidy “UK website revenue from DACH” line. Anyone presenting the full £93.2bn as ecommerce revenue is stretching the data well beyond what it says.
But the figures establish the commercial context. The demand already exists, and a very large part of it sits in sectors where websites, search visibility, digital procurement and remote delivery influence how suppliers are found and evaluated.
Exports grew over five and ten years, but so did the market
Adding the country series together shows how UK exports to DACH developed:
| Year | UK exports to DACH | Change to 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | £72.5bn | +28.6% |
| 2020 | £77.3bn | +20.6% |
| 2025 | £93.2bn | — |
That is meaningful growth: roughly 29% over the period from 2016 to 2025 and 21% from 2020 to 2025.
It is not, however, a clean story of British businesses conquering the market. The figures are nominal. Inflation, exchange rates, the pandemic, supply-chain disruption and changes following the UK’s exit from the EU all affect the series. Switzerland’s figures can also be moved materially by trade in precious metals.
The more revealing comparison is market share.
| Market | UK share in 2015 | UK share in 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 5.7% | 4.5% |
| Austria | 2.0% | 1.8% |
| Switzerland | 7.5% | 5.5% |
Austria recovered some ground in 2024, but all three ten-year comparisons remain below their 2015 level. Germany’s UK share fell by 1.2 percentage points. Switzerland’s fell by two.
In other words, UK exports can rise while competitors take a larger part of the available market. A growing headline number is not the same thing as improving competitive strength. That distinction tends to disappear once international trade figures reach a marketing presentation.
Services make the website question more important
Services accounted for approximately £52.3bn of UK exports to DACH in 2025—more than goods.
That includes professional and business services, financial services, technology, software and other work that may be researched, bought, managed or delivered remotely. In Germany alone, telecommunications, computer and information services accounted for £5.2bn of UK service exports in the twelve months to March 2026.
The ONS modes-of-supply data makes the broader point: a substantial amount of British service trade is supplied remotely. A website may not process the final enterprise contract like a retail checkout, but it still helps a buyer discover the supplier, assess its credibility and decide whether it belongs on the shortlist.
That is why “sales through a website” is too narrow a frame for many B2B companies. The commercially useful question is how much business the website influences.
German buyers are not waiting for British websites to catch up
Germany is hardly an offline holdout. The German Federal Statistical Office reported that 83% of people aged 16 to 74 had bought or ordered something online in 2024—around 52 million people. The equivalent figure was 80% in 2021.
The B2B picture is just as relevant. KfW Research found that German SMEs generated €306bn through online sales of products and services in 2024. About 868,000 SMEs sold through digital channels, producing an average of 27% of their turnover that way.
This does not mean a UK company can translate five landing pages, turn on a German paid-search campaign and wait for the euros to arrive. It does mean the digital route to market is established. If a British supplier is not visible when German-speaking buyers research a problem, competing suppliers will be.
One language does not make one market
DACH is a useful abbreviation. It is not a strategy.
Germany, Austria and Switzerland share a language to varying degrees, but they do not share identical terminology, purchasing expectations, currencies, regulations or competitive landscapes. Switzerland adds regional and linguistic complexity of its own. Even within German-language search, the words people use and the assurances they expect can differ.
Some content can sensibly serve more than one country. Other pages need market-specific language, examples, prices, delivery information or trust signals. The right answer depends on the product, audience and commercial importance of each market—not on how convenient a single translation would be.
My guide to German SEO for UK SMEs looks at those localisation and search-intent questions in more detail. For software companies, I have also written specifically about why UK SaaS businesses should care about German SEO.
Brexit added friction. It did not remove the market
For ecommerce businesses shipping physical products, the commercial calculation changed after Brexit. VAT, customs declarations, rules of origin, delivery delays and returns can all damage margins and conversion. A website cannot optimise those problems away.
That is precisely why market-entry decisions need to join up. Search demand, localisation, payment methods, fulfilment, tax, customer service and returns are parts of the same commercial system. Generating German traffic before the business can serve German customers properly is not expansion. It is an expensive way to document operational problems.
Service and software businesses avoid some of the physical-border friction, but not the need for credible German-language positioning, appropriate contracts, data protection and local buyer confidence.
What UK businesses should take from the numbers
The £93.2bn figure is not a promise. It is evidence that the economic relationship is already substantial.
The falling market-share figures are the warning. Other countries and suppliers are competing for the same demand, and an English-only website makes their job easier.
UK businesses should therefore make an explicit decision about German-speaking markets:
- Is there relevant demand for the product or service?
- Can the business serve that demand profitably and reliably?
- Which of Germany, Austria and Switzerland genuinely matter?
- What would buyers need to see, in their language, before they would trust the offer?
- Where is the business already losing visibility to established competitors?
If the answer is that DACH matters, leaving German-language visibility for another year is not a neutral decision. It means leaving competitors to be found first.
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