Vietnam Freight Forwarding Market Size, Share & Forecast, By Service Type, Mode of Transport & End-Use Industry, 2026-2031

The Vietnam Freight Forwarding Market is worth USD 4.65 billion in 2025 on a net service-revenue basis. The estimate includes forwarding, consolidation, customs brokerage, documentation, and multimodal coordination, while excluding direct carrier line-haul pass-through revenue. A supply-side company universe, trade-intensity model, and shipper-demand cross-check were weighted to prevent reliance on one opaque benchmark. The resulting confidence range is USD 4.10-5.20 billion, with uncertainty driven mainly by pass-through accounting and fragmented small-operator revenue.

The base case reaches USD 7.08 billion by 2031, implying a 7.26% CAGR from the 2025 base. Growth is supported by export manufacturing, cross-border trade, higher logistics outsourcing, and rising value-added service attachment. The model assumes managed cargo volume reaches 902 million tonnes and digital booking penetration reaches 78% by 2031. The bear case is USD 6.35 billion, while the bull case reaches USD 8.05 billion if multimodal infrastructure and high-value air cargo scale faster.

Profit pools will move from basic carrier booking toward customs compliance, buyer consolidation, control-tower visibility, specialized air cargo, project logistics, and contract-based multimodal management. Sea forwarding remains dominant at 75.7% of 2025 revenue, but its share is modeled to ease to 74.0% by 2031 as air and digital services grow faster. Gross profit per shipment, documentation accuracy, and contract retention will therefore matter more than headline tonnage for evaluating competitive performance.

The main risk is a high-cost, road-dependent operating structure interacting with policy and capacity shocks. Logistics costs remain around 17-18% of GDP, and road carries approximately 61-64% of freight. In early 2025, 80% of surveyed logistics respondents reported moderate-to-severe disruption from stricter driving rules, while 70% reported significant cost increases. These pressures can erode fixed-price contract margins, extend transit times, and force forwarders to hold more contingency capacity.

Vietnam ranks fourth among the six selected peers on the modeled 2025 net-revenue lens, behind Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand but ahead of Malaysia and the Philippines. Its USD 4.65 billion market is supported by USD 930 billion of merchandise trade, which is unusually high relative to a USD 514 billion economy. Vietnam's 7.26% forecast CAGR exceeds Thailand and Singapore, giving it a stronger growth profile despite lower logistics efficiency than the top regional hubs.

Export-oriented manufacturing is the strongest structural driver because it creates recurring inbound component flows and outbound finished-goods shipments. Processing and manufacturing represented 55.6% of registered FDI in the first half of 2025, while textile exports approached USD 46 billion and agriculture, forestry, and seafood exports reached USD 70.09 billion for the year. These sectors require carrier procurement, documentation, customs, inspection, and multimodal coordination, creating multiple monetizable service layers per shipment.

A focused corridor and vertical strategy is preferable to broad national coverage at launch. New operators should secure one or two anchor manufacturing clusters, partner for domestic trucking and customs execution, and differentiate through digital quotations, documentation control, and shipment visibility. Acquiring or partnering with a licensed local forwarder can accelerate customer access and regulatory familiarity. Expansion should follow verified lane density, contract renewal, and gross profit per shipment rather than branch count alone.