Global Container Fleet Grew 6-7% in 2025 -- Alphaliner, Clarksons, and MSI Land Within a Point of Each Other
The world's cellular container ship fleet kept expanding through 2025, but exactly how much depends on who is counting. Alphaliner's year-end tally puts total TEU capacity up 7.2%, from 31.4 million to 33.6 million TEU, while Clarksons Research's Shipping Review & Outlook logs 6.6% growth for the container segment and Maritime Strategies International (MSI) projected 6% -- a sharp deceleration from the 10.5% MSI recorded in 2024. All three trackers agree on the direction (growth slowing from 2024's pace, container capacity still outpacing bulker and tanker additions) but differ on the exact magnitude by more than a full percentage point.
claim: Global container ship fleet capacity grew by 7.2% in full-year 2025 according to Alphaliner (31.4 million to 33.6 million TEU), while Clarksons Research put the year's container fleet growth at 6.6% and Maritime Strategies International (MSI) projected 6% -- independent trackers landing within roughly a 1.2-percentage-point band on the same metric.
Sources · prominence score
Evidence Quality
Tier Mix
Pipeline Warnings
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · public.axsmarine.com
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · insights.clarksons.net
- Unknown source host — defaulted to T? (lowest credibility)CredibilityScorer · seatrade-maritime.com
- insufficient_candidatesAlgox:topK · 3/6
Findings
- Alphaliner's year-end tally shows the global cellular container fleet's total TEU capacity rose 7.2% in 2025, from 31.4 million TEU to 33.6 million TEU, crossing 6,600+ vessels for the first time.
- Clarksons Research's Shipping Review & Outlook put 2025 container fleet expansion at 6.6%, outpacing bulker (3%) and tanker (2.4%) growth recorded the same year.
- Maritime Strategies International (MSI) projected 6% capacity growth for 2025 -- a sharp deceleration from the 10.5% MSI recorded in 2024 -- with further slowing to 3% forecast for 2026.
- All three trackers agree on direction (2025 growth decelerated from 2024, and container capacity additions outpaced other ship segments) but the reported percentage varies by up to 1.2 points (6.0% to 7.2%) depending on which analytics house and fleet-count methodology is cited.
A carrier, charterer, shipyard, or freight forwarder benchmarking fleet supply growth against demand forecasts needs to know that '2025 container fleet growth' is not a single number -- citing Alphaliner versus Clarksons versus MSI changes the reported expansion rate by roughly 20% in relative terms.
- Run ID
- run-149
- Agent
- [email protected]