Shopping Emoji

🛍️ Shopping Bags is the shopping emoji in the plain sense: two paper bags with handles, the kind you carry out of a clothes shop. It says "I went shopping", "shopping day" or "retail therapy", and it is the emoji most haul captions start with. It joined Unicode in version 7.0 (2014), so it is drawn on every current phone, though some apps still show it as a small flat icon rather than a colour picture.

🛒 Shopping Cart arrived two years later, in Unicode 9.0 (2016), and took over the online side of shopping: "add to cart", a wishlist, a grocery run. On TikTok a 🛒 in a caption usually points at a product tagged in the video, because TikTok Shop marks shoppable videos with a cart icon, so "🛒 in bio" or "🛒 link below" means "you can buy this". The cart has also become a small meme on its own: the "shopping cart theory" of 2020 asked whether you return the cart when nobody is watching.

🏬 Department Store and 🏪 Convenience Store are the two shop buildings. Both come from the original Japanese carrier emoji that Unicode adopted in 2010 (version 6.0): the department store is the big multi-floor building, the convenience store is the konbini, the small 24-hour corner shop that is on every Japanese street. Use 🏬 for the mall or a big-brand trip and 🏪 for a quick stop for snacks or a late-night run. There is no emoji for a shopping mall as such, so 🏬 does that job too.

🏷️ Label is the price tag, in Unicode since 7.0 (2014), and 🔖 Bookmark often doubles as a tag because it looks like one. 🧾 Receipt (2018) is proof of purchase, a bill to split, or the mock-serious "I have the receipts". 💳 Credit Card means paying, especially online, and 💸 Money with Wings is the money flying out of your account after a spree. 🤑 Money-Mouth Face with its dollar eyes is the face of a bargain hunter who just scored, or of the shop owner on sale day. For the rest of the money pictures and the currency signs of the world, see Money Emoji & Currency Symbols.

Sale emoji and price tags: 🆕 🆓 🉐 🈹 and the Japanese sale buttons

The square buttons are the closest thing to a sale emoji. 🆕 New and 🆓 Free read in English on any phone and are what shops and resellers drop next to a product. The Japanese ones are even more specific, because they were made for Japanese shop signs: 🉐 is 得 (toku, "bargain", a good deal), 🈹 is 割 (wari, "discount", as in 3割引, 30 % off), 🈺 is 営 for 営業中, "open for business", 🈚 is 無 for 無料, "free of charge", 🈶 is 有 for 有料, "there is a charge", and 🈂️ is the katakana サ, short for サービス, a service charge or a free extra thrown in. People outside Japan use 🉐 and 🈹 as a general "sale!" marker, and they stand out in a feed precisely because they are rare.

Around the buttons sit the hype emoji of a sale announcement: 📣 Megaphone and 🔔 Bell for the announcement itself, ⏰ Alarm Clock and ⏳ Hourglass for a flash sale that ends soon, 🔥 Fire and 💯 Hundred Points for "hot deal", ✨ Sparkles for "new in", ✅ Check Mark Button for "in stock" or "ordered", and ✂️ Scissors for a coupon to cut out. 🖤 Black Heart with 🏷️ or 🛍️ is the standard Black Friday pairing, and 🏃 Person Running is the doorbuster rush.

Online shopping emoji: from 🔍 search to 📦 delivered

An online order has its own little story in emoji, and people tell it in order: 🔍 searching, 📱 or 💻 browsing, 🛒 added to cart, 💳 paid, 🧾 order confirmed, 📦 packed, 🚚 on its way, 📬 delivered. 📲 Mobile Phone with Arrow is the app notification ("your order has shipped"), and 📋 Clipboard is the shopping list or the wishlist you tick things off. 🛵 Motor Scooter is the food-delivery and courier bike that brings a small order to the door.

📦 Package is the one to remember: it is how online shops, sellers on Vinted, Depop and Etsy and anyone waiting for a parcel say "shipped" or "it's here". 🚚 Delivery Truck is the same thing for bigger loads and for the "free delivery" line in an ad.

Shopping emoji combos: haul, Black Friday, grocery run

A haul combo lists what came home: 🛍️👗👠💄 for a fashion haul, 🛍️🧴💅✨ for beauty and skincare, 🛍️👟🧢 for sneakers and streetwear, 🛍️💍💎👑 for jewellery. Add 🤩 or 😍 for the feeling, 🙈 if you spent more than planned, and 💸 if you want to joke about it. For a girly shopping day with a friend, 👯🛍️💅 or 👯🛍️🍹 says it all.

A Black Friday combo is 🖤🏷️🛍️ or 🖤💸🛒, with 🏃‍♀️ for the rush and 🔥🔥 for the deals. A Christmas shopping combo swaps in gifts: 🎄🎁🛍️ or 🎁🎀💳. A grocery run is 🛒🍞🥛🥚 or 🧺🍎🥕🥦, and "we're out of everything" is 🛒📋😩. Keep combos to three or four characters; a row of eight reads like spam, and in a shop's bio it looks desperate.

The reverse message, no more shopping, is 🛍️🚫💸 or 💳🔒, and the saving-up version is 🐷🪙. On Instagram and TikTok the aesthetic captions wrap one emoji in plain symbols: ⋆｡˚ 🛍️ ˚｡⋆ or ✧ 🛒 ✧.

Shopping symbols in plain text and how to find shopping emoji on iPhone and Android

For a price list, a listing or a bio where emoji are blocked, plain text symbols do the work: $ € £ ¥ ¢ for prices, % for the discount, № for an order number, ★ ☆ for star ratings (★★★★☆), ✓ for in stock and ✗ for sold out, and → for "was → now" ($40 → $25). They are ordinary characters, so they line up with numbers and survive copy and paste into any app.

To find the shopping emoji on an iPhone, open the emoji keyboard and type "shopping", "bag" or "cart" in the search field; Gboard on Android works the same way. On Windows press Win + . (period) and search, on a Mac Control + Command + Space. In Slack the shortcodes are :shopping_bags: for 🛍️ and :shopping_trolley: for 🛒; Discord uses :shopping_cart: for the cart. 🛍️ and 🏷️ are two of the emoji that can also show as a plain black-and-white glyph in some apps, which is why "shopping bag emoji black and white" is a common search: it is the same character without its emoji presentation, not a separate emoji.