The article examines the foreign and Russian experience in the development of the sharing economy. The phenomenon of collaborative consumption of goods and services gained an impetus on the current wave of technological change mainly due to the digitization. Digital platforms have brought the narrow phenomenon of the consumer market to the level of the global economy and created prerequisites not only for enhancing the local exchange of temporarily free resources (physical, power, labor force, recreational and others), but also for their cross-border movement. The high spread speed of digital technologies and business models based on them, as well as the objectively existing time lag between the ongoing transformations and their evaluation at the theoretical level, create a pluralistic picture of the concepts of this phenomenon. A critical analysis of the approaches of experts from different countries to the scope of the sharing economy revealed a shift in emphasis between some traditional economic categories, and this forms a field for theoretical discussion. The delicacy of the boundaries between the sharing economy and normal business operations causes regulatory problems at national and international levels. Based on their own theoretical views, the authors define the key areas of the sharing economy development, identify current trends that determine the changes taking place there: marketplace growth, multiplication of collectively consumed items, speeding up operational activities, optimizing the structure of income and expenses of end users. They also identify advantages and disadvantages of sharing economy.