We review recent experimental progress in the domain of rare radiative, semileptonic and leptonic B decays. The statistical precision attained for these decays has reached a level where they start to impose meaningful constraints on the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, which are complementary to those obtained from hadronic decays. While the current data indicate no deviations from Standard Model predictions, there is still some room for new physics in these decays.