Best Wishlist Apps
Most wishlist apps fail for the same boring reason: the person who is supposed to buy you a gift cannot open your list. They need an account, an app, an iPhone, or a subscription — and at that point they give up and buy you a candle.
So this comparison is not a list of features. It is a list of the seven things that decide whether a wishlist actually gets used by your family — and which app does each of them. Things To Have is our own app, so we have marked clearly where we win and where someone else is the better choice.
Short answer: for a wishlist you share with friends and family, Things To Have is the best all-round pick — it is free with no paywall, anyone can open your list without an account, and reservations stay anonymous even from you. Elfster is the better choice only if what you really need is a Secret Santa draw. Everything else depends on a niche: price tracking (Moonsift), pooling money toward one bigger gift (Giftwhale), or shopping exclusively on Amazon.
How we compared them
Every row below was checked against the apps' own help pages and store listings, not against their landing pages. Where we could not confirm something, the table says — rather than guessing. Two entries are worth knowing about before you commit years of lists to any app: Carted closed in October 2025 and Kit.co closed in May 2026 — both took their users' lists with them. That is the argument for the last column in the table.
The 7 things that actually matter — and why
1. Anyone can open your list without an account
Why it matters: the people who buy you gifts are the least technical people you know. Your mum is not installing an app to see your birthday list, and your friend is not creating a login to check one link. The test is simple: paste your list into a group chat — can everyone open it? If viewing requires a signup, a meaningful share of your list's audience silently disappears, and those are usually the people who most want to get it right.
This is also the single most common complaint about wishlist apps. As one Reddit user put it after building a whole list in an app: "i made an entire wishlist on giftful only to find out people have to make an account to view it." Elfster and Giftster both work this way — participation means joining, and joining means an account.
2. Reservations that keep the surprise — including from you
Why it matters: duplicate gifts are the number one reason people go looking for a wishlist app. "Inevitably someone ends up with three of the same thing", as one r/AskReddit thread put it. So you need a way for gift givers to mark what they are buying.
But there is a second half that most apps get wrong: the owner should not be able to see it. If your wishlist tells you that two items are already taken, your birthday is partly spoiled in advance. On Elfster, list owners can be notified about reservation activity — reviewers describe this as the app failing to protect the surprise. Things To Have reservations are anonymous by design: other visitors see an anonymous count, you see nothing at all about who reserved what.
3. Free — with no hidden limits
Why it matters: a wishlist is used a handful of times a year. A subscription for that is hard to justify, and free tiers tend to break exactly when you need them. Wishes gives you three wishlists free and charges $9.99 a year for unlimited ones — which is fine until the month you are planning both a birthday and Christmas. Paywalls on a wishlist also create a strange situation where the recipient has paid and the gift givers have not.
4. No ads, and no recommendations you did not ask for
Why it matters: the moment a wishlist starts recommending products to you, it has stopped being your list and become a shop window. This is a real and visible complaint: GoWish, the biggest wishlist app in Europe with 18M+ registered users, is ad-supported, and users describe it as "basically a commercial app. Full of advertisement and cluttered design." Nothing wrong with that as a business — but it is a different product from a list you keep for yourself.
5. Any store, and autofill that does the typing for you
Why it matters: Amazon-only lists cannot hold a handmade ceramic mug from a small shop, a concert ticket, or a second-hand record. And "paste a link" is the difference between adding 20 things and giving up after five, because nobody wants to type a product title, price and photo by hand.
Both halves matter separately. Nearly every app in this table now accepts an arbitrary link — that is table stakes. Autofill is where they diverge: Things To Have pulls the title, photo and price from a pasted link without requiring a browser extension, and also ships a bookmarklet, an iOS Shortcut, and an embeddable "save to wishlist" button that store owners can put on their own product pages.
6. It works on any device — on both sides of the list
Why it matters: platform lock-in quietly filters your audience. Santa's Bag is a lovely Christmas gift app that is iOS and iPad only — an Android-using sibling simply cannot take part. Moonsift is a desktop-browser tool, so nothing can be saved from a phone. A wishlist that lives at a web address has no such problem: a link opens on an iPhone, an Android, a work laptop and a tablet in a relative's kitchen.
7. Your data comes back out again
Why it matters: apps close. When Wunderlist shut down, people were still asking what happened to their lists. When Carted — the best-loved price-tracking wishlist — closed, users were left looking for somewhere to put years of saved items. If an app will not export your lists, you are renting them. Check that there is an export, and that it is a real file rather than a screenshot.
Best wishlist apps compared
| App | View without an account | Reservations keep the surprise | Free, no paywall | No ads | Any store + autofill | Works on any device | Sort & filter | Export your data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Things To Have | Yes | Yes — anonymous even to the owner | Yes — everything free | Yes | Yes — autofill without an extension | Yes — web/PWA, nothing to install | Yes | Yes — JSON |
| Elfster | No — everyone needs an account | No — owners can see activity | Partly — paid tier | Partly | Yes | Yes | Partly | — |
| Giftster | No — you join a group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | — |
| GoWish | Partly | Yes | Yes | No — ad-supported | Yes | Yes | Partly | — |
| GiftList | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Partly | — |
| Wishes | Yes | Yes | Partly — 3 lists free, $9.99/yr | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Moonsift | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No — desktop browsers only | Yes | — |
| Giftwhale | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly — no Android app | — | — |
| Amazon Wish List | Yes | Partly | Yes | No — recommendations | No — Amazon only | Yes | No | Partly |
| Santa's Bag | No | No — it is a private planner | Yes | Yes | Yes | No — iPhone and iPad only | Yes | Partly |
“—” means we could not confirm it from the app’s own documentation.
Things To Have
Things To Have is a free, calm wishlist app for you and your friends, built for gift lists, collections and buying guides alike. It rounds all seven criteria above: no account is needed to view a list, reservations are anonymous even from the list owner, everything is free with no paywall, there are no ads and no algorithmic feed, and lists are private by default with GDPR-minded handling and no tracking cookies.
On the practical side: paste a link and the title, photo and price fill themselves in — no extension needed. Lists are public or private individually, and private lists are genuinely private (their links stop working for anyone else). Birthdays get reminders, an email, and a calendar you can subscribe to. There is an export in Settings → Data that produces a real JSON file, so your lists survive the app. And if you want a second opinion on what to buy a friend, you can connect an AI assistant over MCP with granular permissions.
It is also the only app here that is not aimed at one use case: a birthday list, a private list of things you are saving for, a vinyl shelf, a desk setup, or a gift guide with your own affiliate links all fit the same tool.
Best for: anyone who wants one free list to share with people who will not install anything.
Elfster
Elfster is the established leader for Secret Santa and gift exchanges — it has run name draws since 2004 and says over 47 million people have used it across 50+ countries. If your actual job is "draw names for 12 colleagues, keep everyone secret, set a budget", it does that better than anything in this table.
It is weaker as an everyday shared wishlist. Everyone in the exchange needs an account, and owners can see reservation activity, so the surprise is only partly protected. There is a paid tier on top.
Best for: Secret Santa and organised gift exchanges.
Giftster
Giftster is a family wish-list registry with 3 million-plus members and has been running since 2008. Its strengths are private family groups, child and pet accounts, and a solid Secret Santa generator.
The trade-off is the group model: to see someone's list you join their group, which means an account for every participant. That is good for a tight family circle and a barrier for the cousin who only wants to check one link.
Best for: a closed family circle that gifts together every year.
GoWish
GoWish is the biggest player by user count — 18M+ registered users and 600M+ wishes — with apps for iOS and Android, a browser extension, and a gift generator. It is genuinely good at discovery.
It is also ad-supported, and the most common criticism in user discussions is exactly that: cluttered, commercial, and pushing products. If you are happy to trade a clean list for inspiration and reach, it is a reasonable pick.
Best for: discovering gift ideas and a large community of users.
GiftList
GiftList is a free universal wishlist with an AI gift finder and apps for web, iOS, Android and browsers. It advertises itself as 100% free with no item limits, which is a fair promise and puts it close to Things To Have on the free criterion.
Best for: an AI-assisted "what should I get them" helper alongside a free universal list.
Wishes
Wishes is a well-made mobile app (iOS and Android) with a 4.7 rating and a clean one-link sharing model. Its free tier covers three wishlists, then it is $9.99 a year or $1.99 per extra list.
If you only ever keep one list, the free tier is enough. If you keep a birthday list, a Christmas list and a private list of things you are saving for, you will meet the limit.
Best for: a single, neatly presented mobile wishlist.
Moonsift
Moonsift is the best of the price-tracking wishlist tools: save products from any store with a universal save button, curate collections, and get alerts when prices drop. It is free and ad-free, and a favourite among stylists and interior designers.
The catch is the platform: it is designed for Chrome, Edge and Brave on a desktop, with no iOS or Android app — so you cannot save something from your phone in a shop. Since Carted closed, it is the closest thing to what price-tracking wishlist users lost.
Best for: bargain hunters saving from a desktop browser.
Giftwhale
Giftwhale is a free-forever family wish list with reservations and split-payment group gifting, used by 121,000+ families. Its app covers iPhone and iPad only, so Android households will be back to the web.
Best for: families who want to pool money toward a bigger gift.
Amazon Wish List
The default answer, and still fine if everybody shops on Amazon. Two limits are worth knowing: lists are Amazon-only, so no handmade shops, local stores or tickets; and Amazon has restricted adding external links and notes to lists, which is why many long-time users migrated away. The list is also surrounded by Amazon's recommendations.
Best for: Amazon-only shopping within a family that already uses it.
Santa's Bag
Santa's Bag is a warm, ad-free Christmas planner for iPhone and iPad: recipients, budgets, ideas, wrapping progress, even a countdown. It is a private tool for the person doing the shopping rather than a shared list, and it is Apple-only.
Best for: one person organising Christmas for a whole family on an iPhone.
Which wishlist app should you choose?
- A wishlist to share with friends and family, free, with no one forced to sign up: Things To Have — and it is the only app here whose reservations are hidden from the list owner, so the surprise survives.
- A Secret Santa draw: Elfster.
- A closed family circle: Giftster, or Giftwhale if you want to split a bigger gift.
- Price alerts on saved products: Moonsift, on a desktop browser.
- Only ever shopping on Amazon: Amazon's own Wish List.
The pattern worth remembering: the best wishlist app is not the one with the most features, it is the one that works for the people buying you gifts. They will not install anything, they will not remember a password, and they will not pay. Pick the app where none of that is required — that is where Things To Have is built to land.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a wishlist app that does not need an account?
Yes. Things To Have, GiftList, Moonsift, Giftwhale and several others let anyone open a shared list in a browser. Check the specific app: on Elfster and Giftster, participants need an account, and on Santa's Bag there is no web version at all.
What is the best free wishlist app?
For a general-purpose shared wishlist, Things To Have is the strongest free option: no paywall, no ads, no list limits, and no account needed to view. GiftList and Giftwhale are also genuinely free.
How do I stop getting duplicate gifts?
Use an app where gift givers can mark or reserve what they are buying, and make sure it is obvious how to do it — when the mechanic is unclear, people skip it and duplicates happen anyway. Then check that your app does not show you those reservations, or your own present is spoiled before it arrives.
Compare a specific app
Every app above has its own head-to-head page — see all wishlist app comparisons.