Best Giftwhale Alternatives
Giftwhale is a free-forever family wish list with reservations and pooled payments. It is a good answer to one specific question — families who want to pool money toward a bigger gift — and if that is your situation, it may be all you need.
This page is for the people it does not fit: those who want a list that opens on whatever device the family already owns. It compares Giftwhale with Things To Have on the eight things that decide whether a wishlist actually gets used, and lists the alternatives worth considering alongside it.
Short version: if you want a free, calm wishlist app for you and your friends — no ads, no account needed to view, and reservations your family can use without spoiling the surprise — Things To Have is the closest fit. If you need families who want to pool money toward a bigger gift, Giftwhale is probably still the right tool.
What Giftwhale does well
- free forever, with 121,000+ families using it
- secret reservations so duplicates become impossible
- split-payment group gifting on the free plan
- a native iPhone and iPad app
Why people look for an alternative to Giftwhale
No Android app. Android households are pushed back to the web, and symmetrical apps matter when two parents manage the same list.
Group gifting means money changes hands on the platform, which is where most complaints about this category come from.
A narrower feature set than a general-purpose list once you go past reservations.
Giftwhale vs Things To Have
| 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 |
| Giftwhale | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly — no Android app | — | — |
“—” means we could not confirm it from the app’s own documentation.
The best alternatives, 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 |
| Farha | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| WishTogether | Yes — link only | Yes — secret reservation | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | — |
| Giftster | No — you join a group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | — |
| Wishes | Yes | Yes | Partly — 3 lists free, $9.99/yr | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | — |
“—” means we could not confirm it from the app’s own documentation.
How the two compare, criterion by criterion
Against the eight criteria, Giftwhale falls short on 1 of them. The two apps are level on 5 others.
- Works on any device
- Giftwhale: partly — no Android app. Things To Have: yes — web/PWA, nothing to install.
2 columns are left blank above — Sort & filter and Export your data. Giftwhale's own documentation does not answer them, and a guess in a comparison table is worse than a blank.
Giving up: Giftwhale's specific strengths, listed above. If those matter more than the criteria in the table — and for some people they genuinely do — staying is the right call.
Which should you choose?
- You want a free list to send to family who will not sign up: Things To Have.
- You want what Giftwhale is best at (families who want to pool money toward a bigger gift): stay with Giftwhale.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free alternative to Giftwhale?
Yes — Things To Have has no paywall and no list limits. Giftwhale is free too, so cost is not the reason to switch — the rest of the table is.
Do my friends need an account to open the list?
Not on Things To Have — viewing never requires a signup. Giftwhale also lets people view a list without one. This is the criterion that decides how many people actually see your list.
Can I move my list out of Giftwhale?
Giftwhale publishes no export we could confirm, so copy what matters before you stop using it. Either way, a pasted list of links is enough to rebuild it here — importing shows a preview before anything is written, and the way back out is an export in JSON.
Keep comparing
- Best wishlist apps — all of them, ranked against the same eight criteria
- Every comparison — one page per app