Giftwhale has now been part of people’s lives for longer than many apps ever manage.
In 2025, more families, parents, organisations and groups used Giftwhale to organise birthdays, Christmas, and everyday gifting than ever before. Not because it is loud or flashy, but because it quietly does what people need it to do, year after year.
This felt like the right moment to pause and reflect. Not to celebrate milestones for the sake of it, and not to publish growth charts without context, but to clearly explain what Giftwhale is today, how it is actually being used, and why it continues to matter in a space that is changing quickly.
What follows is an honest snapshot of Giftwhale in 2025.
Giftwhale in 2025: At a Glance
To ground this review in reality, here are a few high-level signals from the past year.
Approximately 30% year-on-year growth, reflecting steady and sustainable adoption
Average user lifespan increased to 3.2 years, and continues to rise
52% growth in items added, indicating deeper and more consistent use
Average review score of 4.9 out of 5.0, based on ongoing user feedback
Individually, these numbers only tell part of the story. Together, they point to something more important: Giftwhale is being reused, trusted, and relied upon over time, particularly around moments that matter to families and groups.
This year, one family told us Giftwhale helped them organise their first Christmas after moving countries, keeping everyone aligned when everything else felt unfamiliar.
What these numbers reflect is long-term, repeat use around real moments, not one-off novelty.
What Giftwhale Is Used For in 2025
Before talking about features or plans, it is more useful to start with behaviour. This is how Giftwhale is actually used day to day.
Birthdays
Birthdays remain one of the most common use cases.
Parents create lists for their children and share them with family and friends. Adults create their own lists to avoid awkward “what would you like?” messages and last-minute guessing. Everything lives in one place, rather than being spread across chats, notes, and screenshots.
Christmas and Seasonal Gifting
Christmas is still the busiest time of year.
Families use Giftwhale to coordinate lists, reduce duplicate gifts, and remove some of the stress that builds up during December. Having a shared reference point makes a busy season feel calmer and more manageable.
Secret Santa and Group Exchanges
Giftwhale is widely used for Secret Santa exchanges across workplaces, families, and friendship groups.
Clear budgets, clear assignments, and an easy way to see what someone actually wants remove a lot of unnecessary friction. Many of these groups return year after year because the process stays familiar.
Life Transitions and Ongoing Lists
Giftwhale is also used during moments of change. New parents use it to share what they genuinely need without pressure, while couples and families maintain ongoing lists that evolve over time. These lists are less about a single event and more about staying aligned as life changes.
A Growing Wish List App Category
One noticeable shift in 2025 was the number of new wish list tools entering the market.
Some are well funded. Some are experiments. Some will not last very long. On the surface, this can look like a crowded space.
In reality, it is a positive signal.
Why This Is a Good Sign
Gift-giving remains surprisingly difficult.
Group chats do not scale well. Notes apps become messy. Duplicate gifts still happen. People still leave buying decisions until the last minute and feel unsure if they have chosen well.
The increase in tools trying to solve this problem reinforces that it is real, persistent, and far from solved.
How Giftwhale Thinks About Competition
Many wish list tools focus on a single moment or event.
Giftwhale has always been designed for repeat, real-world use. Families and groups value familiarity. They want something they recognise and trust when the next birthday or Christmas comes around.
Longevity matters more than novelty, especially for a product that is used quietly in the background of everyday life.
Platform Choices and Trade-offs
Giftwhale has remained web-first by design.
Most gifting flows start with a shared link, sent through messages or email. A web experience works across devices without friction and keeps things simple for people who may only interact with the product a few times a year.
Native apps bring polish, but they also bring long-term complexity and maintenance cost. As we move into 2026, we are beginning to map out what a native iOS and Android experience looks like, ensuring that if we build it, it maintains the simplicity our web users value.
This broader landscape of tools is something we plan to explore in more detail soon, to help people make sense of the options available to them.
What Changed in 2025
The focus in 2025 was refinement rather than expansion.
Instead of adding lots of new features, the emphasis was on making existing ones clearer, more reliable, and easier to use. Small changes that reduce friction often matter more than large additions.
In practice, this showed up in a few specific ways:
Improved and simplified how lists and items are managed
Refined the Secret Santa experience based on real-world use
Updated and refreshed navigation and the dashboard
Continued improvements to overall app performance
What Didn’t Change, On Purpose
Some things stayed the same deliberately.
Giftwhale did not pivot towards becoming a marketplace. User data is not sold. There is no pressure-driven social layer designed to encourage spending.
The goal has remained the same: to be a neutral, helpful tool that supports gifting without trying to control it.
What I Learned Building Giftwhale in 2025
One of the clearest lessons from this year is that fewer features often lead to better outcomes.
Most people want clarity, not cleverness. They want tools that work quietly and reliably, especially when those tools are tied to emotional moments like birthdays, Christmas, or welcoming a new child.
Gift-giving is contextual and personal. Technology should support that, not replace it. Over time, trust is earned by showing up consistently and doing a small number of things well.
That trust is reflected not just in repeat use, but in the consistently high satisfaction scores Giftwhale receives from people who rely on it year after year.
The most meaningful progress this year came from doing fewer things better.
The Role of AI at Giftwhale
AI now plays a role in how people discover products and how content is summarised and shared.
Behind the scenes, we’ve been improving how items are processed and structured, laying the groundwork for more personalised recommendations in the future. AI already plays a role in the most-used feature on Giftwhale, Item Fetch by URL, where it helps clean up titles, images, and details automatically when someone adds a link.
At Giftwhale, the approach has been cautious. AI is useful when it reduces effort or helps people find what they are already looking for. It is less useful when it tries to make decisions on someone’s behalf.
Accuracy and trust matter more than novelty, and any use of AI should feel supportive rather than intrusive.
Who Giftwhale Is For, And Who It Isn’t
Giftwhale is for families, parents, and groups who want gifting to feel simpler and calmer. It is for people who return to the same tool year after year because it feels familiar and dependable.
It is not a shopping platform. It is not a social network. It is not designed around trends or impulse buying.
That focus is intentional.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Looking forward, the goal is not reinvention.
The focus remains on making Giftwhale clearer, calmer, and more reliable in the moments people use most. Refinement matters more than speed, and listening to real behaviour matters more than assumptions.
Thank You ❤️
Thank you to the families who come back each year, the parents organising birthdays and Christmas, the groups quietly running Secret Santa exchanges, and the people who rely on Giftwhale quietly in the background.
If you’d like to look back, you can also read our Year in Review from 2018. This post is part of a longer product story that is still being written.
