Recession fears aren’t hurting the wishlist and shopping app GoWish, which is seeing record numbers ahead of the 2025 holiday season. The app, which has north of 13.6 million registered users, had its best day yet this week, when on Monday it hit No. 2 on the U.S. App Store.
While GoWish has seen similar adoption trends in previous years, this year has proven to be a breakout success. The app doubled the number of users from last year, and it has been breaking records with hundreds of thousands of new daily users in the month of November.
In the U.S. alone, the app has nearly 6.2 million users, while it has around 1 million in the U.K. In its home market of Denmark, the wishlist app has over 50% market penetration and over 3.5 million registered Danish users.
Though today it operates as a tech company, GoWish has a unique origin story.
Image Credits:GoWish
The app was originally launched in 2015 by the Danish-Swedish national postal service PostNord as “Ønskeskyen.” (That’s Danish for “wish cloud.”) It was just a seasonal wishlist gimmick, but its founders saw the potential for it to be something more.
In 2020, GoWish was acquired by Danish VC Dotcom Capital, which is owned by founder Casper Ravn‑Sørensen, who is also GoWish’s Chief Growth Officer, and his partner, CEO Mads Dahlerup. They spun it out as an independent tech company and created an international version of Ønskeskyen (the app’s name in Denmark and Norway).
“We might be the first state-founded tech platform to go global as a privately-owned scale-up,” Ravn‑Sørensen told TechCrunch.
Image Credits:GoWish
Consumers can use the app to create multiple wishlists for themselves, their family and friends, and for different occasions. Wishes — or products you can buy from online retailers — can be added directly to your list by copying and pasting a URL, searching for a product, or browsing the inspiration feeds that feature millions of products. When you’re ready to buy, you can tap a button in the app to go directly to the retailer’s website.
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