The short answer
Pick GiftList if the job is a gift registry: you want a list of things you would like, you want people to claim items so nobody buys the same thing twice, and you want it on a phone app. It does that well and it has done it for years.
Pick weeshelf if the job is deciding together: several people are comparing a handful of options, arguing about them, and narrowing down to a shortlist. That conversation happens on the products themselves rather than in a group chat.
They overlap on the obvious part — both are free, both take a link from any shop, both show pictures and prices. The difference is what happens after the list exists.
What GiftList does better
Three things, and they are not small.
- Gift reservation. Someone can mark an item as claimed, hidden from you, so two relatives do not buy the same present. weeshelf has no equivalent, and for a birthday or a wedding that is a real reason to choose GiftList.
- Proper mobile apps on iOS and Android, rated well with over a thousand reviews. weeshelf is a website — it works on a phone, but there is nothing to install.
- Gifting machinery around the list: Secret Santa, cash funds, group gifts, imports from other registries. If you are running a family gift exchange, that is most of what you need.
What weeshelf does better
One thing, mostly, and it is the thing we built the product around.
On GiftList, and on almost everything else in this category, a list is something you SEND. People open it, look, and any discussion goes back to WhatsApp — where it gets lost among everything else, and where nobody can tell afterwards which four options you had actually narrowed it to.
On weeshelf the discussion lives on the product. You react to a specific item, reply to someone about that item, mention a person so they see it, and when you have narrowed things down you shortlist the finalists without deleting the rest. The shelf still holds all twenty-four; the shortlist shows the four you are choosing between.
If nobody else is going to have an opinion, this is worth nothing to you and you should use GiftList.
Adding things: the same, with one difference
Both work by pasting a product link: the page is read, and the title, price and photograph are pulled in automatically. Both also have a browser helper for saving while you shop.
The difference is coverage rather than method. GiftList is built around a large catalogue of mostly North American retailers — Amazon, Target, Walmart, Nike, Sephora, Etsy. weeshelf reads whatever a shop publishes as standard product data, which covers every Shopify store plus Hopscotch, Nykaa, Ajio and Amazon.in.
Neither reads everything. Some retailers refuse automated requests, and Myntra and Flipkart are the two that will bite you in India. weeshelf tells you when a page could not be read rather than saving an item with a title and no price.
Does anyone need an account?
Neither makes your guests sign up, which is worth stating plainly because several tools in this category do.
On GiftList, gift-givers reserve items by entering a name and email. On weeshelf, anyone with the link can open the shelf and read everything. Reacting or commenting does require signing in, because those actions have to be attributable to somebody.
So: for a list people only read, both are equally frictionless. For a list people are meant to argue in, weeshelf asks the arguers to sign in and nobody else.
What they cost
Both are free, and neither charges for the core list.
weeshelf is built to run at zero recurring cost — that is an architectural constraint rather than a pricing decision, which is a slightly stronger guarantee than a free tier somebody can revisit.
Which to pick
If you are making a list of things you want, for people to buy you, and you care about avoiding duplicates: GiftList. It is more complete for that job and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
If several of you are choosing something together — a gift for someone else, a thing for the house, a holiday wardrobe — and the problem is that the conversation keeps getting lost: weeshelf.
They are also not exclusive. A registry and a decision are different activities, and plenty of people have reason to do both.