Cost Per Wishlist: Steam Benchmarks by Channel and a Calculator

Cost per wishlist on Steam is your cost per view divided by the share of viewers who end up clicking "Add to your wishlist." Developers commonly report paying roughly $0.50 to $2 per wishlist on paid social, and one public games-clipping guide models short-form clipping at $0.16 to $0.63 per wishlist at a $1.25 CPM. Everything else you read is a variation on that one division, so this page gives you the formula, a calculator you can run with your own numbers, and the handful of public figures that actually have a source behind them.

A note on honesty before the tables. Most "cost per wishlist by channel" charts floating around indie-dev Discords are unsourced, and the same four numbers get copied from post to post. Below, every figure is either attributed to where it was published or labelled as arithmetic from the calculator. Where no reliable public figure exists (streamers, Next Fest), we say so rather than fill the cell.

Short Answer: Cost Per Wishlist by Channel (checked September 2026)

If you only remember one thing from the table: the two inputs that move cost per wishlist are the price of a view and the conversion rate from view to wishlist. A 10x difference in either is normal between channels, and the cheapest view in the world still produces an expensive wishlist if nobody who sees it cares about your genre.

The Cost Per Wishlist Calculator

Cost per wishlist is a two-step funnel. A view has to become a store page visit, and a store page visit has to become a wishlist. Enter a CPM and your best estimate for each step. The preset buttons load the published CPMs used in the table.

The formula: cost per wishlist = (CPM / 1,000) / (view-to-visit rate × visit-to-wishlist rate). Here is the same math pre-run across the three published CPMs and the three view-to-wishlist rates from the Vues model:

The caveat that matters for logo placement. A paid ad carries a button. A logo or caption placed inside a meme or a sports clip does not, so the viewer has to search for the game or tap through to a bio. Do not borrow a paid-ad click-through rate for the first step; for logo placement, start the view-to-visit field well under 1% and treat anything the campaign beats as upside. Full UGC, where a creator talks about or plays the game, earns a higher rate on that first step, which is why it can justify a CPM thirty times higher.

The second step is the one developers underweight. A cheap view that lands on a weak capsule and a vague description still produces an expensive wishlist, because the visitor bounces before the button. Fix the store page before scaling any channel.

Wishlist-to-Sale Conversion: What Is Actually Published

A wishlist is only worth what share of them turn into a purchase. The public numbers are wide on purpose:

• 20% first-year. Vues' indie-games guide uses 20% wishlist-to-first-year-sale as the commonly cited benchmark, and notes it varies enormously by genre, price point and launch timing.
• Anywhere from 1% to 40%. Chris Zukowski of How To Market A Game, in "Do wishlists matter any more?" (January 2024), writes that he has seen conversions across that entire spread, and one game past 30%.
• Velocity over totals. The same piece argues that the rate you collect wishlists predicts more than the pile you end up with: a game gathering around 15,000 wishlists a year looks far healthier than one under 4,000 a year.

Why the spread is so wide: a wishlist added eighteen months before launch by someone who has since forgotten the game converts nothing like one added the week of a Next Fest demo by someone who just played it. That is also why a cost-per-wishlist number should be judged alongside when the wishlists arrived, not on its own.

Channel Breakdown

Steam Next Fest and Festivals

No media buy, so no cost per wishlist in the paid sense. Fests reward games that arrive with momentum: a demo backed by an audience already primed elsewhere tends to convert more of the fest's traffic than a game relying on the fest alone to find its first players. Plan paid or organic pushes to land in the weeks before the fest, not after.

Reddit Ads

Reddit's advantage for niche genres is targeting by community: a roguelike can run directly against roguelike subreddits instead of a broad "gamers" interest. The limit is inventory. Small subreddits run out of fresh impressions quickly, and frequency climbs.

Meta Ads

Lookalike audiences are powerful once you have real conversion signal feeding them, which a first-time developer usually does not. Expect to spend a learning budget before the numbers settle, and to refresh creative often on a short campaign.

TikTok Ads

Performance swings hardest on creative. An ad that looks like native gameplay footage tends to beat one that looks like an ad unit. Budget for several creative variations, not one hero cut.

Streamers and Key Giveaways

Mostly unpriced: a key traded for the chance of coverage, paid for in outreach hours. Track it with its own UTM link so it shows up in Steamworks, but do not expect a per-wishlist figure you can compare to a CPM.

Clipping and Organic Page Networks

Same math, different inputs. The placement rides inside content an audience already chose to watch on sports, gaming and meme pages, so the CPM is low, while the first conversion step is weaker than a paid ad's because there is no button. See our guide to clipping for video games for what kind of game footage actually spreads, and clipping CPM benchmarks for 2026 for how networks price views.

Where Organic Placement Fits

Organic placement is a cheap top-of-funnel layer that feeds the same store page as your paid channels, not a replacement for them. Paid social buys precise targeting at a higher CPM. A page network buys volume inside content the audience already watches, at a far lower CPM. The trade-off is laid out in organic views vs. paid ads.

For reference on FindClout's side, using only what the network publishes: logo and caption placement is quoted at a $0.20 CPM ceiling and typically delivers at $0.08 to $0.10, and UGC is never priced under a $6 CPM ceiling. The ceiling is the most a brand pays per thousand verified views; campaigns come with a guaranteed view floor and overdelivery is free. CPM ceiling vs. effective CPM explains why the two numbers differ, and clipping campaign pricing covers minimums and budget math.

Three mechanics matter for a game specifically. Every page on the network has to clear a 40% US-audience floor, verified through the creator's connected Instagram account, and every post shows the page's audience country and age split, so you are not paying for wishlists from regions you did not plan to launch in. Nothing runs until the studio approves the post, and any post can be pulled without paying for it. And payout to a page is capped per post, so if a clip of your game runs away to millions of views, most of that runaway reach costs nothing, which pushes the effective cost per wishlist down on exactly the posts that work.

Tracking Wishlists: Steam UTM Links and the Steamworks Traffic Report

Steam supports UTM-tagged store links (How To Market A Game has a walkthrough of the feature). Give each channel, and ideally each creator or page, its own tagged link, and the Steamworks UTM report breaks out visits, wishlists and purchases by source. That covers paid ads and any post that can carry a link in the caption or bio.

Logo placement inside a clip often cannot carry a link, and organic short-form does not click-attribute the way a pixel does; FindClout says so plainly rather than promising last-click numbers. For those posts, read the Steamworks wishlist chart for spikes aligned to post dates, watch branded search for the game's name in the days after a push, and use a unique tagged link in any page bio that allows one. Directional, but enough to tell a channel that works from one that does not.

When Cost Per Wishlist Is the Wrong Metric

Cost per wishlist measures the top of the funnel, not profit. A wishlist from a viewer who plays your genre is worth several from viewers who tapped out of curiosity, and a channel optimized purely for the cheapest wishlist can buy exactly the second kind. Pair it with three other reads: the share of wishlists that convert at launch (per source, from the UTM report), the country mix of those wishlists against your pricing and localization, and whether wishlist velocity holds after the campaign ends. A $1 wishlist that converts at 30% beats a $0.20 wishlist that converts at 3%.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Steam wishlist cost?

Developers commonly report roughly $0.50 to $2 per wishlist on paid social. One public games-clipping guide models short-form clipping at $0.16 to $0.63 per wishlist at a $1.25 CPM. Your own number is your CPM divided by your view-to-wishlist rate, which is why it varies so much by channel, genre and store page.

How many wishlists do you need before launch?

There is no fixed number. Published wishlist-to-sale conversions range from about 1% to 40%, with 20% in the first year a commonly cited benchmark. How To Market A Game argues that velocity matters more than the total: a game collecting around 15,000 wishlists a year looks far healthier than one under 4,000 a year.

Do clipping campaigns drive wishlists?

They can, by putting the game inside content its audience already watches on gaming, sports and meme pages. The view is cheap, so even a low view-to-wishlist rate can produce a competitive cost per wishlist. The catch is that a logo inside a clip carries no button, so the view-to-visit step is weaker than for a paid ad.

How do you attribute wishlists to short-form video?

Organic short-form does not click-attribute like a pixel. Use a unique Steam UTM link wherever a caption or bio allows one, check the Steamworks wishlist chart for spikes on post dates, and watch branded search for the game's name in the days after a push.

What is a good cost per wishlist?

Judge it against conversion, not in isolation. Below the $0.50 to $2 range developers report for paid social is efficient, but a $1 wishlist that converts at 30% beats a $0.20 wishlist that converts at 3%. Track launch conversion per source in the Steamworks UTM report.

Does Steam Next Fest lower cost per wishlist?

Next Fest has no media cost, so it is not a cost-per-wishlist channel on its own. A demo that performs during the fest lowers the blended cost across every other channel, and games that arrive with an audience already primed tend to convert more of the fest's traffic.

FindClout is a clipping network of vetted pages with verified American audiences. Brands can get a campaign quote, and creators can apply to join the network.