Steam Wishlist Calculator: Estimate Wishlists, Sales and Campaign Results

Short answer: the numbers that matter for a Steam launch come down to a few multiplications. Wishlists are roughly followers × 24 (range 8 to 38 in our campaign data). First week sales are roughly launch wishlists × 0.10 to 0.20. Wishlists from a creator campaign are roughly the creator budget ÷ $0.49 at the median. Below are the tables, where each number comes from, and a free forecast for your own Steam page.

1. Wishlists from followers

Steam doesn't show wishlist counts for games that aren't yours, but the follower count on every store page is public. Followers are a small slice of wishlisters, and the two move together.

In our campaign data, each new Steam follower came with about 24 new wishlists at the median, across 14 campaigns, with a range from roughly 8 to 38. On the two games where we checked against the studio's own Steamworks numbers, the ratio was 29 and 31.

Followers	Low (×8)	Median (×24)	High (×38)
500	4,000	12,000	19,000
2,000	16,000	48,000	76,000
10,000	80,000	240,000	380,000

The ratio was measured on new followers and new wishlists during campaigns, so for a game's lifetime total treat it as a rough range. For your own game, skip the estimate and read the real number in Steamworks. Here is where to find it.

2. First week sales from wishlists

GameDiscoverCo's data puts first week sales at about 0.10 to 0.20 of the wishlists a game had at launch. The latest median is 0.15 for games above 25,000 wishlists, and 0.10 for games priced above $10 (GameDiscoverCo, October 2025).

Launch wishlists	Cautious (×0.10)	Median (×0.15)	Strong (×0.20)
5,000	500	750	1,000
20,000	2,000	3,000	4,000
50,000	5,000	7,500	10,000

First week sales include players who never wishlisted the game, and the spread between games is wide. First week reviews matter most. The details are in Steam wishlist conversion rate.

The first week isn't the whole story either. In GameDiscoverCo's 2024 developer survey, the median game earned 3.16 times its first week revenue over its first year (GameDiscoverCo, April 2024).

3. Wishlists from a creator campaign budget

Across 105 short-form creator campaigns on Trapster, the median cost per wishlist was $0.49, counting what creators were paid. A quarter of campaigns came in under $0.17 and a quarter went over $1.41. A $3,000 campaign puts $2,400 in front of creators.

Campaign budget	Worst quarter ($1.41)	Median ($0.49)	Best quarter ($0.17)
$3,000	1,700	4,900	14,100
$5,000	2,800	8,200	23,500
$10,000	5,700	16,300	47,100

Genre shifts the median: strategy came in at $0.33 and co-op at $0.76. The full table and method are in Steam cost per wishlist by genre. The forecast on this page matches your Steam tags to the right genre row for you.

A worked example

A game with 1,000 followers probably has around 24,000 wishlists, somewhere between 8,000 and 38,000. A $5,000 creator campaign at the median adds about 8,200. That is roughly 32,000 wishlists going into launch, which at 0.10 to 0.20 means about 3,200 to 6,400 first week sales.

Every step carries a range, so the result is a planning number, not a promise. It tells you whether you are closer to a few hundred launch sales or a few thousand, and that is usually the decision you need to make.

How to track the real numbers

Once your game has a Steamworks page, stop estimating your own wishlists. Steamworks reports adds, deletes and purchases daily. If you run a campaign on Trapster, you can connect your Steamworks Financial API key, and Trapster pulls your real daily wishlists next to the campaign. For a step by step method, see how to measure wishlists from a creator campaign.

FAQ

How do I calculate how many wishlists a Steam game has? For another game, multiply its follower count by about 24, with a realistic range of 8 to 38. For your own game, read the number in Steamworks under Sales & Activation Reports.

How many sales do wishlists bring at launch? About 0.10 to 0.20 first week sales per launch wishlist. GameDiscoverCo's latest median is 0.15 for games with more than 25,000 wishlists.

How much does a Steam wishlist cost? On Trapster's short-form creator campaigns, the median is $0.49 per wishlist, and the best quarter came in under $0.17.

How many wishlists will a $3,000 creator campaign bring? About 4,900 at the all genre median, between 1,700 and 14,100 across the worst and best quarters.

Is there a free Steam wishlist calculator? Yes. The forecast on this page takes your Steam link and budget and returns a median and best case estimate from our campaign data.

Sources: Trapster campaign data (followers to wishlists ratio from 14 campaigns, cost per wishlist from 105 campaigns); GameDiscoverCo newsletter issues from April 2024 and October 2025. Cost per wishlist excludes the platform fee.