# Waitlist benchmarks: compare your referral and confirmation rates

Waitlist benchmarks show where your referral and confirmation rates stand. This tool divides your referred signups, your sharers and your confirmed signups by your total signups, then places each rate between the percentiles of 701 LaunchList waitlists of your size, created January 2023 to September 2026. You get each rate against the median and the top quarter, and the one step worth changing next.

Use it free, with no signup, at https://getlaunchlist.com/tools/waitlist-benchmark. Updated 2026-10-15.

## What you enter

- **Signups so far**: Everyone on the list, including people who came through a referral.
- **Signups who came through a referral link**: People who joined from someone else's personal link.
- **Signups who referred at least one person**: Count each sharer once, however many friends they brought in.
- **Do you ask new signups to confirm their email?**: Also called double opt-in. Choose yes if signups click a link in an email to confirm.
- **Signups who confirmed**: Out of all your signups. If you turned confirmation on partway through, this rate reads low.

## How it's calculated

**What the data is.** These benchmarks come from LaunchList's own waitlists: 701 waitlists created January 2023 to September 2026, measured once on 2026-10-15. Counted once, read-only, from per-waitlist totals in the production database. Only totals per waitlist left the database: no signup details were exported. The calculator divides your counts the same way and places each rate between the percentiles for waitlists of your size. Your numbers stay in your browser.

**Which waitlists count.** Waitlists created on LaunchList from January 1, 2023 to September 30, 2026 with at least 50 signups, not counting signups added in bulk (10 or more in the same second, which is how a CSV import arrives). Left out: deleted waitlists, waitlists of deleted accounts, LaunchList's own waitlists, waitlists in testing mode, and waitlists whose older signups were moved out of the live database. 701 waitlists qualify.

- **Referral share = signups who came through a referral link ÷ all signups.**
- **Signups who referred = signups who brought in at least one person ÷ all signups.**
- **Referrals per referrer = signups who came through a referral link ÷ signups who referred at least one person.**
- **Confirmed signups = signups who clicked the confirmation link ÷ all signups since confirmation was turned on.**

## What each number means

- **Referral share:** Signups who joined through another signup's personal referral link, divided by all signups. Measured on the 610 waitlists with referral links switched on (91 had them switched off).
- **Signups who referred:** Signups whose referral link brought in at least one person who joined, divided by all signups. Measured on the same 610 waitlists.
- **Referrals per referrer:** Signups who joined through a referral link, divided by the signups who referred at least one person. Measured on the 120 waitlists where at least 10 signups referred someone.
- **Confirmed signups:** Signups who clicked the link in the confirmation email, divided by the signups who joined after the waitlist's first confirmation. Measured on the 128 waitlists with confirmation emails switched on and at least 50 signups since their first confirmation.

Referral share is also a rough viral coefficient: a referral share of 8% means that, over the life of the list, each signup brought in about 0.08 more people on average. The [K-factor](https://getlaunchlist.com/glossary/k-factor) splits the same idea into the share who refer times the friends each one brings.

## How to read your result

The median is the middle waitlist: half did better, half did worse. The 25th and 75th percentiles mark the middle half, and the 90th marks the top 10%. Each waitlist counts once, whatever its size, and percentiles are interpolated between waitlists. A size group with fewer than 30 waitlists is not shown. When your size has too few waitlists for a number, the calculator compares you with all sizes and says so.

## The benchmarks

### Referral share

| Waitlist size | Waitlists | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 50 to 249 signups | 343 | 0% | 0% | 6.9% | 19.1% |
| 250 to 999 signups | 156 | 0% | 0.6% | 6.3% | 25.3% |
| 1,000 or more signups | 111 | 0% | 1.3% | 19.1% | 53% |
| All sizes | 610 | 0% | 0.7% | 7.8% | 26.5% |

### Signups who referred

| Waitlist size | Waitlists | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 50 to 249 signups | 343 | 0% | 0% | 3.3% | 5.9% |
| 250 to 999 signups | 156 | 0% | 0.3% | 2.7% | 4.9% |
| 1,000 or more signups | 111 | 0% | 0.5% | 3.1% | 5.8% |
| All sizes | 610 | 0% | 0.3% | 3% | 5.5% |

### Referrals per referrer

| Waitlist size | Waitlists | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 50 to 249 signups | 18 | Too few to show | | | |
| 250 to 999 signups | 45 | 1.91 | 3.34 | 5.75 | 10.79 |
| 1,000 or more signups | 57 | 2.77 | 5.52 | 10.09 | 17.68 |
| All sizes | 120 | 1.99 | 3.78 | 6.80 | 13.07 |

### Confirmed signups

| Waitlist size | Waitlists | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 50 to 249 signups | 56 | 41.5% | 50.4% | 60% | 74.8% |
| 250 to 999 signups | 29 | Too few to show | | | |
| 1,000 or more signups | 43 | 2.8% | 29.6% | 60.4% | 75.6% |
| All sizes | 128 | 15.2% | 46.4% | 60.7% | 75.3% |

**Signups in the first month.** Signups in the first 7 and the first 30 days after a waitlist's first signup, on the 697 waitlists whose first signup came at least 30 days before measurement. Every one of them went on to reach 50 signups, so these describe waitlists that got going, not every new waitlist. The median got 17 signups in its first 7 days and 57 in its first 30.

## What this data cannot tell you

- Some of the largest waitlists, mostly from 2022 and 2023, had their signups moved out of the live database in April 2026 and are not included, so the data under-represents very large lists. Waitlists of 10,000 or more signups are grouped into 1,000 or more because fewer than 30 remain.
- 270 of the 610 waitlists with referral links switched on (44%) got no referral signups at all, which pulls the referral medians close to zero. Some of them collect signups through their own form or the API and may never have shown people a referral link.
- Whether referral links and confirmation emails are switched on is read from each waitlist's settings today. A waitlist that changed the setting along the way is counted by its current setting.
- Signups who never received the confirmation email, for any reason, count as not confirmed.
- Counts include signups a founder later deleted (1.4% of a list at the median) and any spam that was not caught.
- These are waitlists that chose LaunchList, not a sample of every waitlist. No industry or category is recorded for them, so there is no breakdown by industry.
- Visitor-to-signup conversion is not benchmarked: page visits were not recorded for most of the period.
- Signup-to-customer conversion happens after launch and is not in this data.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is a good waitlist referral rate?

On LaunchList waitlists created January 2023 to September 2026 (measured 2026-10-15), the median share of signups that came through a referral link is 0.7%, because many lists get few or no referrals. A quarter of waitlists reach 7.8% or more and the top 10% reach 26.5%, so a rate above 7.8% is good. On the median list 0.3% of signups referred someone who joined; where at least 10 did, each brought in 3.78 people at the median.

### What is a good double opt-in confirmation rate?

On LaunchList waitlists that ask new signups to confirm their email (sometimes called a verification rate), the median waitlist had 46.4% of its signups confirm and the top quarter 60.7% or more (128 waitlists created January 2023 to September 2026, measured 2026-10-15). Signups who never received the email count as not confirmed.

### How many signups does a waitlist get in its first month?

On LaunchList waitlists created January 2023 to September 2026 that went on to reach at least 50 signups, the median got 17 signups in its first 7 days and 57 in its first 30. A quarter got 161 or more in the first 30 days (697 waitlists, measured 2026-10-15). Waitlists that never reached 50 are not counted, so a typical new list starts slower than this.

### What is a good waitlist conversion rate?

It depends which conversion you mean. Visitors to signups needs page visits, which LaunchList did not record for most of January 2023 to September 2026, so this tool does not benchmark it. The steps after the signup are measured here: the share who refer someone (median 0.3%) and the share who confirm their email (median 46.4%). Signups to paying customers happens after launch, outside the waitlist.

### How can I improve my waitlist conversion rate?

Find the weak step first, which is what the calculator does. If few signups share, put the referral link and a reason to share on the screen people see right after they sign up and in the first email. If sharers bring in few friends each, give them a goal, such as earlier access at a set number of referrals. If few confirm, check that the confirmation email arrives and leads with its button. Then measure again on the next few hundred signups.

### Where does this benchmark data come from?

From LaunchList's own data: 701 waitlists created January 2023 to September 2026, each with at least 50 signups, counted once on 2026-10-15 as totals per waitlist. No signup's details were exported, and the numbers you enter stay in your browser. The data leaves out some of the largest older waitlists and has no industry breakdown; every limitation is listed under What this data cannot tell you.

## Glossary terms

- [Pre-launch waitlist](https://getlaunchlist.com/glossary/pre-launch-waitlist.md)
- [Waitlist conversion rate](https://getlaunchlist.com/glossary/waitlist-conversion-rate.md)

## Related tools

- [Waitlist growth simulator](https://getlaunchlist.com/tools/waitlist-growth-simulator.md): Project how big your waitlist gets in the weeks before launch, with and without referrals.
- [Referral program ROI calculator](https://getlaunchlist.com/tools/referral-reward-calculator.md): Price a referral reward and see the ROI of a referral program before you launch it.
- [Product Hunt upvote calculator](https://getlaunchlist.com/tools/launch-day-forecaster.md): Estimate the upvotes your own list and network bring to a Product Hunt launch, and what closes the gap.