2026 Guide to App Retention by Rates (with Metrics, Statistics, & Tips)

On average, only about 28% of users return to a mobile app the day after installing it. By Day 7, that falls to about 18%, and by Day 30, just 8% are still active, according to OneSignal's benchmarks across 12 app categories. Many users never come back at all: on Android, apps are uninstalled within 30 days of install 46% of the time, according to AppsFlyer.

That's why user acquisition alone isn't enough to secure your mobile app's long-term growth. Product managers also need a strategy to keep users engaged and minimize churn.

In this guide, you'll learn what app retention is, how to measure it, what counts as a good retention rate, and what retention benchmarks look like across industries and platforms, along with the latest data on why users stay or leave.

App Retention Benchmarks at a Glance

Benchmarks vary a lot between sources because each one measures a different set of apps and calculates retention in its own way. AppsFlyer, for example, averages apps with at least 50,000 installs per quarter, including installs from paid campaigns. For the most useful comparison, pick one source and compare your app against the same metric in it consistently.

What Is Mobile App Retention?

Mobile app retention measures the percentage of people who continue using your app after installing it. It matters because user acquisition isn't cheap. In practice, it answers the most uncomfortable question product teams and marketers face: Do users actually use our product after installing it?

When retention is high, it means the app is delivering value. Your audience will have a higher average lifetime value, refer friends, and tolerate the occasional bug.

When it's low, you'll miss out on potential revenue, while losing time and money investigating why users churn and how to keep them.

How Do You Measure App Retention?

Retention is usually measured by cohort. Take a group of users who installed your app on the same day, then count how many of them open the app again on a specific day afterward:

Day N retention = users from the install cohort who are active on Day N ÷ total users in the install cohort

For example, if 1,000 people install your app on March 1 and 250 of them open it on March 2, your Day 1 retention is 25%. If 80 of the same 1,000 open it on March 31, your Day 30 retention is 8%.

Teams typically track Day 1, Day 7, and Day 30 retention:

• Day 1 retention shows whether onboarding and the first experience clicked.
• Day 7 retention indicates whether the app is sticky enough to become a habit.
• Day 30 retention shows whether it's delivering sustained value.

Some analytics tools also report "rolling" or "unbounded" retention, which counts users who return on Day N or any day after it. That produces higher numbers than the classic Day N method, so check which definition a benchmark uses before comparing it to your own data.

What Is a Good App Retention Rate?

A good retention rate is one that beats the benchmark for your app's category and platform. Using the benchmarks above:

• A Day 1 retention rate above about 28% puts an app above OneSignal's cross-category average. In AppsFlyer's data, the average app retains 23.9% of users on iOS and 20.3% on Android after one day.
• A Day 30 retention rate above about 8% beats OneSignal's average. AppsFlyer's per-app averages are much lower: 3.7% on iOS and 2.1% on Android.
• Category matters as much as the number. A social app might expect a high Day 1 rate, while a niche utility, like a mobile PDF scanner, might hover in the single digits. That doesn't mean the PDF scanner is failing; it's just not the sort of app people open every day.

The shape of your retention curve also matters. Healthy apps lose most of the users they'll ever lose in the first week, and then the curve flattens. If your curve keeps declining steadily after Day 30, users aren't finding lasting value.

What's the Average Retention Rate by Industry?

Here's what the average retention rate for mobile apps looks like across different industries, according to OneSignal's most recent public benchmarks, published in 2024:

When you look at these benchmarks, the drop-off is steep and immediate. On average, only 28.29% of users come back the very next day after installing an app. By the end of the first week, that number falls to 17.86%, and by Day 30, you're typically left with just 7.88% still active.

Productivity apps retain users best across all three time frames, while Lifestyle apps have the lowest Day 7 and Day 30 retention. OneSignal's newer 2026 State of Customer Engagement Report includes updated retention benchmarks by category, available as a gated download.

How Does App Retention Compare on iOS and Android?

iOS apps retain users better than Android apps at every stage. In AppsFlyer's 2025 app retention benchmarks report, which analyzed 11,000 apps and 10.6 billion installs, the average app retained:

The categories gaining retention were very different on each platform. On Android, the biggest year-over-year retention gains went to apps that tap into core human behaviors:

• Dating (+35% YoY)
• Education (+29% YoY)
• Social Media (+23% YoY)

On iOS, lifestyle categories drove the biggest gains:

• News & Magazines (+24% YoY)
• Health & Fitness (+22% YoY)
• Photo & Video (+20% YoY)

The steepest declines were in Utilities & Productivity (−13%) on Android and Casinos & Gambling (−45%) on iOS. AppsFlyer has since retired this report page, so the link above points to an archived copy. For current figures by category, see AppsFlyer's live benchmarks, which are updated quarterly.

App Retention Statistics You Should Know in 2026

Here are the key retention-related statistics product managers should know in 2026:

Why Users Uninstall Apps

• On Android, the average app is uninstalled within 30 days of install 46.1% of the time, down slightly from 46.9% the year before. In the US, the rate is 48%. Dating and gaming apps have the highest uninstall rates. [AppsFlyer App Uninstall Report, 2025 edition]

• The three most common reasons people uninstall an app are freeing up phone storage (32%), too many in-app ads (30%), and never using the app (26%). Most people (73%) decide whether to delete an app within a week or two. [Airship Mobile Consumer 2023]

What Improves Retention Rates

Do you have the right game plan for improving your mobile app engagement? Certain strategies and tactics have a significant impact on app retention. Owned channels (such as push notifications, SMS, and email) and AI-powered personalization are leading the way:

• App users who receive any push notifications in their first 90 days have a 3x higher retention rate than those who receive none, according to Airship's research. [Airship Push Notification Benchmarks 2023]

• 90% of consumers say they're willing to spend more with companies that personalize the customer service experience. [Zendesk CX Trends 2022] Expectations keep rising in the age of AI integration: 67% of consumers now expect brands to tailor support based on their prior interactions. [Zendesk CX Trends 2026]

• Moving an app from a three-star to a four-star rating can increase conversions by 89%, based on the minimum star ratings consumers say they'll accept before downloading an app. [Apptentive 2022 Mobile Consumer Engagement Report]

Customer Needs That Impact Retention

Mobile app users expect more from companies, and they won't stick around if you can't provide a great experience.

• 63% of consumers are willing to switch to a competitor after just one bad experience, a figure that grew 9% year over year. [Zendesk CX Trends 2025]

• The top reasons customers stopped buying from a brand in the past year were high prices (65%), poor customer service (43%), and inconsistent product or service quality (40%). [Salesforce State of the AI Connected Customer, 2024]

• 73% of customers say companies treat them as unique individuals, up from 39% in 2023, which raises the bar for apps that still deliver a one-size-fits-all experience. [Salesforce State of the AI Connected Customer, 2024]

How In-App Chat and Community Features Affect Retention

Features that connect users to each other give them a reason to come back. Stream's customers have seen this in their own data:

• Partiful: At the event-hosting app, users who send at least one message have double the retention rate of those who send none. [Partiful case study, 2025]

• Together with Kai: Among users of the AI companion app who mutually opt into video calls with each other, Day 7 retention is roughly 3x the platform baseline, which the company calls an early signal. [Together with Kai case study, 2026]

• Activity feeds: In a survey of 132 customers using Stream's Activity Feeds API, customers reported an average 60% increase in user retention and a 66% increase in user engagement after adding feeds. These figures are self-reported by customers. [Stream Activity Feeds survey]

Note that the Partiful and Together with Kai figures compare users who engage with a feature to those who don't, so they show a strong link between social features and retention rather than proving cause and effect. Still, they point in the same direction as the industry data above: the apps that keep users are the ones that become part of how people connect.

Industry-Based Retention Stats in 2026

Next, let's look at how specific verticals are doing in terms of app retention and engagement, based on Adjust's Mobile App Trends 2026 report, which covers 2025 data, unless noted otherwise.

Marketplace and Ecommerce App Retention Stats

• Marketplace apps remain the stickiest ecommerce segment, with about one in four users coming back the day after installing.

• Between 2024 and 2025, marketplace and classifieds apps saw Day 1 retention dip from 25% to 24%, Day 7 from 15% to 14%, and Day 14 from 12% to 11%, while Day 30 held steady at 8%.

• Ecommerce apps as a whole retain far fewer users: Day 1 retention fell from 13.2% to 12.6%, and Day 30 held at 3%. General shopping apps retained just 12% of users on Day 1 and 2% on Day 30.

• Marketplace and classifieds apps also became cheaper to acquire users for, with median cost per install (CPI) falling from $0.99 to $0.88.

Gaming App Retention Stats

• Retention for gaming apps held flat between 2024 and 2025: 27% on Day 1, 13% on Day 7, 8% on Day 14, and 5% on Day 30.

• Hyper-casual games retain users much less over time, with 27% on Day 1 but just 2% on Day 30.

• Acquiring players got more expensive, with gaming CPI rising 30% to $0.56.

Fintech App Retention Stats

• Fintech apps saw Day 1 retention dip from 13% to 12% between 2024 and 2025. Day 7 held at 6%, while Day 30 slipped from 3% to 2%.

• Even as installs fell 4%, sessions in finance apps grew 21% in 2025, led by Latin America (+57%) and Asia-Pacific (+50%).

• Acquiring finance app users became cheaper, with global CPI falling from $1.51 to $1.13.

Health and Fitness App Retention Stats

• In Q3 2026, fitness apps retained 19.43% of users on Day 1, 8.57% on Day 7, and 3.30% on Day 30 globally. iOS outperformed Android at every stage (21.71% vs. 17.03% on Day 1). [AppsFlyer Benchmarks, Health & Fitness]

• Retention for non-gaming apps varies widely by country. On iOS, the Netherlands had the highest average Day 1 retention (24.42%) and Egypt the lowest (11.95%), while Sweden led on Day 30 (5.95%). On Android, Bangladesh had the lowest Day 30 retention (0.82%). [AppsFlyer 2025 app retention benchmarks report, Q3 2024 data]

Video Streaming App Retention Stats

• The average monthly churn rate for US premium streaming services was 4.6% in 2025, while subscriber growth slowed to 7%, down from 12% in 2024. [Antenna, 2025 Year in Review]

• Serial churners, subscribers who have canceled three or more premium streaming services in two years, made up 23% of US premium streaming subscribers at the end of Q3 2024. They also drove 41% of the industry's new sign-ups that year, as they cycled back to services they'd left. [Antenna, 2024 serial churn insights]

Time Spent in Apps

• Consumers spent 5.3 trillion hours in mobile apps in 2025, up 3.8% year over year, or about 3.6 hours per user per day. Social media apps accounted for nearly 2.5 trillion of those hours. [Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2026]

Value Is Your Secret Weapon in the Fight for Retention

The benchmarks above paint a different picture depending on the type of product you're building, but there are some underlying themes: most users decide within the first week whether an app is worth keeping, and they stay with apps that deliver clear value with the fewest tradeoffs.

Marketplaces that connect buyers and sellers, games players have already invested time in, and apps that let people message, share, and meet each other consistently retain users better than apps people only open for a one-off task.

That doesn't mean your app can't retain and engage users like the rest of them.

You can increase retention by bringing awareness to your app's value early on, avoiding overloading phones with ads or large file sizes, adding social features that give users a reason to return, and sticking to tried-and-true engagement strategies with modern twists (like AI-powered personalization).