Mobile app retention is a crucial metric that measures the percentage of users who continue using your app after initial installation. In today's competitive mobile landscape, achieving high user retention rates is essential for long-term success. But what are the average retention rates by industry, and how can you improve yours?
What Is Mobile App Retention?
Mobile app retention measures the percentage of people who continue using your app after the initial installation. 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?
You measure retention by dividing the number of users at the end of a given period by those active at the start of it. It's often tracked in time-based snapshots: Day 1, Day 7, and Day 30. For instance, if you have four users at the start of the month but only one at the end, you have a 25% 30-day retention rate.
Expectations for App Retention Rates
Expectations for app retention rates vary significantly across categories. A social app might expect a Day 1 rate of 30% or more, while a niche utility tool, like a mobile PDF scanner, might hover in the single digits. That doesn't necessarily mean the PDF scanner is failing; it's just not the sort of app people open every day.
What Are the Average Retention Rates by Industry?
Not sure how your mobile app retention rate holds up to the competition? Here are some benchmarks and stats to help you gauge your performance:
| App Category | Day 1 | Day 7 | Day 30 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business | 25.38% | 16.85% | 6.94% |
| Education | 27.5% | 17.76% | 8.02% |
| Entertainment | 28.4% | 18.15% | 8.46% |
| Finance | 26.84% | 18.54% | 8.03% |
| Food & Drink | 22.86% | 18.85% | 7.86% |
| Games | 32.22% | 18.08% | 7.67% |
| Health & Fitness | 28% | 18.13% | 8.48% |
| Lifestyle | 25% | 13.13% | 5.94% |
| News | 26.67% | 15.83% | 7.55% |
| Productivity | 32.86% | 24.23% | 9.63% |
| Shopping | 29.09% | 18.26% | 7.2% |
| Utilities | 28.18% | 16.75% | 9.2% |
What These Numbers Really Highlight
When you look at mobile app 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.
What's the Most Popular App Store Category?
Games dominate the largest share of available apps in the iOS App Store, followed closely by business and utility categories.
| Category | Share of Apps |
|---|---|
| Games | 11.86% |
| Business | 10.11% |
| Utilities | 9.73% |
| Education | 9.56% |
| Lifestyle | 7.6% |
| Food & Drink | 6.62% |
| Health & Fitness | 5.68% |
| Productivity | 5.14% |
| Shopping | 5.12% |
| Finance | 4.38% |
| Entertainment | 3.82% |
| Travel | 3.33% |
| Sports | 2.67% |
| Medical | 2.27% |
| Social Networking | 2.14% |
| Music | 1.92% |
| Photo & Video | 1.59% |
| Reference | 1.46% |
| News | 1.46% |
| Navigation | 1.13% |
| Books | 0.92% |
| Stickers | 0.57% |
| Graphics & Design | 0.34% |
| Weather | 0.3% |
| Newsstand | 0.14% |
| Developer Tools | 0.14% |
App Retention Benchmarks You Should Know in 2026
Here are some key app retention benchmarks and related data that product managers should know in 2026:
Overall Retention Stats
How Do Retention Gains Compare Between Android and iOS?
The gap between which apps people engage with on iOS and Android is huge. On Android, the biggest retention gains went to apps that tap into core human behaviors, specifically: Dating (+35% YoY), Education (+29% YoY), and Social Media (+23% YoY).
Why Do Users Uninstall Apps?
The three most common reasons users uninstall an app are: freeing up storage space, feeling overwhelmed by too many ads, and having never opened the app to begin with.
What Are the Apps with the Highest Monthly Active Users (MAU)?
The app with the most MAU is Facebook, with over 3 billion active users. YouTube sits next at 2.5 billion users and Instagram at 2 billion users. Meta's whole portfolio, namely, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, together hit over 7 billion monthly users.
What Are the Most Popular App Subgenres?
Social Media (part of Social), Film & Television Streaming (part of Media & Entertainment), and Shopping (General) (part of Shopping) are the most popular subgenres by downloads. They all managed to post modest but positive year-over-year growth at the global level.
Examining total time spent in the app by subgenre, Social Media is the clear winner, with Social Messaging in a distant second