Day 30 retention benchmark for Gaming apps (2026)

    Day 30 retention benchmark for Gaming apps

    Published range

    4%–8%

    Across 2 published sources, which do not agree. The spread is the finding.

    Why the published figures disagree

    Most pages answering this question state one number. That is misleading here: the sources below differ by more than the gap between a healthy app and a failing one, and the difference is almost entirely methodology — which apps were in the sample, whether installs were paid or organic, and how the day window was counted.

    Comparing your own figure against the wrong one of these produces the wrong decision, which is the practical reason this page lists all of them instead of averaging.

    Every published figure

    • 4%–8%

      Pushwoosh, 2026 · taken from the publisher's summary

    • 4%

      Hyper-casual; mid-core nearer 10%

      UXCam, 2026 · taken from the publisher's summary

    What day 30 retention actually measures

    The share of users still returning a month after install.

    Where the measurement goes wrong

    D30 is where published benchmarks diverge most, because it is most sensitive to whether a cohort is paid or organic. A benchmark drawn mostly from paid installs will sit far below one drawn from organic.

    Three things that change how you should read this

    Business model predicts retention better than category does
    Subscription apps retain around 14% at D30 against 5.4% for ad-supported ones. A subscription gaming app retains better than an ad-supported fintech app, which means comparing yourself to your category average can mislead you in either direction. Business of Apps
    The all-category median is roughly 4% and tells you nothing
    Retention varies four to five times across industries, so a global average is not a benchmark, it is an artefact of whichever mix of apps the sample contained. UXCam
    Roughly two thirds of fintech installs in India are organic
    Which matters for reading any paid-heavy benchmark against your own numbers: an organic-led cohort retains differently, and most published benchmarks do not separate the two. Apptrove

    Your number is below this. Now what?

    A benchmark tells you whether to worry, not what to do. Retention is downstream of activation: if users are not reaching the thing the product is for, no amount of re-engagement fixes the curve. That is the first thing worth checking, and it is usually the least instrumented part of the funnel.