App Categories With the Highest Retention: Sourced Benchmarks by Category
Fintech and lifestyle keep the most users a month after install. Games win the first day and lose most of them. Every figure carries its source and its year.
Measured a month after install, fintech and lifestyle apps keep the most users: 9% each in Adjust’s 2022 medians, ahead of health and fitness and social at 7%. Games are the trap. They lead Day 1 retention and then lose most of those users within the month, and hyper-casual games keep just 2%. This page uses only figures the measurement companies published themselves, each with its year, because the vendors’ current category data now sits behind forms and much of what circulates as this year’s benchmark is older data under a new date.
What This Guide Covers
- Day 30 leaders: fintech and lifestyle, 9%
- Day 1 leaders: games and social, 29%
- Why Day 1 winners lose by Day 30
- iOS vs Android can flip a category’s rank
- What a good retention rate actually is
- Why the benchmarks you read disagree
On dates: the public category data is Adjust’s 2022 figures and 2024 analysis, and AppsFlyer’s 2021 report. None of it is relabelled as 2026. The App Store category charts were captured on 11 September 2026.
Get Started FreeTL;DR Quick Summary
At Day 30, the checkpoint that reflects whether an app became a habit, fintech and lifestyle apps led Adjust’s 2022 medians at 9%, followed by health and fitness and social at 7%, gaming at 6% and e-commerce at 5%. Travel, food and drink and hyper-casual games retained worst at 4%, 3% and 2%. AppsFlyer’s 2021 figures put finance at 9.27% on Android and 10.74% on iOS and casino and sports betting at 12.47% on Android, but only 7.56% on iOS, so the platform can reorder a category’s rank. Day 1 tells a different story: games and social led Adjust’s 2024 figures at 29%, yet hyper-casual games kept only about 8% of their first-day returners a month later, against about 41% for fintech and 39% for lifestyle apps. Across all categories Adjust’s 2024 medians were 26% on Day 1 and 7% on Day 30. A good retention rate is one above the median for your own category, platform and region, measured with the same definition.
Build an App Free →Table of Contents
Jump to any section: the short answer, Day 30 and Day 1 benchmarks by category, why Day 1 leaders fall away, iOS versus Android, regions, what a good retention rate is, why published benchmarks disagree, why some categories retain better, how to benchmark your own app, and the limits of all of it.
- Which app categories have the highest retention?
- Day 30 retention by category: fintech and lifestyle lead
- Day 1 retention by category: games and social lead
- The Day 1 leaders are not the Day 30 leaders
- iOS vs Android: the platform can reorder the ranking
- Retention by region: APAC and Europe hold users longest
- What is a good app retention rate?
- Why the retention benchmarks you read disagree
- Why some categories keep users and others don’t
- How to benchmark your own app against these numbers
- What these benchmarks can’t tell you
- What this means if you’re building an app
- Frequently Asked Questions
Which app categories have the highest retention?
Measured at Day 30, which is the benchmark that matters, fintech and lifestyle apps retain best. In Adjust’s 2022 medians both kept 9% of new users a month after install, ahead of health and fitness and social apps at 7%. AppsFlyer’s 2021 figures agree on finance, which kept 9.27% of users on Android and 10.74% on iOS, and add two categories that Adjust does not break out: casino and sports betting apps on Android (12.47%) and dating apps (8.78% on Android, 7.01% on iOS).
The categories that retain worst are just as consistent: hyper-casual games (2%), food and drink (3%) and travel (4%) at Day 30. Games are the odd case. They win Day 1 comfortably and then lose most of those users within the month.
Read this before you use any number on this page
The freely published, category-level retention data from the two largest measurement companies is 2021 and 2022 data. Their current figures are gated: AppsFlyer’s quarterly benchmark dashboard asks you to fill in a lead form before it shows anything, and Adjust’s 2026 trends report is a download, with no retention figures on its public page.
So every figure below carries its source and year, and nothing is relabelled as 2026. That matters, because many articles now published as current retention benchmarks re-quote these same older numbers under a new year, and several disagree with each other by a wide margin.
Day 30 retention by category: fintech and lifestyle lead
Day 30 retention is the share of people who installed an app and were still opening it thirty days later. Adjust published its medians by category for 2022, drawn from the dataset behind its Mobile App Trends report, which covers more than 5,000 apps.
| Category (Adjust, 2022) | Day 1 | Day 30 |
|---|---|---|
| Fintech | 22% | 9% |
| Lifestyle | 23% | 9% |
| Health and fitness | 24% | 7% |
| Social | 23% | 7% |
| Gaming | 29% | 6% |
| E-commerce | 19% | 5% |
| Travel | 15% | 4% |
| Food and drink | 12% | 3% |
| Hyper-casual games | 26% | 2% |
Source: Adjust, “Get the mobile app retention benchmarks for 2023”, published 25 April 2023, reporting 2022 medians. Fintech’s Day 1 figure appears in Adjust’s chart rather than its text.
Why Day 30 is the benchmark to use
Day 1 tells you whether the first session worked. Day 30 tells you whether the app became part of someone’s routine, which is what revenue, referrals and store ranking actually depend on. The global median across all of Adjust’s apps in 2022 was 6% at Day 30, so a category at 9% is keeping half as many users again as the typical app.
The bottom of the table
The weakest categories share a pattern: people use them for a task that ends. A trip gets booked, a meal gets ordered, a hyper-casual game gets finished or gets boring. Health and fitness is the counter-example worth noticing. Adjust reported that its Day 30 retention rose from 3% in 2021 to 7% in 2022, the largest improvement of any vertical that year.
Day 1 retention by category: games and social lead
Adjust’s 2024 analysis gives the most recent public Day 1 figures by category. Day 1 is the share of new users who come back the day after install, so it mostly reflects the first session and onboarding.
| Category (Adjust, April 2024) | Day 1 retention |
|---|---|
| Gaming | 29% |
| Social | 29% |
| Health and fitness | 27% |
| Fintech | 22% |
| Utility | 21% |
| Entertainment | 20% |
| Shopping | 18% |
| Travel | 16% |
| Food and drink | 13% |
Source: Adjust, “What makes a good app retention rate?”, published 16 April 2024. Global Day 1 medians by vertical.
What Day 1 actually measures
A strong Day 1 means the first session delivered something worth returning for. A weak one almost always points at onboarding: too many permission prompts, a sign-up wall before any value, or a first screen that does not show what the app is for. If that is where your own numbers fall short, our guide to increasing app retention covers the fixes. This page stays with the benchmarks.
The rankings shifted between the two Adjust datasets
Comparing Adjust’s 2022 and 2024 Day 1 figures for the same verticals, social rose from 23% to 29% and health and fitness from 24% to 27%, while gaming held at 29% and fintech at 22%. Read that as a direction rather than a precise trend: the two posts do not describe their samples in identical terms.
The Day 1 leaders are not the Day 30 leaders
Put the two columns of Adjust’s 2022 data side by side and a different ranking appears. Divide each category’s Day 30 median by its Day 1 median and you get the share of first-day returners who were still there a month later.
| Category (Adjust, 2022) | Day 1 | Day 30 | Day 30 as a share of Day 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech | 22% | 9% | 9 / 22 = 41% |
| Lifestyle | 23% | 9% | 9 / 23 = 39% |
| Social | 23% | 7% | 7 / 23 = 30% |
| Health and fitness | 24% | 7% | 7 / 24 = 29% |
| Travel | 15% | 4% | 4 / 15 = 27% |
| E-commerce | 19% | 5% | 5 / 19 = 26% |
| Food and drink | 12% | 3% | 3 / 12 = 25% |
| Gaming | 29% | 6% | 6 / 29 = 21% |
| Hyper-casual games | 26% | 2% | 2 / 26 = 8% |
Derived by Appy Pie AI from Adjust’s published 2022 medians, including the fintech Day 1 figure shown in Adjust’s chart. No ratio mixes sources or years.
Fintech keeps 41% of its Day 1 users; hyper-casual games keep 8%
Hyper-casual games are second-best at Day 1 and last at Day 30. Fintech and lifestyle apps start mid-table and hold on to far more of the users they win. Gaming overall sits in the lower half by this measure even though it tops the Day 1 table.
Two honest caveats on the arithmetic
Adjust publishes whole percentages, so a ratio built from them is approximate: 7 / 24 could be anything from roughly 27% to 31% once rounding is allowed for. And a ratio of two medians is not the median of each app’s own ratio. Use the column to compare the shape of retention across categories, not as a figure to quote to the decimal.
iOS vs Android: the platform can reorder the ranking
Across all categories, iOS users are stickier. Adjust’s 2024 medians put iOS at 27% on Day 1 and 8% on Day 30, against 24% and 6% on Android. The gap is not the same in every category, though, and in some it runs the other way.
| Category (AppsFlyer, 2021) | Android Day 1 | Android Day 30 | iOS Day 1 | iOS Day 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casino real money and sports betting | 28.15% | 12.47% | 25.05% | 7.56% |
| Finance | 16.96% | 9.27% | 21.58% | 10.74% |
| Dating | 28.30% | 8.78% | 28.95% | 7.01% |
| Books | 29.43% | 8.11% | 21.83% | 7.74% |
| Business | 16.09% | 6.98% | 13.88% | 6.46% |
| Entertainment | 17.10% | 4.65% | 17.83% | 4.42% |
| Education | 13.93% | 2.69% | 14.59% | 3.23% |
Source: AppsFlyer 2021 retention report, as preserved on AppsFlyer’s retention-rate glossary. The original report page now redirects to that glossary.
Casino and sports betting: first on Android, mid-table on iOS
On Android this category kept 12.47% of users at Day 30, the highest figure in AppsFlyer’s table. On iOS the same category fell to 7.56%, behind finance, books and dating. A benchmark quoted without a platform can put an app in the wrong half of the table.
Finance and education run the other way
Finance retained better on iOS (10.74%) than on Android (9.27%), and education did too (3.23% against 2.69%). Books went the opposite direction, holding 8.11% on Android against 7.74% on iOS. If your audience leans heavily to one store, benchmark against that store’s column. For how the two stores compare on downloads and revenue, see our App Store vs Google Play comparison.
Retention by region: APAC and Europe hold users longest
Adjust’s 2024 analysis also split its all-category medians by region. APAC led at every checkpoint, and by Day 30 APAC and Europe were level at 6%.
| Region (Adjust, April 2024) | Day 1 | Day 7 | Day 14 | Day 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global | 26% | 13% | 10% | 7% |
| APAC | 26% | 12% | 9% | 6% |
| Europe | 24% | 11% | 8% | 6% |
| LATAM | 26% | 11% | 7% | 5% |
| North America | 23% | 10% | 7% | 5% |
| MENA | 24% | 10% | 7% | 4% |
Source: Adjust, “What makes a good app retention rate?”, 16 April 2024.
North America is the hardest region to retain in, on these numbers
Adjust also published Day 1 retention by region for nine categories. North America had the lowest, or joint-lowest, figure in six of them: gaming (26%), utility (14%), fintech (13%, level with LATAM), entertainment (15%), shopping (11%) and travel (12%). The largest regional gap in a single category was in shopping, where Europe and MENA reached 16% against North America’s 11%.
Where each category does best
Social apps peaked in Europe at 29% on Day 1. Fintech was strongest in MENA at 18%, followed by Europe at 17%. Utility apps did best in APAC at 19%. Food and drink was low everywhere, around 10% to 11%, and lowest of all in LATAM at 8%.
What is a good app retention rate?
The honest answer is: better than the median for your category, on your platform, measured the same way. As a starting reference, Adjust’s 2024 medians across all categories were26% on Day 1, 13% on Day 7, 10% on Day 14 and 7% on Day 30.
Adjust also offers a rule of thumb for the very first checkpoint, writing that an app is generally considered high-performing if it retains over a third of its users after install. Against a 26% median Day 1, that is a clear margin above typical.
Compare against your category, not the overall average
A 7% Day 30 would be ordinary for an app in general, strong for a travel or food and drink app, where the 2022 medians were 4% and 3%, and below par for fintech or lifestyle at 9%. The same number can be a success or a warning depending on the row you compare it with.
Compare like with like
Match the platform, because iOS medians run about two points higher at Day 30. Match the region where most of your users are. And match the definition, which the next section shows is where most benchmark comparisons quietly go wrong.
Why the retention benchmarks you read disagree
Search for app retention benchmarks and you will find fintech Day 30 figures that differ several-fold from one article to the next. Most of that disagreement has ordinary causes, and knowing them is the difference between a useful benchmark and a misleading one.
“Retained” means different things
Classic Day N retention counts users who opened the app on exactly day N. Rolling retention counts anyone who returned on day N or later, which always produces a higher number. Even the length of a day varies: Adjust defines a day as a 24-hour period measured from install, rather than a calendar day. Two honest reports can disagree simply by using different definitions.
Medians, averages and different sets of apps
A median is the middle app. An average can be pulled up by a few very sticky apps. Vendors also measure different customers: each one only sees the apps that use its product, so the sample behind a figure is never the whole market.
Even one vendor’s figures do not reconcile
Adjust’s 2024 analysis puts fintech Day 1 retention at 22% globally, yet reports 13% to 18% in every one of the five regions it breaks out. Health and fitness shows the same pattern: 27% globally, no more than 24% in any region. A global median cannot sit above every regional median of the same population, so these figures must come from different cohorts, periods or definitions. The point is not that Adjust is wrong. It is that any single benchmark is better read as a band than as a target.
App stores and vendors sort apps differently
Apple’s App Store has no Dating category. On the US iPhone chart we captured on 11 September 2026, Hinge and Tinder both ranked inside Lifestyle. AppsFlyer reports dating as its own category, while Adjust reports lifestyle. So “lifestyle” in one dataset can include apps that another dataset counts separately, and a category comparison across sources can be comparing different groups of apps.
Old data under new years
Because the vendors’ current numbers sit behind forms and downloads, much of what is published as this year’s benchmark is the 2021 and 2022 data on this page with a new date on the headline. Check the year of the underlying data, not the year on the article.
Why some categories keep users and others don’t
The data shows which categories retain. The reasons below are our reading of it, based on how people use each kind of app, rather than something the benchmarks measure directly.
Stored value makes leaving costly
Finance apps hold accounts, balances, transaction history and saved payees. Leaving means rebuilding all of that somewhere else, so once a user has set one up they tend to stay, which is consistent with fintech sitting at the top of the Day 30 table.
Daily habits beat one-off tasks
Health and fitness, social and lifestyle apps fit into something people do every day: tracking a workout, checking messages, planning a routine. Travel, food and drink and shopping are used when a specific need comes up, then set aside until the next one, which shows as low Day 30 retention even when users are satisfied.
Other people keep users coming back
Social and dating apps are worth more the more of a person’s contacts or matches are inside them, and conversations create reasons to return that the app does not have to manufacture. Notifications help here only when they carry something the user actually wants, which is the argument behind personalized push notifications.
Content that runs out
Hyper-casual games are built to be learned in seconds, which makes the first session easy and leaves little to come back for. That is the clearest explanation for a category that is second on Day 1 and last on Day 30.
How to benchmark your own app against these numbers
A benchmark is only useful if your own number is measured the same way. Three steps keep the comparison honest.
Calculate Day N retention the same way
Take everyone who installed in a given period, your cohort. Count how many of them opened the app on day N. Divide the second number by the first and multiply by 100. If 1,000 people installed in the first week of a month and 70 of them opened the app on day 30, your Day 30 retention is 7%. Use whole cohorts of at least a few hundred users, or one busy week will swing the result.
Pick the right comparison row
Use the category closest to your app, the platform most of your users are on, and the region you mainly serve. For a dating app on Android, AppsFlyer’s 8.78% Day 30 is a better reference than any all-category average.
Then work on the gap, not the headline
If Day 1 is below your category and Day 30 is fine, the problem is the first session. If Day 1 is healthy but Day 30 collapses, the app is not becoming a habit. The fixes for each are in our guide to app retention strategies.
What these benchmarks can’t tell you
Every figure on this page is sourced. Each one also has limits that tend to disappear when it is quoted elsewhere.
The data is not current
The most recent public category data here is from 2022 for Day 30 and from a 2024 analysis for Day 1. Retention patterns change slowly, but they do change, as health and fitness showed between 2021 and 2022.
A median hides the spread
Half the apps in any category do better than its median and half do worse. The benchmark tells you where the middle is, not what is achievable for a well-built app with a clear reason to return.
Retention is not revenue
A category with low Day 30 retention can still earn well if it monetizes in the first sessions, and a sticky app can struggle to earn anything. For how apps turn users into money, see how free apps make money, and for the wider market figures behind all of this, our mobile app statistics.
Do this
- State the year of the data
- Name the vendor and its definition
- Match platform and region
- Compare with your category median
- Judge the launch at Day 30
- Read figures as bands
Avoid this
- Old data under a new year
- Mixing classic and rolling retention
- Comparing across vendors’ categories
- An all-app average for one category
- Judging a launch by Day 1 alone
- Ratios quoted to the decimal
What this means if you’re building an app
Your category sets a baseline, not a ceiling. Four things follow from the data.
Know which retention driver your category runs on. Stored value for finance, daily habit for health and social, other people for dating and social. Build the feature that creates it before building anything else.
Judge your launch by Day 30, not Day 1. Games show how misleading a strong first day can be.
Benchmark by platform and region. The same category can rank first on Android and mid-table on iOS.
Treat every benchmark as a band. The sources disagree with each other and, occasionally, with themselves. You can test an idea with real users far more cheaply than you can settle that argument, and Appy Pie AI lets you build and publish an app without a development team to do exactly that.
Retention Starts With What You Build
Your category sets the baseline. The features that give people a reason to come back set everything above it. Build and publish an app without a development team, then measure your own cohort.
Build an App Free Or read how to increase app retentionFrequently Asked Questions
Which app category has the highest retention rate?
At Day 30, fintech and lifestyle apps led Adjust’s 2022 medians at 9%, followed by health and fitness and social apps at 7%. In AppsFlyer’s 2021 figures, finance kept 10.74% of users on iOS and 9.27% on Android, and casino and sports betting apps reached 12.47% on Android. Games lead Day 1 retention but not Day 30.
Which app categories have the lowest retention?
Hyper-casual games, food and drink, and travel. In Adjust’s 2022 medians they kept 2%, 3% and 4% of new users at Day 30. In AppsFlyer’s 2021 data, education was lowest of the categories it listed, at 2.69% on Android and 3.23% on iOS.
What is a good app retention rate?
One above the median for your category, on your platform, measured the same way. Adjust’s 2024 medians across all categories were 26% on Day 1, 13% on Day 7, 10% on Day 14 and 7% on Day 30. Adjust describes an app that retains over a third of its users after install as generally high-performing.
What is the average app retention rate after 30 days?
Adjust’s 2024 median across all categories and platforms was 7% at Day 30, with iOS at 8% and Android at 6%. Its 2022 global median was 6%. These are medians, meaning half of apps retain more and half retain less.
Do iOS apps have higher retention than Android apps?
Overall, yes. Adjust’s 2024 medians put iOS at 27% on Day 1 and 8% on Day 30, against 24% and 6% on Android. It varies by category: in AppsFlyer’s 2021 data, casino and sports betting apps retained far better on Android (12.47% at Day 30) than on iOS (7.56%).
What is the retention rate for dating apps?
In AppsFlyer’s 2021 figures, dating apps kept 28.30% of users on Day 1 and 8.78% on Day 30 on Android, and 28.95% and 7.01% on iOS. Apple’s App Store has no dating category, so dating apps such as Hinge and Tinder chart under Lifestyle.
Why do gaming apps have high Day 1 but low Day 30 retention?
Games are easy to start and often run out of novelty. Adjust’s 2022 gaming median was 29% on Day 1 but 6% on Day 30, and hyper-casual games fell from 26% to 2%, keeping only about 8% of their first-day returners after a month.
How do you calculate app retention rate?
Take a cohort of users who installed in the same period, count how many opened the app on day N, divide by the cohort size and multiply by 100. If 70 of 1,000 installs are active on day 30, Day 30 retention is 7%. Make sure you use the same definition as any benchmark you compare against.
Why do app retention benchmarks differ between sources?
They use different definitions of a retained user, medians versus averages, different sets of apps and different category groupings. Even one vendor can disagree with itself: Adjust’s 2024 analysis gives fintech 22% Day 1 retention globally but 13% to 18% in every region it reports.
Are these app retention benchmarks current?
They are the most recent category-level figures the major vendors have made public: Adjust’s 2022 data and 2024 analysis, and AppsFlyer’s 2021 report. Newer figures from both companies are behind a lead form or a report download. Treat any article quoting 2026 category benchmarks with care and check the year of the underlying data.
Benchmark Honestly, Then Build for Your Category
The sourced figures point the same way: apps that hold something users value, fit a daily habit or connect people keep them, and apps built around a one-off task lose them. Compare yourself with the median for your own category, platform and region, judge the result at Day 30, and treat every published benchmark as a band rather than a target. Then test the idea with real users, which Appy Pie AI makes quick and inexpensive to do.
Start Building Free →Stop Comparing Medians. Measure Your Own Cohort.
No benchmark predicts how your app will retain. A real cohort of users will tell you within a month.
Build an App FreeFree to start | No developer needed | 10M+ apps & sites built since 2016
Aasif Khan
Head of SEO and Growth Marketing Lead at Appy Pie AI with 17+ years in digital marketing, AI-powered optimization, and scalable growth strategies.
Abhinav Girdhar
Founder and CEO of Appy Pie AI. Builder of one of the world’s largest no-code and AI platforms, with 10M+ apps and websites created.