Day 1 retention benchmark for Gaming apps (2026)

    Day 1 retention benchmark for Gaming apps

    Published range

    33%

    From a single published source. Treat one source as an indication, not a benchmark.

    Every published figure

    • 33%

      Hyper-casual titles; mid-core sits nearer 45%

      UXCam, 2026 · taken from the publisher's summary

    What day 1 retention actually measures

    The share of users who open the app again on the day after they first install it.

    Where the measurement goes wrong

    Day 1 means the calendar day after install for some tools and a rolling 24 hours for others. The two differ by several points, which is enough to change whether you think you are above or below benchmark.

    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.