For a monthly subscription app, losing 39% to 47% of new subscribers at the first renewal is normal in most categories, according to RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, which covers more than 115,000 apps.
Churn then falls to roughly 18% to 27% by the third renewal, and only 6% to 14% of monthly subscribers are still paying after a year.
If your first-month churn on monthly plans is under 40%, you are doing better than the median app in nearly every category.
Below are the benchmarks by plan length, category, store, region and price.
After them comes a way to set your own target, and the tests from our database where apps actually moved churn.
The average subscription churn rate and the range
App churn is not a steady monthly drip.
Most of it happens at the first renewal, and churn drops sharply for subscribers who stay past that point.
That's why one "monthly churn rate" number tells you so little.
RevenueCat reports renewal rates, the share of subscriptions that renew at each billing cycle.
Churn at each cycle is simply 100% minus that number.
These are the category medians in the 2026 report:
| Plan length | 1st renewal | Churn at 1st renewal | 2nd renewal | 3rd renewal | Still paying after 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 35–58% | 42–65% | 67–75% | 77–81% | 1–2% |
| Monthly | 53–61% | 39–47% | 65–77% | 73–82% | 6–14% |
| Annual | 23–40% | 60–77% | 44–64% | 56–70% | 20–40% |
A few things stand out. Annual plans lose most subscribers at their single first renewal, but they still keep three to ten times more subscribers after a year than weekly plans do.
Weekly plans are close to total churn by month 12, so their lifetime value depends on early revenue.
Retention is also slipping. RevenueCat's second 2026 insights release shows year-one retention for the 2024 cohort at 8% for monthly plans (down from 10%), 28% for annual (down from 31%) and 1.2% for weekly (down from 1.7%).
If you need a single average monthly churn rate, you can back it out of the 12-month figure.
With 8% of monthly subscribers left after a year, average churn is 1 − 0.08^(1/12), or about 19% a month.
That's our own arithmetic, not a RevenueCat figure, and it hides the spike at month one.
You can run your own numbers in our churn rate calculator.
Churn rate by category
RevenueCat's renewal rates by category post, updated in April 2026 with the 2026 report data, gives median first renewal rates for each plan length. We converted them to first-renewal churn:
| Category | Weekly churn at 1st renewal | Monthly churn at 1st renewal | Annual churn at 1st renewal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business | 48% | 39% | 60% |
| Media & Entertainment | 55% | 42% | 63% |
| Shopping | 49% | 42% | 70% |
| Health & Fitness | 46% | 43% | 75% |
| Utilities | 51% | 43% | 65% |
| Education | 42% | 44% | 76% |
| Productivity | 47% | 46% | 77% |
| Travel | 52% | 47% | 60% |
| Gaming | 49% | 47% | 74% |
| Photo & Video | 55% | 52% | 77% |
| Social & Lifestyle | 65% | 58% | 75% |
Business apps keep subscribers best on monthly plans.
Photo & Video and Social & Lifestyle sit outside the usual monthly range, and Social & Lifestyle loses subscribers fastest on weekly and monthly plans.
Travel and Business also lead on annual renewals, at 40% each.
Categories differ less over time than at the start.
In the 2026 report, weekly plans across all categories converge to 74–91% by the third renewal, which suggests early filtering, not long-term loyalty, drives most of the gap.
One more segment matters if you are building with AI.
RevenueCat found AI-powered apps earn 41% more revenue per payer but churn 30% faster than other apps.
Churn by platform: iOS vs Android
RevenueCat's 2026 report does not split renewal rates by store.
What it does split is why subscriptions end, and that's where the stores differ most.
- App Store: 82.9% of cancellations are voluntary unsubscribes and 15.2% are billing errors.
- Google Play: 66.3% are voluntary unsubscribes and 32.2% are billing errors.
The report's summary rounds these to roughly a third on Google Play and 14% on the App Store.
Either way, Android churn includes about twice as much involuntary churn.
Price changes, pauses and developer cancellations are each 0.5% or less on both stores.
Elsewhere the stores look alike. Median trial-to-paid conversion is 32.6% on the App Store and 32.5% on Google Play, and in Western Europe year-one value per payer is slightly higher on Google Play ($27.08) than on iOS ($26.47).
Both stores give you tools against billing churn.
Apple lets you enable a billing grace period of 3, 16 or 28 days (capped at 6 days for weekly plans), during which subscribers keep access while Apple retries payment.
On Google Play, grace period and account hold are on by default and together give a recovery window of about 60 days.
RevenueCat's guide to Google Play billing churn covers the in-app messaging API and dunning steps on top of that.
Churn by region and price point
Region mostly affects the first renewal. Median first renewal rates from the 2026 report:
| Region | Weekly 1st renewal | Monthly 1st renewal | Annual 1st renewal |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | 55% | 55% | 26% |
| Western Europe | 42% | 55% | 28% |
| Latin America | 44% | not reported | not reported |
| India & Southeast Asia | 37% | 46% | 22% |
By the third renewal, every region sits within 5 to 10 points of the others.
RevenueCat reads this as early friction in emerging markets, not weaker loyalty.
Refunds follow the same pattern: the median refund rate is 7.7% in India and Southeast Asia against 3.4% in North America.
Price has a clear effect, and it's strongest on annual plans:
| Price tier | Monthly 1st renewal | Annual 1st renewal | Annual plans still active after 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 60% | 37% | 36% |
| Mid | 55% | 27% | 26% |
| High | 51% | 24% | 23% |
High-priced apps lose more subscribers early, but third renewals converge at 68–81% across tiers.
Higher prices raise the bar at the first checkpoint rather than wearing down loyalty over time.
Still, high-priced annual plans earn a median $62.19 per payer in year one against $10.69 for low-priced ones, so higher churn can still mean more revenue. Our subscription pricing guide covers that trade-off.
Paywall type barely matters for churn. Freemium apps keep 28% of annual subscribers after a year and hard-paywall apps keep 27%, even though hard paywalls convert five times better by day 35.
What a "good" churn rate means for you
Benchmark your app against its own segment, not the overall median.
A high-priced Health & Fitness app selling annual plans in North America has a very different baseline than a low-priced weekly photo editor.
- Pick the right churn metric. Track churn at the first, second and third renewal for each plan length separately. A blended monthly number goes up and down with your plan mix, not with your product.
- Find your row. Use the category, region and price tables above. Beating the median at the first renewal is a reasonable first goal; RevenueCat's top-quartile monthly apps keep 11–25% of subscribers after a year.
- Split voluntary from involuntary churn. If billing errors are well above 15% of App Store cancellations or 32% of Google Play cancellations, fix billing before you touch the product.
- Watch refunds next to churn. Most categories have median refund rates of 3–4%. A paywall that lifts conversions but pushes refunds up is not a win.
- Judge churn with revenue. A churn rate that rises after a price increase can still leave you ahead. Check LTV before and after.
Our app retention rate benchmarks cover usage retention (D1, D7, D30).
How apps in the database moved their churn
Few public tests report churn directly. Most report a metric next to it: retention, refunds, trial cancellations, plan mix or LTV.
Here's what apps in our retention tests found.
Set expectations before the first renewal
The first renewal is where most churn happens, so the paywall and onboarding shape it.
In a test shared by Marcus Burke, Blinkist's trial timeline paywall raised trial opt-ins significantly and cut trial cancellations by 4%.
The timeline shows when the reminder comes and when billing starts, so fewer people feel caught out.
Applica's rebuild of ASL Bloom's onboarding around user goals, paired with a two-screen paywall, lifted trial conversion 15%, ARPU 12% and 30-day retention 18%.
Several changes shipped at once, so the result can't be pinned on any single one.
Move subscribers to longer plans
Annual plans keep far more subscribers after a year than monthly or weekly ones.
Mojo tested showing only the yearly plan on the paywall and saw a 15–20 percentage point rise in yearly share. dub's shift of paywalls toward annual plans came with a 207% LTV increase, as reported in RevenueCat's customer story; it was also a bundle of changes.
Win back churned subscribers
Monthly subscribers come back much more often than annual ones: RevenueCat's 2026 data shows 20% of churned monthly subscribers reactivate within a year, against 5% for annual.
Unscripted's personal win-back trial offer produced more than 240% more trial starts in an A/B test (vendor-reported by Superwall). See win-back offers for more patterns.
Accept some churn when the math works
TalkingParents raised its price alongside a new feature.
About a quarter of customers churned, but the business came out ahead financially. Churn rose, but so did revenue.
Don't buy conversions with future churn
BoldVoice tested a hard paywall with no close button.
Trial starts went up, but refunds rose by more than the gain.
Vahe Baghdasaryan's "end your trial now" discount offer went the other way: it averaged a 15–17% ARPU lift across tests by converting trial users before they could cancel.
When you run your own churn tests, measure through at least the first renewal.
A test that only reads install-to-trial will miss most of the churn story.
Browse all app tests or the retention guide for more.