Churn rate, also called attrition, is the percentage of users who stop using an app over a given period. Publishers watch it closely because lost users mean lost revenue, and because it is one of the earliest warning signs that something in the product or the monetization mix is pushing people away. Where retention rate tells you who stayed, churn tells you who left, and the gap between them is where most revenue problems begin.

How to calculate churn rate

Churn rate = (Users lost in the period / Users at the start of the period) x 100

Churn rate = (Users lost in the period / Users at the start of the period) x 100

Churn rate = (Users lost in the period / Users at the start of the period) x 100

Pick a consistent window, daily, weekly, or monthly, and count a user as lost if they were active at the start and did not return by the end. Keeping the window fixed is what makes the trend readable.

A quick example

If you start the month with 10,000 users and lose 1,500, your monthly churn rate is 15%.

Flip that around and 85% of your users stuck around, which is your retention for the same period. Churn and retention always add up to 100% over the same window.

What counts as a good churn rate?

It depends heavily on app type. A daily-habit game expects low daily churn but will still shed most of a cohort within weeks. A utility opened once a month tolerates far higher monthly churn. The useful comparison is your own churn by cohort and by acquisition source, since a channel that delivers cheap installs but high churn is often worse than a pricier one that brings loyal users.

Churn rate vs. retention rate

The two are mirror images: retention is the share who stay, churn is the share who leave. Teams tend to report retention when the story is positive and churn when they are hunting for a leak, but they describe the same cohort. Churn is often the more actionable framing because it points you straight at the users you are losing and prompts the question of why.

How to reduce churn

• Strengthen the early experience so new users reach a first reward quickly.

• Give users a reason to return with progression, events, and reward loops.

• Watch frequency: too many interruptive ads is a common churn driver.

• Re-engage lapsing users before they go fully inactive.

How engagement lowers churn

Reward loops give users a reason to keep coming back. An offerwall lets players earn premium currency by completing offers, which extends sessions and keeps non-paying users engaged rather than dropping off. That softens churn while adding revenue, so the same feature that keeps a user around is also monetizing them, instead of the two goals fighting each other the way extra interstitials often do.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing time windows, then comparing a weekly churn figure against a monthly one.

• Treating all churn the same when a lapsed payer and a lapsed free user cost you very differently.

• Reacting to a single spike instead of watching the trend across cohorts.