FunnelHound / Guides / In-app purchase conversion rate
In-app purchase conversion rate: what's normal, and where to read yours
"In-app purchase conversion rate" is three ratios wearing one name. Out of 100 downloads of a typical subscription app, about 6 start a trial, roughly 2 to 3 of those pay, and by day 35 somewhere between 1.5 and 2.7 of the original 100 are paying customers. Hard-paywall apps report numbers five times higher on the last ratio, and the reason is arithmetic, not magic.
Three ratios, one phrase
- Download to trial start. How many new installs reach the paywall and tap the trial button. Mostly a product and onboarding question: how fast does the app show its value, and how early does it ask.
- Trial to paid. How many trials survive the first renewal. Mostly a trial length, pricing and habit question.
- Download to paid. The product of the two, usually measured at day 30 or 35 so long trials have time to convert. The one that ties your store funnel to money.
Apps with one-off purchases instead of subscriptions collapse the middle step: download to paid is the only ratio, and it usually lands in the same 1 to 3% band for freemium apps.
The benchmarks, with their fine print
| Ratio | Median | Strong | What shifts it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download → trial | 6.2% | 20% (top 10%) | Price point: 9.8% for higher-priced apps, 4.3% for cheaper ones |
| Trial → paid, trial of 1 to 4 days | 30% | 50%+ | Trial length; short trials convert worst |
| Trial → paid, 5 days or longer | 44 to 46% | 66%+ | Category: Travel 49%, Health and Fitness 40% |
| Download → paid, day 35, freemium | 2.2% | 5.5% (upper quartile, North America) | Geography, price, paywall timing |
| Download → paid, day 35, hard paywall | 12.1% | higher still | Fewer, pre-qualified downloads |
The pattern inside the table: whatever filters people out earlier makes the later ratio look better. Higher prices scare off casual trial starters, so the ones who start convert more often. Hard paywalls scare off casual downloaders, so the ones who download pay more often. None of that is wrong, but it means a 12% app and a 2% app can earn the same money from the same impressions. The hard paywall guide covers what that filtering does to rankings; the pricing model guide covers when it is worth it.
Where App Store Connect shows yours
Nowhere in one place, which is why this question gets searched. The pieces:
- Download to paid, the proxy. App Store Connect → Analytics → Metrics: Paying Users ÷ Total Downloads over the same window. Both metrics count opt-in users only, so the absolute numbers are undercounts, but the ratio holds because both sides shrink alike. Pick a window at least a month long so trials have time to convert.
- Trial to paid, exact. Sales and Trends → Subscriptions → the Summary and Conversion views. Apple reports introductory offer starts and conversions to the standard price per subscription, plus a conversion rate column. This comes from every transaction, no opt-in gap.
- Download to trial. Trial starts from the Subscriptions report divided by Total Downloads from Analytics. Two sources, so keep the dates aligned and accept a little noise.
- One-off purchases. Analytics → Metrics → In-App Purchases, or the Sales report's units per product ID, divided by downloads.
Reading these every week is the habit that pays, and it is the habit nobody keeps, because it is three screens and a calculator. FunnelHound reads downloads and purchases from the same API credentials and shows purchases as a share of installs as one pill on the funnel, so the purchase ratio sits right under the install ratio it depends on.
Moving the number
- Ask after value, not at launch. The paywall on first open converts the few who arrived already convinced. A paywall after the first real result converts the rest. Measure download-to-trial before and after moving it.
- Trials shorter than five days convert about a third worse. Three-day trials are popular because they look decisive. The data says seven days is where the curve flattens.
- Lead with the annual plan. Annual-first paywalls raise proceeds per paying user even when the trial-to-paid percentage dips a little. Judge by revenue per 100 downloads, not by a single ratio.
- Count the deletions. An app that converts 3% but is deleted by half its installers within a week has a product problem no paywall tweak fixes. Deletions are the quiet denominator.
Purchases as a share of installs, one pill
FunnelHound draws impressions, page views, installs and purchases as one funnel on your iPhone, with each stage rate on its own pill. When the last pill slips after a paywall change, you see it that week, not at tax time.
Get FunnelHoundData notes: benchmark figures from RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2025 (75,000+ apps; trial start median 6.2%, P90 20.3%; day-35 download-to-paid medians 2.18% freemium and 12.11% hard paywall; 2.66% higher-priced vs 1.49% lower-priced) and RevenueCat's trial length analysis (10,000+ apps; 30% median for 1 to 4 day trials, 44 to 45% for 5 to 32 days). Medians hide wide spreads; your category and price band matter more than the headline. App Store Connect screen names as of 2026.