App Store Conversion Rate Benchmarks by Category (2026)

Your App Store conversion rate tells you how often people who see your app go on to download it. That sounds like one number. In practice there are at least four, and the published benchmarks you find in search mix them freely. Apple's own console divides total downloads by unique impressions. Most App Store Optimization tools divide first time downloads by product page views. Google Play Console stopped showing a conversion rate in 2026 and now reports a click through rate on install buttons. Apple Ads reports a tap through install rate on ads. Each is a fair number. None of them can be compared with another.

That is why one blog tells you the average App Store conversion rate is 25% and another says 8.56%, and why a founder who opens App Store Connect and sees 4% wonders whether the product page is broken. Most of the time it is not. The number on the screen and the number in the blog post are answers to different questions.

This page puts the definitions first, then the benchmarks. You get Apple's exact formula from its developer help pages, Google's from the Play Console help center, the full category tables from AppTweak's 2025 data for both stores, a side by side of the published averages with the reason each one differs, and a list of changes that move the number, each tied to what Apple or Google say the change does. If you only need one sentence: compare your rate with Apple's private peer group benchmarks in App Store Connect first, because they use the same formula as your dashboard and no public benchmark does.

If you came here from our guide on how to get app downloads, this is the long version of its short answer to what a good App Store conversion rate is. The broader context, such as how many people visit the store each week and how many apps compete for them, is in our App Store statistics reference.

On October 28, 2026 we opened every source on this page and read the figures from the page itself. For definitions we used only first party documentation: Apple's App Store Connect metric definitions, its acquisition source types, its peer group benchmarks help page and its App Analytics overview, and Google's Play Console help page on store listing performance. Where a vendor blog described a definition differently from Apple or Google, we went with the platform.

The category numbers come from AppTweak's average conversion rate per category, published May 18, 2026 with 2025 data for the United States. The article text names only the top and bottom categories. The full lists sit in three embedded charts, and we read every value from the chart data, which AppTweak last edited on May 4, 2026. We also compared AppTweak's figures with Adapty's conversion rate benchmarks, updated January 2, 2026, which quote AppTweak data from the first half of 2024, and with AppFollow's 2026 benchmarks article, which uses its own August 2026 data and a different set of denominators.

Three rules apply throughout. Every figure names who measured it, what was divided by what, and the period. Anything we calculated is marked as derived, with the arithmetic shown. Examples with made up numbers use an app owned by Alex, a fictional developer, and say so. We did not use paywalled reports or figures that we could not trace to a named publisher.

Apple's definition is short. In the metric definitions for App Store Connect Analytics, conversion rate is total downloads and pre orders divided by unique device impressions. A pre order counts toward the rate when it is placed and is not counted a second time when the app later downloads to the device. Every word in that sentence matters, so here is each part in turn.

Total downloads is the sum of first time downloads and redownloads. A first time download is counted on a device running iOS, macOS, tvOS or visionOS. A redownload is counted when a customer taps the redownload button, and Apple excludes automatic updates and device restores. So a person who deleted your app last year and installs it again today raises your conversion rate exactly as much as a new customer does.

Unique device impressions is the number of unique devices that viewed your app on the Today, Games, Apps or Search tabs of the App Store. An impression requires the app to be on screen for more than one second, and impressions include product page views. Apple's analytics overview describes unique impressions as the number of people who view your app icon on the App Store in a given day, and gives a worked example: 100 unique impressions and 50 total downloads on a day make a 50% conversion rate.

Two consequences follow. First, the denominator is far wider than a page view. Your app scrolling past in a search result for one second counts, even if the person never taps it. That is why Apple's rate usually looks low next to the numbers on ASO blogs, which divide by page views. Second, the numerator includes returning users. Apple's 2025 Transparency Report counts 929,754,061 average weekly downloads against 2,053,461,208 average weekly redownloads across the store, so redownloads are not a rounding error. Derived: 2.21 redownloads for every first time download (2,053,461,208 ÷ 929,754,061). An app with a large lapsed audience can post a strong conversion rate with very few new users.

Apple also sets a floor before the number appears at all. App Store metrics, conversion rate among them, become available once your app has at least five first time downloads or pre orders. Usage metrics such as sessions rely on people who opted in to share analytics with developers, but conversion rate is built from App Store data, not from that opt in group.

If you have opened the App Analytics page recently you will also see a new metric with conversion in its name: day 35 download to paid conversion, the share of first time downloads or redownloads followed by an In App Purchase within 35 days. That one measures monetization, not the product page. Keep the two apart when someone asks for your conversion rate.

Google changed the metric this year. According to the Play Console help page on store listing performance, store listing reports were updated in July 2026 to focus on user intent, measured as clicks, and from June 2026 the primary metrics are based on unique clicks. The new click through rate is the percentage of store listing visitors who tapped Install, Open or Pre register, and Google states that it replaces the legacy conversion rate metric. If you search for a Google Play conversion rate in Play Console today, the number you find is this click through rate.

The denominator is narrower than Apple's. Store listing visitors are users who visited your store listing and did not already have your app installed on any of their devices, and a person who visits several times in a day counts once per day. Reports include new users and returning users by default, where returning users are people who installed the app before and have since removed it from all their devices. Store listing acquisitions, the older outcome metric, count users who visited and installed without having the app on another device, so they run lower than raw installs.

Google also limits the traffic in this report. Visitors and acquisitions from other surfaces on Google Play, such as promotional content, are left out, and so are installs from backup and restore. Clicks are counted from three places: the store listing page, the inline install overlay that sometimes appears when someone installs from an ad, and a mini detail page Google may show for searches closely tied to your app. You can split the report by traffic source (Google Play search, Google Play explore, and ads and referrals), by country, by language and by the search term a person typed before reaching your listing.

Play Console gives you a peer comparison as well. The click through rate chart compares your daily performance with your peers' median, 25th and 75th percentiles, and the breakdown table compares your total with the peer median over the last 28 days. Google shows benchmark data only when there is enough data from your selected peer set, and only when you view performance by country, language, install state or traffic source.

So the practical answer to what a play store conversion rate is today has two parts. Inside your console it is unique install clicks divided by visitors who did not already have the app. In third party benchmarks such as AppTweak's 16.15% average it is downloads divided by store listing views, measured by the tool vendor. Expect the two to differ, and compare yourself first with the peer lines Google draws for you.

Three patterns stand out once the full table is in front of you, and none of them show up in the top and bottom lines most articles quote.

First, the overall average sits below almost every category. Only trivia games, at 5.2%, are under 8.56%, and adventure games at 8.6% barely clear it. A simple average of the categories could not land there. The likely explanation is that the overall figure is weighted by page views, so a handful of very large apps with huge traffic and low rates pull it down, but AppTweak does not say how it averaged. The lesson for you is practical: compare yourself with your category row, not with the headline 8.56%.

Second, conversion rate and install rate tell different stories. Board games convert 35.6% of page views but only 0.6% of impressions, which suggests a search result that rarely earns the tap, followed by a page that closes the deal for the few who open it. Medical apps show the reverse shape at 25.5% and 7.8%: people who search for a specific medical app tend to recognize it and download from the results without opening the page. When your install rate is low and your page view rate is high, the work is on the icon, name, subtitle and first screenshots that appear in results. When both are low, the page itself needs the work.

Third, high rates often mean intent, not craft. Food & Drink, Travel and Shopping top the list because many of their visitors arrive already wanting a specific brand: a restaurant chain, an airline, a store. Social Networking at 9.8% and Productivity at 11.5% sit low because people browse and compare more in crowded categories. A 15% rate is weak for a food ordering app and solid for a to do list.

If your category is not in the table, AppTweak's own benchmark tool covers more countries and channels on a paid plan, and Apple's peer group view inside your account covers every category for free. For what the screenshots of high converting apps look like, our App Store screenshot examples break down real listings category by category.

On AppTweak's numbers, Google Play converts almost twice as well as the App Store on average, 16.15% against 8.56%. Before reading that as a verdict on the two stores, look at the shape of each funnel.

On the App Store, a person can download straight from search or browse results without opening your page, which is why AppTweak reports a separate install rate for iOS and notes that an App Store page view rate can exceed 100%. Those downloads go into the numerator while the people who made them never enter the page view denominator, and the people who do open the page are often the undecided ones. AppTweak describes downloading straight from results as an App Store behavior that Google Play does not share, so on its method a Google Play listing view sits closer to the decision and carries more intent.

Category mixes differ too. Google Play splits categories differently (Auto & Vehicles, Events and Parenting have no App Store equivalent), and some apps sit in Business on one store and Finance on the other. Adapty's page warns about exactly this when it compares finance apps across the two stores.

Then there are the audiences. Google Play reaches more people in more markets, and the United States data in both tables covers only one country. If your Android users come mostly from India or Brazil, a United States Google Play average says little about you. Google's peer lines inside Play Console, filtered by country, are the fairer reference.

None of this means one store is easier. It means you should judge each store against its own benchmark and its own peer group, and run listing tests separately on each, because a screenshot set that wins on one can lose on the other. Our iOS app marketing guide covers the iPhone side of that work in more depth.

If you search for an average App Store conversion rate you will find two numbers repeated across dozens of pages: 25% and 8.56%. Both trace back to AppTweak, a year and a half apart.

The 25% comes from AppTweak's data for the first half of 2024, which Adapty quotes on a page updated January 2, 2026, alongside 27.3% for Google Play. The 8.56% is AppTweak's figure for full year 2025 in its May 2026 article. Same company, same country, same broad definition of downloads divided by page views, and a third of the value. AppTweak does not explain the drop. Its 2025 article even contains a line that calls the App Store average 25%, apparently left over from the earlier edition, which may be how the old number keeps circulating.

The category figures moved even more. In Adapty's copy of the first half of 2024 data, Navigation converts at 115%, Business at 66.7% and Food & Drink at 12.1%. In AppTweak's 2025 charts, Navigation is at 11.8%, Business at 18.7% and Food & Drink at 52.8%. Board games went from 1.2% to 35.6%. Swings that large across a year are more likely to come from a change in sample, weighting or how page views were counted than from people changing how they shop for apps. Treat any single year of vendor data as a rough guide, not a target.

Then add Apple's own number. Apple's custom product pages overview says the average conversion rate on default product pages is 1.6%, and that sending people to a custom product page adds 2.5 percentage points, a 156% increase. Apple does not date the figure or spell out the formula on that page, but its console formula divides by impressions, which would put it in the same family as AppTweak's 3.8% install rate and AppFollow's search ranges, not the page view family.

AppFollow's guide to ASO benchmarks sums up the fix in one line: check the denominator, channel, market and collection period before borrowing any figure. We would add a fifth check, the numerator, because Apple counts redownloads and AppTweak does not.

A good App Store conversion rate is one that beats the median of apps like yours, measured with the same formula you use. That sounds evasive, but it is the only answer that holds up, because the published figures run from 1.6% to over 60% depending on definition and category.

Inside App Store Connect, use the peer group benchmarks. Apple compares your conversion rate with the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of a peer group built from your primary category and business model, and you can narrow the group by download volume. Apple builds these values with differential privacy, checks every week that each peer group holds enough apps before releasing it, and adds noise to each data point, which is why it calls them directional rather than an exact ranking. They still use exactly the same formula as your dashboard, which no public benchmark does.

Here is how we read the three lines. Below the 25th percentile, your page or your traffic has a problem worth fixing before you spend on anything else. Between the 25th and 50th, you are typical, and one or two good tests can move you up. Above the 75th, the page works, and growth will come from more impressions rather than better conversion. For Google Play, read the same three percentiles from the click through rate chart in Play Console.

If you need a public reference, for a pitch deck or because your app is too new for benchmarks, use AppTweak's category row and say which definition it uses. For a United States App Store app, a page view rate around your category's figure in the table above is normal. For a new app with few ratings, expect to sit below it at first, because a product page with no rating has less to work with.

Two more numbers help put a rate in money terms. Our cost per install benchmarks show what paid installs cost by country and category, and a better conversion rate lowers that cost directly: if an ad tap costs $1.00 and 60% of taps install, each install costs about $1.67 (derived: $1.00 ÷ 0.60). At 40% the same tap makes each install cost $2.50. And the LTV to CAC ratio guide shows how those install costs compare with what a user is worth.

The phrase mobile app conversion rate gets used for at least three different stages, and teams waste time because two people in a meeting mean different ones.

The store stage is everything above: how often someone who sees the app downloads it. The ad stage is the tap through install rate an ad network reports, such as Apple Ads' figure of over 60% for ads at the top of search results, where the person has already chosen to tap. The in app stage is what happens after the download: finishing onboarding, starting a trial, paying. Apple now covers that last one with day 35 download to paid conversion, and subscription platforms report their own trial to paid rates.

An app install conversion rate, in most ad dashboards, is installs divided by clicks or taps on the ad. In App Store Connect there is no metric with that exact name, and the closest equivalent is conversion rate filtered to a campaign. When a partner, an investor or an agency asks for your install conversion rate, ask which denominator they want: impressions, page views or ad taps.

For the in app stage, our app retention benchmarks show how many people keep using an app after day 1, day 7 and day 30. A product page that converts well but sets the wrong expectation shows up there as a steep drop on day 1, so the two pages are worth reading together.

Google Play gives you a stronger testing tool than Apple in one respect: you can test text. Store listing experiments let you run one default graphics experiment, covering icon, feature graphic and screenshots in your default language, or up to five localized experiments at the same time, which can also test your descriptions. Each experiment can have up to two variants against the current listing. Google now judges experiments on unique install clicks, open clicks or pre registration clicks, the same intent metrics as the new reports, and lets you set the minimum detectable effect and the confidence level. Experiments stop on their own after six months.

Google's own store listing experiments page lists the practices that work: test icons, videos and screenshots for the biggest impact, test a single asset at a time, run each test for at least a week to cover weekday and weekend traffic, and revisit assets as users, locations and seasons change. The same page features developer results such as Kongregate's reported 45% increase in installs, which are the developers' own figures.

The assets themselves follow Google's preview asset guidance. The preview video plays from the feature graphic before the screenshots, and may autoplay muted for up to 30 seconds, so Google recommends showing core content in the first 10 seconds. Screenshots come next, and the first three should show the interface. You can add up to 8 screenshots per device type, and Google recommends at least four for phone apps. The short description, 80 characters, is the first text people read on the details page.

For different audiences, Google offers up to 50 custom store listings, targeted by segments such as country or region, search keywords, ads traffic, pre registration, churned or lapsed users, and custom audiences. A custom listing for lapsed users that leads with what changed since they left is the Google Play counterpart to an Apple In App Event shown to past users.

If you publish on both stores, test on both. A screenshot set that wins on one can lose on the other because the audiences and the layouts differ. Size rules for both stores are in our App Store screenshot sizes reference.

Look again at AppFollow's August 2026 ranges. Web referrer installs ran from 4.0% to 75.1% of product page views across category medians, and app referrer installs from 4.5% to 53.0%. The spread is wider than in any other source type because the visitor's intent varies so much. Someone who tapped a link in a friend's message to download the app converts at a very different rate from someone who tapped a banner out of curiosity.

That is good news for anyone with an audience. A visitor who has already seen your app in a post, a video or a newsletter arrives with context: they know what it does, and the product page only has to confirm it. That is the opposite of a search visitor, who is often comparing five apps at once.

To see whether that traffic converts, tag it. Apple's campaign links add a provider token (pt), a campaign token (ct) and a media type token (mt) to your App Store URL. The campaign token holds up to 30 characters. A campaign appears in Analytics 24 hours after launch, once it has first time downloads from at least five people, and each metric appears once it reaches a threshold of 5 in the selected range. The free App Store campaign link generator builds the link for you, with one campaign token per network or per post.

Tip: if you post about your app on several networks but never know which ones bring downloads, give each network its own campaign token and read conversion rate by campaign after a month. When the posting itself is the part you never get to, Spreadcast designs the posts from your App Store listing and publishes them to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and the rest, so the tagged links actually go out every week.

Social traffic also has a floor problem. Apple hides campaign data below five first time downloads, so a single post rarely shows up on its own. Group posts into one campaign per network per month, and judge the network, not the post. Our guide to promoting an app on social media covers which networks tend to send app installs.

Does a better conversion rate help you rank? Apple does not use the words conversion rate when it explains ranking. Its search page says search results are based on text relevance, meaning matches for your title, subtitle, keywords and primary category, and on user behavior, naming downloads, ratings and reviews. A page that turns more of the same impressions into downloads raises one of those inputs, so the link is plausible, but Apple publishes no formula and neither do we.

The search page adds two details that matter for the install rate. Your rating and up to three screenshots or app previews may appear in results, depending on platform and orientation. And search results may now show app tags, which Apple generates with large language models from the metadata you entered in App Store Connect. The tags are another reason to keep the subtitle and description literal: whatever you write there may come back as a label under your app in results.

Search is the largest door into the store. Apple Ads states that 70% of App Store visitors use search to discover apps and that almost 65% of downloads happen directly after a search, both for the App Store worldwide in 2022. That makes the search result, not the full product page, the place where most of your conversion rate is decided.

If your app is new and has few impressions, conversion rate work has a ceiling. The how to get featured on the App Store guide and the how to market an app playbook cover how to grow the impressions side.

Everything above works on the page. The other half of conversion is who arrives. A product page converts best for people who already know what the app does, and the cheapest way to create those people is to keep showing the app where they spend time: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, Pinterest and the rest.

Most small teams know this and still do not post, because each post means a design, a caption per network and a login per network. Here is what that looks like by hand: open the release notes, crop a screenshot, place it in a frame in a design tool, write an Instagram caption, rewrite it for LinkedIn, shorten it for Threads and Bluesky, upload four times, then remember to tag the App Store link. For a team that ships every two weeks, that is an afternoon lost every two weeks.

With Spreadcast, you paste your App Store link at the start page once. It builds a brand kit from the listing: your icon, colors and screenshots in an iPhone frame. Then it checks your App Store listing every day, and when a new version goes live or the app reaches a ratings milestone, it designs the post, writes a caption for each network and publishes it to Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, on full autopilot or after one tap of approval. For anything else, you type one line in Create, or pick one of twelve app post types such as a feature, a how to or a testimonial.

You keep the measurement side. Put a campaign token from the campaign link generator in the link you share, and App Analytics shows the conversion rate of the visitors your posts bring. Spreadcast's own analytics show followers and interactions per network and likes, comments, reach and views per post, so you can see which network earns attention and which one earns downloads.

The free plan makes 3 posts for one app to download, with a small Spreadcast mark. Pro is $29 a month or $290 a year and includes clean posts with no cap, publishing to 10 social accounts across any mix of networks, autopilot or one tap approval, and posting from Claude or ChatGPT through the Spreadcast MCP server. If you want to try it around a single launch, the Post Pack is $19 once for 10 posts designed and published. All of it is on the pricing page, with a 7 day full refund on paid plans. It makes image posts and carousels, so keep a video editor for app previews.

Our mobile app marketing hub and the App Store update announcement examples show what those posts look like for real apps.