Which retention time-horizon should consumer apps prioritize measuring and optimizing?

David Lieb · Sep 21, 2022

It is legitimate to define your retention cohort as only users who have passed some qualifying step in the funnel, and a steep drop-off in the first period is fine — what matters is whether the curve flattens after that.

Some people in your funnel were never going to be your customer, and both you and they know it; the meaningful signal is whether the users who did stick and understand the product keep using it over time.

Scope: time granularity depends on the product (daily, weekly, annual)

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David Lieb · Sep 21, 2022

There is no universal 'good' retention number — all that matters is that the cohort curve goes flat, even if it flattens at 5%, provided that usage is valuable enough per occurrence.

Airbnb's cohort retention curve is steep and flattens low, but each use earns them around $100, and they're a $100bn company — so value per use and frequency determine whether a flat low curve is good.

Scope: depends on frequency and value of each use to you and the user

25:35 20 Product: The No 1 Metric You Need To Look at When Building Product | Why the Best in Product Have No Domain Experience | Why You Should Not Hire From Incumbents & The Difference Between Good vs Great PMs with David Lieb, Visiting Group Partner @ Y Comb

Cem Kansu · Jun 20, 2025

There is no useful universal benchmark for what counts as good retention or DAU numbers

It depends on the product and on the composition of your user base — an all-new-user base behaves very differently from settled users of three-plus years

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Severin Hacker · May 19, 2025

Day-one retention is the retention metric worth optimizing because all retention horizons correlate and D1 gives you a data point every single day.

High current-user retention implies high D7 and D30 retention, but D1 gives feedback daily rather than weekly or monthly.

Scope: consumer apps

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Cem Kansu · Jun 20, 2025

Daily retention is the king of all metrics for consumer products

It's the cleanest signal of whether people find value in a feature or app, and high daily retention compounds into high DAUs, whereas DAUs themselves have many inputs muddying whether the product is genuinely sticky

Scope: match the cadence to the product — weekly retention for a weekly app

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Raman Malik · Nov 15, 2024 · hedged

Good consumer retention means the retention curve stabilizes, with roughly 45% at month six as the target for a non-social product.

Non-social products don't get the smile-shaped retention curve, so you have to drive retained value and frequency to reach that level.

22:08 Stabilized retention curve around 45 percent at month six is the target for non social products

Raman Malik · Nov 15, 2024

Duolingo's 50% twelve-month retention is world class, built on a world-class retention engine.

22:56 Duolingos fifty percent twelve month retention is the world class benchmark

Harry Stebbings · Sep 21, 2022

Retention windows shorter than thirty days are not indicative of true habit-forming behaviour, so thirty-day retention is the number to look at.

23:17 Thirty day retention is the benchmark for true habit formation

Mike Salguero · Apr 5, 2023

The first ninety days determine subscription retention: churn is heaviest in the first thirty days and declines, and customers who get past the ninety-day hump stay for a very long time

That window is where the customer builds a habit, which for frozen meat delivery requires adopting a defrosting and cooking pattern

34:50 First ninety days habit formation determines long term retention

Phil Carter · Sep 20, 2024

Monthly and annual subscriber retention should be assessed separately: retaining more than 50% of monthly subscribers for six months is very good, while annual subscribers should be judged on two to three years

Monthly subscribers churn at much higher rates; and data shows annual subscribers who survive the second renewal typically retain for many years and become the long-term foundation of the business

32:48 Monthly and annual subscriber retention need different benchmarks and horizons