View peer group benchmarks

Peer group benchmarks help you put your app’s performance into context by comparing your results to those of apps that are similar to yours.

You can view peer group benchmarks across several key metrics, including conversion rate, day 1, day 7, and day 28 retention rates, crash rate, and average proceeds per paying user. Peer group benchmark metrics are defined in the same way as the the standard app metrics in App Analytics and are displayed in weekly intervals.

Peer groups are created using a number of different attributes to help ensure you can compare your app’s performance to the most relevant benchmark:

App Store category

Apps in the same App Store category are grouped together in the same peer group. Apps that belong to multiple categories, such as primary and secondary categories, will be included in each category when calculating the respective benchmarks. You’ll be able to view benchmarks for each App Store category you belong to, as long as there are enough apps in that peer group to ensure individual app performance is protected, and your app won’t be included in a category that you haven’t assigned to your app. You can view which App Store categories your app is included in by reviewing your app information in App Store Connect.

App Store business model

Apps with the same business model are grouped together in the same peer group. The available business models are free, freemium, paid, paymium, and subscriptions. Apps with in-app purchases are considered freemium or paymium. Apps that have an associated cost to download are considered paid or paymium. In order to be considered part of the subscription business model, a freemium or paymium app must generate at least 50% of its revenue from auto-renewable subscriptions. An app’s business model assignment will only switch between the freemium and subscription business models after the app has belonged to the new business model for three consecutive weeks. Other business model changes, such as from free to paid, will occur immediately.

App Store download volume

Apps with similar levels of download volume in a given week are grouped together into low download volume, medium download volume, and high download volume peer groups. Apps are placed into these groups based on the number of first-time downloads and redownloads they have compared to the rest of the apps in the peer group. Download volume is determined relative to the rest of your peer group, so it’s possible for your app to appear in different volume tiers for different peer groups. You can toggle between these peer groups after you click into the detailed view for a specific metric on the Benchmarks tab.

Learn how to take action on insights from peer group benchmarks.

Required role: Account Holder, Admin, Finance, or Sales. View role permissions.

View app benchmark data

From App Analytics, select your app.
Click the Benchmarks tab to open the Benchmarks overview page, and compare your app’s performance across a variety of metrics.

Available benchmark metrics include download conversion rate, proceeds per paying user, crash rate, and retention metrics. In each metric widget, you can view how your app compares to your peer group’s 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile values.

By default, the peer groups for your app’s primary App Store category and business model appear. Data will display from the most recent week during which benchmarks were available. If your app has a subcategory or secondary category, you can view these peer groups by clicking the peer group name. To view data for apps in all categories using the same business model as yours, select All Categories.

In some cases, your assigned peer group may not be big enough to display a benchmark. Use the category menu to select a different peer group in these cases. Keep in mind that if your app is a free app, a benchmark for proceeds per paying user won’t display.
Click View Trends next to any of the performance metrics to open a detailed view containing a graph that illustrates your app’s performance over time. You can view a more granular peer group by further refining the data by app download volume.

The detailed view opens with the last 26 weeks displayed by default. Click the date picker to select a different date range.
Next to Compare To, select a peer group percentile to compare your app against a different percentile value. This returns a dotted line on the graph to illustrate the performance of your peer group's apps compared to yours.

How does Apple protect the privacy of individual apps in each peer group?

Peer group benchmark values are calculated using a technique called differential privacy, which is the gold standard for ensuring that aggregated data remains both helpful and private. Apple displays peer group metrics only when the number of apps in the group meets a minimum threshold, and after we add a certain amount of noise to each data point. The amount of noise added is inversely proportional to the number of apps in the group, which ensures that we maintain a minimum amount of privacy for each group.

Why does App Analytics display benchmarks for a particular week, but not others?

There are several reasons why benchmark data might show for one week and not another:

Peer groups need a minimum number of apps in order to show data in a way that preserves privacy. If the number of apps in the peer group drops below the minimum threshold, data won’t appear for the week.
Day 28 retention takes longer to calculate than other metrics since it’s a longer duration. When selecting a recent weekly date range, day 28 retention data won’t appear.
Your app has a new category or business model, and you selected the previous peer group. The trend line stops when your app switches to a new peer group.

Why does App Analytics display benchmarks for a particular metric, but not others?

Some apps will display data from a different number of benchmarks compared to others. One reason for this is that developers can only view benchmarks for peer groups that are relevant for them. For example, free apps won’t display a proceeds per paying user benchmark, and Arcade apps will only display crash rate benchmarks in order to avoid showing unhelpful comparisons.

Additionally, a benchmark won’t be shown if it doesn’t meet the privacy threshold. For example, if your app uses a lesser-used business model, such as paid or paidmium, your benchmarks may not all meet the privacy threshold and, as a result, you may observe fewer benchmarks.

Can I change my peer group?

In most cases, yes.

Category: If you switch your App Store category, then your peer group comparison will change. You’ll be able to view benchmarks for each App Store category you belong to, as long as there are enough apps in that peer group to ensure individual app performance is protected. If you switch App Store categories, you’ll maintain the ability to access historical benchmark data for the time you were in that category, but you won’t be able to view new benchmark data for that category. You’ll be able to view benchmark data for your new category starting from the week you switched.
Business model: You can change which business model you’ll be compared against by updating your app’s metadata. If you have in-app purchases in your metadata, you’ll be considered freemium or paymium. If you don’t have any in-app purchases and offer your app for free, you’ll be considered free. In order to be considered part of the subscription business model, your app must generate at least 50% of its revenue from auto-renewable subscriptions. Both free and paid apps can be subscription apps.
Download volume: Apps are placed into download volume buckets based on the number of first-time downloads and redownloads they have when compared to the rest of the apps in their peer group. As a result, you cannot manually change which download volume bucket your app is in. However, App Analytics lets you view peer group benchmarks for any download volume group you want, so you can easily determine what your benchmark would be if you received more or fewer downloads in the future.

How will benchmark data be impacted if I change my app’s category or business model?

App Analytics detects when you change your app’s category or business model and automatically switches your app to the new peer group. You’ll continue to have access to historical benchmark data for the previous groups you belonged to, and subsequent weeks will show the data from your new peer group. An annotation will appear in the benchmark trends chart when your peer group changes.

What benchmark data is available for Apple Arcade games?

Apple Arcade games are included in the paid business model peer group and benchmark data is only available for the crash rate metric.