When do free players convert to paying?
№ 142 · Conversion-to-payer curve
Definition
MetricCumulative share of a cohort's payers who have made a first purchase by day N
Unit% of 30-day payers converted by day N; days to first purchase
Cumulative percent of cohort that has made their first purchase by day N. Track first-payment events per install cohort. Steeper curve = better conversion funnel. Watch for plateau (the conversion ceiling). Example: D7 conversion 2.1%, D30 4.2%, D90 5.8%.
- D7
- Day 7 retention. Share of a signup cohort returning on the seventh day after install or signup.
- D30
- Day 30 retention. Share of a signup cohort returning on the thirtieth day after install or signup.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| under 25% converted by day 3, with the curve still climbing materially after day 10 | about 25% of buyers converted by day 2 and about 42% by day 3 on iOS; average time to first purchase just over 2 days | roughly half of the cohort's 30-day payers converted by day 3, with average time to first purchase under 2 days |
Mobile free-to-play, iOS figures where stated, US and global mixed, 2023 to Q1 2026. The denominator is buyers inside the measurement window, so the curve describes when payers convert and not what share of installs pay. Time to first purchase is a mean and is skewed upward by a small number of very late converters. · Two different curves get drawn on the same axes and are constantly confused. The first is the share of eventual payers converted by day N, which is what the AppsFlyer buyer figures describe. The second is cumulative IAP revenue by day N, which has a different shape because early converters are not the deepest spenders. Both the AppsFlyer datasets and the Mistplay index draw on AppsFlyer as the underlying data provider, so agreement between them is consistency rather than independent corroboration, and the category table should be read with that in mind. The Mistplay genre figures are US-only and cover 2023 and 2024.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| All genres, iOS | not published as a percentile | 25% of buyers converted by day 2 and roughly 42% by day 3 | not published as a percentile |
| Casino | not published as a percentile | 29% of buyers converted by day 2; day 1 IAP is 23% of D60 revenue, so conversion is early but spend deepens later | not published as a percentile |
| Puzzle | not published as a percentile | average time to first purchase 1.6 days; 7.4% of players are spenders by day 30 (US) | not published as a percentile |
| RPG | not published as a percentile | average time to first purchase 1.7 days; 5.0% of players are spenders by day 30 (US) | not published as a percentile |
When it looks bad
The curve is shallow through the first week and keeps climbing past day 10, so payers are converting late and cohort revenue arrives after the point where the acquisition decisions have already been made.
Only 18% of a cohort's 30-day payers converted by day 3 and 44% by day 10, against a D7 retention of 9%, meaning the remaining conversion has to come from a population that has already left.
What to do about it
- Put the first offer inside the first session. Day-zero session count sits at 1.65 across nearly all genres (Adjust), so the average user gets roughly one opportunity to see it and a gated offer three levels in never reaches most of the cohort.
- Judge the offer sequence on share of payers converted by day 3 rather than on 30-day conversion. Roughly 42% of iOS buyers have converted by day 3 (AppsFlyer), which makes the day-3 number a decision-grade leading indicator while the 30-day number arrives too late to change anything.
- Keep the conversion curve and the revenue curve on separate charts. IAP revenue reaches 60% of its D60 total by day 7 while payer conversion is still accumulating, which means early converters are not the deepest spenders and optimising purely for conversion speed will cap payer value.
- Test a second conversion window at day 7 to day 10 for the part of the cohort that survived the first week. Transactions among buyers continue daily through roughly the first 10 days (AppsFlyer), so there is a genuine second opportunity that most offer schedules skip entirely.
Sources
- AppsFlyer On iOS, 25% of buyers make their first purchase by day 2 and a further 17% by day 3. In casino games, 29% of buyers have made their first purchase by day 2. Among the fewer than 5% of users who purchase, transactions occur daily through the first 10 days post install. appsflyer.com ↗
- Mistplay and AppsFlyer Average time to first purchase is just over two days post install. Puzzle averages 1.6 days and RPG 1.7 days, and puzzle leads on both share of payers at day 30 (7.4%) and time to first purchase, with RPG at 5%. business.mistplay.com ↗
- AppsFlyer IAP revenue reaches 60% of its D60 total by day 7 and day 1 alone accounts for 38% of D60 revenue across all apps, while for casino games day 1 IAP is 23% of the D60 total. Casino converts 4.95% of installs to payers within 30 days with 3.01% repeating, and first-to-repeat ratios are 1.65x casino, 1.76x midcore and 1.89x casual. appsflyer.com ↗
- Moloco Install-to-payer conversion rates rose 6% year on year among top advertisers and the number of paying iOS users grew 13% in 2024, achieved through improved conversion rather than more installs. moloco.com ↗
- GameAnalytics Median D7 retention of 3.42% to 3.94% across the pool, which caps how much conversion can physically happen after the first week because most of the cohort is no longer present to convert. gameanalytics.com ↗
- AppMagic By day 90 the share of App Store paying users who had spent more than $100 rose from 22% in 2024 to 32% in 2025 in hybridcasual, so the depth of the payer cohort builds well after the conversion moment itself. gamedevreports.substack.com ↗
- Adjust Day-zero session count held steady at 1.65 across nearly all genres, so the average user gets roughly one session on install day in which a first offer can be seen at all. adjust.com ↗
- AppAgent The first week does most of the work for in-game purchases. Each day brings new spenders but at a decreasing rate, so the slope of the early conversion curve determines the slope of the LTV curve and therefore the payback date. appagent.com ↗
- Liftoff Advertising-driven games generally need returns inside 30 days while IAP-driven games may take 90 to 180 days, which is the downstream financial consequence of a slow conversion-to-payer curve. liftoff.ai ↗
- Sensor Tower (via GameDev Reports) Average D7 retention among the top 25 casual games was 14.9% in December 2025, and midcore leaders retain best across every window, which sets how much of a cohort is still available to convert in the second week. gamedevreports.substack.com ↗