Most apps fail fast. 95% of app installs are abandoned within 30 days of download, according to Business of Apps’ 2025 compiled retention benchmarks drawn from billions of tracked mobile sessions. The pattern holds whether “fail” means a user quietly deleting an app or a founder shutting down the company behind it: most mobile products lose the overwhelming majority of the people who try them, and most app-based startups never survive long enough to matter.
If you build, publish, or license mobile software, the numbers below break down exactly where apps fail: at the review gate, in the first week of use, and in the years after launch.
How many app installs fail within the first month?
Most apps lose the overwhelming majority of their users inside 30 days. Business of Apps’ compiled 2025 retention benchmarks, which aggregate analytics-platform data from AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Liftoff across billions of tracked sessions, put average Day 1 retention at roughly 25%, Day 7 at about 11%, and Day 30 at close to 5%. In plain terms, 95% of the people who install an app stop using it within a month.
Figure 1: Share of installed-app users still active at each milestone. Source: Business of Apps compiled retention benchmarks, 2025 update.
The steepness of the drop matters more than any single number. Roughly half of the total loss between install and Day 30 already happens by Day 1, which means a user’s first session decides most of an app’s fate before onboarding is even finished.
What percentage of apps are used only once and never opened again?
About 25% of apps are opened exactly once and then never launched again, a figure that traces back to Localytics’ 2016 “Slipping Away” retention study. That study is nearly a decade old now, but it remains the most widely repeated one-time-open benchmark across 2025 industry roundups, largely because no larger public dataset has replaced it since. Treat it as directional rather than current.
More recent, narrower studies point in the same direction without offering a clean replacement figure. Business of Apps’ Day 1 retention average of roughly 25% is consistent with a quarter of users never returning past their first session, which is the same magnitude the older one-time-open number describes.
Warning
The “25% of apps are used once” figure predates most of today’s app stores’ current review processes and privacy prompts. We could not locate a comparable large-sample 2025 replacement study, so we are flagging this stat’s age explicitly rather than presenting it as fresh. Use it as a rough, still-plausible order of magnitude, not a precise current rate.
One-time use is functionally the same outcome as never installing at all: the app failed to earn a second session, which is the bar every retention benchmark below is measuring against.
What percentage of app-based startups fail?
90% of startups fail overall, and the leading cause is “no market need,” cited in 42% of the failed-startup postmortems CB Insights has analyzed. “Ran out of cash or failed to raise new capital” is the second most common cause, cited in roughly 29% of postmortems. These figures describe startups broadly, not mobile apps specifically, but a large share of the startups in that dataset are app-first businesses, so the pattern applies directly to anyone building a company around a mobile product.
Figure 2: Share of weekly app submissions Apple approves versus rejects. Source: Apple’s live App Review transparency page.
Commercial failure and product failure compound each other. An app that never retains users past Day 30 rarely generates the revenue a startup needs to avoid the “ran out of cash” outcome, so the retention numbers above and the startup-failure numbers here are largely describing the same underlying problem from two different angles.
How many apps fail app store review?
Apple’s own live App Review page shows the company rejecting roughly a third of weekly submissions for guideline, security, privacy, or content violations. That figure is a rolling weekly count, not a fixed annual rate, and it moves from week to week, so treat any specific percentage as a current snapshot rather than a permanent constant. Google’s numbers, published on its own security blog, show a similar scale of rejection at the gate: Google removed 2 million published apps from Google Play and blocked 1.75 million policy-violating submissions before they ever launched, in 2025.
Figure 3: The three gates most apps fail before they can be called successful. Source: synthesized from Apple App Review and Business of Apps retention data above.
An app can pass review and still fail commercially, but it cannot fail commercially before it launches. A well-drafted EULA that names your app’s actual functionality, data use, and licensing terms up front reduces the odds of a rejection at this first gate, since undisclosed functionality is one of the more common guideline failures reviewers flag. These review numbers sit inside a much larger picture of app store volume; see our App Store statistics for 2026 for the full breakdown of downloads, revenue, and submission counts behind them.
Does app failure rate vary by category?
Yes, substantially. Business of Apps’ category-level retention breakdowns show finance apps holding onto roughly 9.7% of users by Day 30, compared to about 2.7% for games. Utility and productivity apps sit in between, generally in the mid-single digits. Categories where an app solves a recurring, practical problem retain users far longer than categories built around novelty or one-time entertainment.
Figure 4: Day 30 retention rate by category. Source: Business of Apps compiled retention benchmarks, 2025 update.
If your app sits in a low-retention category like gaming, the 30-day churn number above is not a warning sign specific to you, it is the category norm, and your comparison point should be other apps in that category, not the cross-category average.
Figure 5: Timeline of major app store review and enforcement changes. Sources: Apple App Review page, Google security blog.
App failure rate comparison, by definition
“What percentage of apps fail” depends entirely on which failure you mean. The table below lines up the four most common definitions against the numbers gathered above.
| Failure definition | Failure rate | Source | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abandoned within 30 days of install | 95% | Business of Apps compiled benchmarks | 2025 |
| Opened once, never again | ~25% | Localytics “Slipping Away” study | 2016 |
| App-based startup never sustainable | 90% | CB Insights failed-startup postmortems | ongoing |
| Rejected at weekly App Store review | ~33% | Apple App Review live page | 2026 |
The 95% figure is the widest lens and the one that best answers “what percentage of apps fail” as most people mean the question: almost every install ends in abandonment within a month, regardless of whether the app ever gets rejected at review or the company behind it ever runs out of money.
The Bottom Line
There is no single “apps fail X% of the time” number, because failure happens at three separate gates: review, first use, and the business behind the app. 95% of installs churn out within 30 days, which is the single largest failure point and the one every app owner can most directly influence. Roughly a third of weekly App Store submissions never make it past review, and 90% of app-based startups never become sustainable businesses. A EULA that accurately describes your app’s functionality and data use will not fix a retention problem, but it removes one of the more common reasons apps get stuck at the first gate before they ever get a chance to prove themselves with users. You can generate a EULA that matches what your app actually does in a few minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of apps fail? 95% of app installs churn out within 30 days of download, per Business of Apps’ compiled 2025 retention benchmarks. Among app-based startups specifically, roughly 90% fail to become sustainable businesses, according to CB Insights.
What percentage of apps are used only once and then deleted? About 25% of apps are opened once and never again, a figure first measured by Localytics in 2016 and still the most repeated benchmark in 2025 industry roundups, since no larger public study has replaced it.
What percentage of app submissions does Apple reject? Roughly a third of weekly App Store submissions get rejected, per Apple’s own live App Review transparency page, which updates its counts every week.
How many apps did Google remove from Google Play? Google removed 2 million published apps from Google Play and blocked 1.75 million policy-violating submissions before launch in 2025, according to Google’s own security blog.
Sources and References
- Business of Apps. (2025). “App Retention Rate Statistics.” Compiled benchmark data from AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Liftoff analytics platforms across billions of tracked mobile sessions.
- CB Insights. “The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail.” Ongoing analysis of failed-startup postmortems.
- Apple. (2026). “App Review.” Live, rolling weekly submission and rejection counts; figures cited reflect a recent 2026 snapshot and fluctuate week to week.
- Google Security Blog. (2025). Annual Google Play policy enforcement update, covering submissions blocked and apps removed in 2025.
- Localytics. (2016). “Slipping Away: Insights on Retention.” Origin of the widely repeated one-time-app-open benchmark; dataset methodology and sample size not published in later citations.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Retention benchmarks and app store enforcement figures shift regularly, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year. Rolling and live-dashboard figures, and the 2016-origin one-time-open stat, are flagged in-text and should be re-checked before each refresh.
