D1 Retention Thresholds: What Number Gets You a Publisher Meeting

Public benchmarks place median mobile game day one retention in the mid twenties as a percentage, with a commonly cited healthy profile of roughly 35 per cent at day one, 15 at day seven and 5 at day thirty. Top-quartile titles clear 40, 20 and 10. Genre variation is large, so compare within your genre rather than against the median.

Why this matters

Day one retention is the first number a publisher looks at after install cost, and increasingly the one that decides the deal.

It is also the most commonly misreported metric in games, usually without any intent to mislead. Two teams measuring the same game with different definitions can produce numbers that differ by several points.

Knowing the published landscape and your own definition is what makes the figure usable.

What D1 measures, and how it gets overstated

Day one retention is the share of players who installed on a given day and returned on the following day.

The word "following" is doing a lot of work, and there are two common definitions.

• Calendar day. A player who installs at eleven at night and returns an hour later counts as retained.
• Rolling 24 hours. The same player does not count until a full day has passed.

Calendar day produces a higher number. Neither is wrong, and quoting one while a reviewer assumes the other is where credibility is lost.

Three other things inflate a figure without anyone intending it: counting only players who completed onboarding rather than all installs, excluding a market that performed badly, and small cohorts where variance is large.

State the definition, the cohort size, and the market beside every retention figure. Reviewers assume the least flattering interpretation of an unqualified number.

Published benchmarks by genre

Current public figures. Genre matters more than any overall median.

Sources: GameAnalytics 2026 Mobile and PC Gaming Benchmarks and Segwise's retention benchmark analysis.

The hyper-casual row is the instructive one. A high first day and a very low thirtieth day is exactly the shape that made the old business model work and stopped being enough as install costs rose, which is the subject of The Hybrid-Casual Shift Explained.

Why D1 alone is not enough

A strong first day with a weak second week describes a game that is appealing and thin.

Publishers read the shape rather than the point, and there are three distinct patterns.

1. High D1, steep fall. The hook works and the loop does not sustain. Common, and now a harder sell than it once was.
2. Moderate D1, shallow fall. Less immediately appealing and more durable. Frequently the more interesting profile in the current market.
3. Low D1. Almost always a first-session problem rather than a loop problem, and usually fixable.

Because of this, report the curve rather than the number. A single figure invites the least generous reading.

The D1 to D7 ratio publishers look at

The relationship between the first day and the first week is the quickest read on whether a loop has depth.

Using the published healthy profile of roughly 35 at D1 and 15 at D7, the ratio is a little over two to one. The top-quartile profile of 40 and 20 is two to one exactly.

A much steeper ratio, where D7 is a small fraction of D1, indicates that players understood the game quickly and found nothing further. That is a design finding, and it points at progression and return reasons rather than at onboarding, per The Core Loop Behind Five Games.

A shallower ratio on a modest D1 is worth flagging deliberately in a submission, because it is easy for a reviewer to miss and it is the more valuable pattern.

Fixing a weak D1: onboarding and first session

A low first day is nearly always the opening rather than the game.

Work in this order.

• Cut everything before the first action. Splash screens, menus, permission prompts, and account offers all belong after the first win, per What Happens in the First 30 Seconds.
• Make the first level unlosable. A new player who fails early leaves at a much higher rate than one who wins early.
• Check the advert-to-game match. Paid installs arriving to something other than what was promised churn immediately and drag the cohort down.
• Add one specific return reason before the first session ends, per Three Retention Mechanics Worth Stealing.
• Delay the first advert. Published guidance on interstitial placement suggests a first-ad delay of 60 to 90 seconds, with AdReact's analysis reporting D1 improvements of several points from that change alone.

That last point is worth testing early, because it costs a configuration change rather than development time.

Where these numbers came from

All figures here are published and all of them move.

• Genre-level retention and overall medians: GameAnalytics 2026 Mobile and PC Gaming Benchmarks.
• Median and top-quartile profiles: Segwise.
• Interstitial timing and its retention effect: AdReact.

Check the current edition before quoting any of these. Retention benchmarks in casual genres have moved noticeably in recent years, generally downward.

What we would do

Pick one definition of day one retention, write it down, and use it consistently across every test you run. Internal comparability is worth more than matching anyone else's method.

Report the curve with cohort sizes, and flag a shallow D1 to D7 ratio explicitly when you have one, because it is the pattern most likely to be undervalued by a quick read.

Then fix the opening before touching the loop. Most weak first-day numbers are produced in the first sixty seconds, and that is the cheapest part of the game to change.

The short version

• Published median D1 sits in the mid twenties, with a healthy profile near 35, 15 and 5.
• Genre variation is large, so compare within your genre.
• Calendar day and rolling 24 hour definitions give different numbers; state which you used.
• Publishers read the curve and the D1 to D7 ratio, not a single figure.
• A weak D1 is nearly always an opening problem rather than a loop problem.
• Delaying the first advert is a configuration change with a measurable retention effect.

Write down your retention definition today and check it matches what your dashboard computes. If your first day is weak and you want the opening reviewed, send us a build.

Related reading: Retention Benchmarks: D1, D7, D30, CPI Benchmarks by Genre, and Why Retention Beats Downloads.