Revenue Per Install by Category: Health & Fitness Leads at $0.48, Gaming at $0.08

The short answer: Health & Fitness makes the most money per install

Which app categories make the most money per install? Health & Fitness does, and by a wide margin. It leads on revenue per install, or RPI, at about $0.48 for every install by day 14 and $0.66 by day 60. The all-category median is far lower, $0.23 (D14) and $0.34 (D60) (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000 apps).

Gaming trails the entire field at $0.08 (D14) and $0.14 (D60). At day 60 that is about a 4.7x gap behind Health & Fitness. Business ($0.31 D14) and Education ($0.30 D14) sit between the leader and the median. The number to benchmark against is your category's, not a global average.

By category, revenue per install runs from $0.48 down to $0.08

Revenue per install spreads a cohort's subscription revenue across every install, payers and non-payers alike. It measures how efficiently a category turns raw downloads into money, before you separate who paid. This is a different question from how much a whole app earns, which is about the revenue spread across apps, not the money per install.

By day 14 the ranking runs: Health & Fitness $0.48, Business $0.31, Education $0.30, the all-category median $0.23, and Gaming $0.08 (SOSA 2026).

By day 60 the order holds and every number grows. Health & Fitness reaches $0.66, the median $0.34, and Gaming $0.14. The typical app multiplies its day-14 revenue per install by about 1.5x on the way to day 60.

Per install and per payer answer two different questions

Revenue per install and revenue per payer are not the same metric, and they can crown different winners. RPI divides revenue across everyone who installed. Revenue lifetime value (RLTV) per payer counts only the people who actually paid.

One number tells you how well a category converts traffic. The other tells you how deep its payers go. Health & Fitness leads on both early. But over a full year the per-payer ranking shifts, and Business closes almost all of the gap.

Which number matters depends on your constraint. Cheap installs push you toward RPI, because you win by converting volume. Expensive installs push you toward per-payer depth, because each payer has to carry more acquisition cost.

Revenue per payer by category: Business goes deepest over a year

After one month, Health & Fitness payers are worth the most: $24.23 in lifetime value per payer, ahead of Business ($18.76) and Gaming ($8.41) (SOSA 2026).

After one year the top two essentially tie. Business reaches $35.48 per payer and Health & Fitness $35.64. Productivity is $24.95, Education $22.82, and Gaming $11.22.

The Business story is the expansion. Its per-payer value nearly doubles over the year, from $18.76 to $35.48, while Health & Fitness climbs from $24.23 to $35.64. And the Business ceiling is highest: the best Business apps clear $120 per payer.

So Health & Fitness wins on efficiency, converting installs best and starting its payers highest. Business wins on depth, expanding hardest and topping out highest. The Health & Fitness pattern shows up across the category's teardowns, from Yazio to Cal AI.

Access model, price, and geography move RPI more than category does

Before you treat category as destiny, one caveat on Gaming. Its $0.08 does not mean Gaming makes little per install. These are subscription figures, and Gaming monetizes mostly through consumable in-app purchases, not subscriptions. Its subscription RPI understates its true per-install revenue.

In subscription-first categories, three levers move RPI more than category does. Access model: a hard paywall returns about 8 to 9x the revenue per install of low-priced freemium ($2.32 vs $0.27 at D14). Price: higher-priced apps monetize installs several times better than cheap ones. Plan duration: yearly-dominant apps monetize installs about 2x better than monthly-dominant ones at D14 (SOSA 2026).

Geography swings it just as hard. North American installs return $0.38 at day 14 against $0.08 in India and Southeast Asia, a 5x gap. Revenue per install by country can matter as much as your category. Benchmark the segment you actually serve.

How to read your own revenue-per-install number

Pull two numbers for your app: revenue per install and revenue per payer, each at day 14 and day 60. Compare them to your category's figures above, not to the all-category median. A fitness app benchmarking against $0.23 is grading itself on a curve that flatters it. The honest bar is $0.48.

Then read the two together. A healthy RPI with a weak per-payer number means you convert well but monetize shallow, so raise price or push annual. A strong per-payer number with weak RPI means your payers are good but too few convert, so fix the paywall and the install-to-trial step. The full revenue distribution sets the ceiling; these two ratios tell you which lever to pull first.

If you build with an AI coding agent, tasu's MCP is the conversion-expertise layer it calls while it builds: these benchmarks, with their sources, on tap inside your editor.