Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU)

ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) is the total revenue from buyers in a period divided by the number of people who paid in that period. Unlike ARPU, ARPPU leaves free users out of the calculation entirely.

What is ARPPU?

ARPPU is used most in games, subscription apps and freemium products, where most users never pay and a small group pays a lot. It tells you how much the people who actually opened their wallets spent on average.

“Paying user” needs to mean the same thing from one period to the next:

• Apple counts Paying Users as unique users, by Apple Account, who paid for an app or made an in-app purchase on the App Store (Apple, App Store Connect metrics, accessed October 2026).
• GA4 calculates ARPPU as total purchase revenue divided by the number of active users who made a purchase (Google Analytics Help, accessed October 2026). Unlike ARPU in GA4, the numerator here does not include ad revenue.

The ARPPU formula and how it relates to ARPU

ARPPU = Revenue from paying users in the period / Number of paying users in the period

If you only count sales revenue, there is a handy identity:

ARPU = ARPPU × Paying user rate

An app with 2% paying users and an ARPPU of VND 250,000 has an ARPU of VND 5,000. To raise ARPU you have two levers: get more people to pay for the first time, or get current payers to spend more. The two call for different tactics. GA4 has a built-in PMAU/DAU metric, the percentage of active users who purchased in the previous month, for tracking the first lever.

2026 update: Apple’s Proceeds per Paying User benchmark

App Store Connect has a Proceeds per Paying User benchmark: total proceeds, including in-app purchases, divided by the number of paying users. Your app is placed against the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles of apps in the same category and business model. Free apps do not see this benchmark (Apple, Peer group benchmarks, accessed October 2026).

The Analytics update on March 25, 2026 added more than 100 metrics on in-app purchases and subscriptions, along with a benchmark for download-to-paid conversion (Apple Developer News, March 2026). Read the two benchmarks side by side and you can tell whether your app is weak at getting people to pay the first time or at how much they spend once they do.

Example: ARPPU went up, but that may not be good news (hypothetical)

In October, a mobile game has 200,000 MAU, 4,000 paying players (2%) and VND 1.2 billion in top-up revenue.

• ARPPU = 1,200,000,000 / 4,000 = VND 300,000.
• ARPU = 1,200,000,000 / 200,000 = VND 6,000.

In November the game launches a VND 2 million event bundle. Revenue rises to VND 1.35 billion, but only 3,000 players pay. ARPPU climbs to VND 450,000 and ARPU to VND 6,750, while the paying user rate drops from 2% to 1.5%. Revenue is piling up in fewer hands. If a few of the biggest spenders quit the game, revenue will fall fast.

ARPPU vs. ARPU vs. AOV

Frequently asked questions

What period should ARPPU cover?

Follow the product’s billing cycle. A monthly subscription app should calculate it monthly. A game with seasonal events should look at it monthly and compare it with the same event the year before.

How is ARPPU used in advertising?

Multiply ARPPU by the payer conversion rate of each install source and you get an estimate of revenue per install, which tells you the highest CPI you can accept. Over the long run, switch to cohort-based LTV.

If you need to break down paying rate and ARPPU by ad source, see our App User Acquisition solution or contact Adtek.