Review in-app subscription performance

At the top of your screen, you'll see the following information:

• Active subscriptions: Number of subscriptions that were active for at least one day over the selected time period, including users with free trials.
• New subscriptions: Number of subscriptions that started in the selected time period, including users with free trials.
• Canceled subscriptions: Number of subscriptions that were canceled during the selected time period, including cancellations within a free trial.
• Gross revenue: Estimated revenue generated during the selected time period. This is the amount paid by users, including taxes, and other fees.
• ARPAS: A summary of the average revenue per active subscription. ARPAS is calculated as the total subscription revenue during the selected time period, divided by the total number of active subscriptions.
• Refunds: Total number of refunds that were issued during the selected time period.

When reviewing your app's dashboard, keep the following terms in mind:

• Subscriber: A user with at least one active subscription in your app. This includes users with free trials or those in a grace period.
• Active subscription: An SKU that a user has activated, including free trials. Active subscriptions end when a user cancels their subscription, even if their access continues until the end of the current billing period.
• First-time subscription: The first subscription a user activates in your app.
• Returning subscription: A second or subsequent subscription that a user buys in the same app. For example, a user cancels their first subscription in May and purchases one again in September.

Your app's total subscriptions card shows all active, new, and canceled subscriptions during the selected time period, including users with free trials.

Your app's revenue card shows daily and 30-day revenue generated during the selected time period, including taxes and other fees.

The retention card displays the percentage of subscriptions that remain active over time. You can use this information to better understand how well different SKUs retain subscribers.

To see a detailed breakdown of your retention and conversion data, select Explore report.  

The cancellations card shows the churn breakdown for your cohort’s subscriptions. You can use this information to identify ways to try to decrease cancellations for different scenarios. 

To see a detailed breakdown of your cancellation and recovery data, select Explore report.

On your Subscription retention report, you can compare retention and conversion rates between two subscription cohorts to better understand how to best retain and convert subscribers. You can configure cohorts by subscription, base plan, or offer, country of purchase, and the date range of when a subscription started. Cohorts in the retention report include all new subscriptions, including first-time and returning subscribers.

Compare retention rates

You can evaluate how well each cohort retains subscribers and when or if they churn using the “Retention by billing period” and “Retention by day” charts.

On the “Retention by billing period” chart, you can see how many billing cycles your subscribers remain active for. This can give you insight into how well you’re monetizing subscribers in each cohort.

Note: If you’ve set up introductory price billing cycles for a subscription, they’re included in the billing periods. If an installments base plan is selected, the report will show installment subscriptions that were billed during each billing period.

On the “Retention by day” chart, you can get more detailed insights on how far subscribers get into a billing period before canceling. This chart includes the first day a subscription was active to the day it was canceled, including any free trial, grace period, and account hold time periods.

Below each chart, you can view the data in a table by selecting the down arrow next to Data table.

Compare conversion rates

Under the retention charts, there are cards that show you how well subscribers convert from the following states:

• Free trial offer to a paid subscription
• Introductory price offer to full price
• First full payment to second full payment

On each card, you can see how many subscribers in a cohort entered the subscription state and how many of the subscriptions that existed in that state either canceled or converted to a paid subscription, along with a breakdown of cancellation reasons.

For example, imagine that you had 2,000 subscribers start a free trial offer, and 1,000 of them have now completed the free trial offer, either by canceling or converting to paid subscriptions. If 200 of those 1,000 subscribers are no longer using the free trial because they canceled it, and the remaining 800 people converted to paid subscriptions, your cancellation rate would be 20%, and your conversion rate would be 80%.

If you choose the base plan view, your cancellation metrics will also show users who switched to a different base plan within the subscription. If you choose the offer view, your cancellation metrics will also show users who switched to a different base plan, or a different offer.

On your Cancellations and recovery report, you can get detailed insights on why users canceled their subscriptions and how well subscription recovery features, such as grace period and account hold, are performing.

After you select a subscription, base plan, or offer, countries, and time period that you want to view data for, you can view charts that summarize and categorize why users canceled their subscriptions. Statistics are shown as percentages by default to make it easier to compare the key reasons for cancellation. To view data as absolute values, choose Absolute values from the Display drop-down menu.

To get details for specific dates, hover over the graph.

View cancellation reasons

The Cancellations card shows a breakdown of users’ top reasons for cancellation over time:

• Voluntary: Subscription canceled due to an explicit action by the user (e.g., canceling in the Play Store, deleting their account, contacting support to request cancellation) or by the developer (e.g., using the Google Play Developer API or order management to cancel a subscription).
• Involuntary: Subscription canceled due to an issue completing payment (e.g., unconfirmed price changes or a payment problem, such as insufficient funds, closed accounts, etc.).
• Upgrade/downgrade: Subscription canceled because the user moved to another subscription tier.
• Base plan change: The user switched to another base plan within the same subscription (only shown in base plan and offer view).
• Offer change: The user switched to another offer within the same base plan (only shown in offer view).
• Other: Subscriptions canceled for other reasons (e.g., inactive account, app suspension).

View cancellation survey responses

When users cancel their subscriptions using the subscription center, they’re asked why they decided to cancel. Responses from users who chose to provide a reason for cancellation are shown in the Cancellation survey responses card.

Users that choose “Other” may optionally provide their own reason for canceling. You can download a CSV file containing these responses from the Other responses card if you have the global "View financial data" permission.