Summarize this documentation using AI
"What is a good retention rate?" is unanswerable without a vertical attached. A 30% repeat purchase rate is excellent for a fashion brand and alarming for a grocery brand. A 7% day-30 retention rate makes you a median fintech app and a top-decile shopping app.
So here is the direct answer, then the receipts. In 2026, the average ecommerce repeat purchase rate sits around 28.2%, median annual subscriber churn across the Recurly network ranges from 3.22% (SaaS) to 4.99% (education), subscription boxes still bleed 10 to 15% of subscribers per month, and median day-30 retention for consumer apps lands anywhere from 2% (shopping) to 12% (social). Everything below is sourced and dated so you can benchmark against your actual peer set, not a blended average.
For the broader stat library behind this piece, see our 50+ customer retention statistics and benchmarks roundup and our guide to customer retention rates by industry.
What are good customer retention benchmarks in 2026?
How should you read retention benchmarks?
Three rules before you compare anything.
First, match the metric. Repeat purchase rate, logo churn, revenue churn, and day-N retention are different math on different denominators. Recurly notes that annual churn is not simply 12x monthly churn because of compounding, so a "5% churn rate" is meaningless until you know the period.
Second, benchmark cohorts, not blended averages. A blended number mixes loyalists with last month's discount-driven signups and hides every real trend. Start with our primer on what cohort analysis is and how to run it, then graduate to cohort LTV vs blended LTV.
Third, split voluntary from involuntary churn. Across the Recurly network in July 2026, total churn of 3.60% breaks into 2.34% voluntary and 1.25% involuntary. That means roughly a third of all subscription churn is failed payments, not unhappy customers, and it is the cheapest churn to fix.
1. DTC and ecommerce retention benchmarks
The average ecommerce repeat purchase rate is 28.2%, according to Rivo's benchmark roundup of Shopify and industry data, but the spread by category is enormous: luxury goods sit at 9.9%, fashion overall at 24.4%, beauty and cosmetics at 25.9%, health and supplements at 29%, pet supplies above 30%, and grocery and food delivery at 65.2%.
On engagement-based measurement, Mixpanel's product benchmarks analysis of 1.3 billion users found that average eight-week retention is below 20% for most industries, and that elite ecommerce products clear 35% eight-week retention.
What separates the 35%+ brands from the pack is rarely the product. It is the post-purchase system: segmented flows, replenishment triggers, and winback sequences firing at the right moment. Our ecommerce email marketing benchmarks for 2026 break down what good looks like channel by channel, and Klaviyo's 2026 benchmark data across 183,000+ businesses shows why flows matter: automated flows generate nearly 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of sends, with over 3x the click rate of campaigns (5.58% vs 1.69%).
2. Subscription box and DTC subscription benchmarks
Subscription boxes remain the leakiest bucket in consumer subscriptions. Churnkey's industry analysis puts average monthly churn for ecommerce subscription boxes at 10 to 15%, versus 4 to 6% for SaaS and 5 to 8% for media and entertainment. At 12% monthly churn, you replace your entire subscriber base roughly every 8 months.
The broader subscription picture is healthier: Recurly's network medians (July 2026) show ecommerce subscriptions at 4.25% annual churn, digital media at 4.14%, and education at 4.99%. And the top cancellation driver is not price. Recurly's 2026 State of Subscriptions report found 52% of consumers canceled at least one subscription in the past year due to lack of use. Engagement, not billing, is the retention lever.
If you run a subscription brand, start with our full guide to reducing subscriber churn, then map your program against the subscription retention matrix and our subscription retention strategies guide.
3. Health, wellness, and telehealth retention benchmarks
Health and fitness subscriptions churn at 7 to 10% monthly on average (Churnkey), and health and fitness apps retain a median of just 5% of users at day 30, with strong performers reaching 8 to 12%, per UXCam's 2026 benchmark compilation of AppsFlyer, Adjust, and data.ai data.
Telehealth has an even harder version of this problem: medication persistence. A Prime Therapeutics real-world analysis of 3,364 patients, covered by Forbes, found 71% of patients taking GLP-1s for weight loss discontinued within one year and 85% within two years. For a GLP-1 telehealth brand, the retention benchmark to beat is brutal: keep more than 29% of patients active at month 12 and you are outperforming the market.
That is a lifecycle problem as much as a clinical one, which is why we built dedicated playbooks for GLP-1 patient retention and retention and lifecycle marketing for telemedicine.
4. Consumer app retention benchmarks
Per UXCam's 2026 compilation, median day-30 retention by category: social 12%, streaming and media 7%, productivity 8%, gaming 3%, health and fitness 5%. Day-1 medians run 18 to 40%, meaning most apps lose 60 to 82% of new users in the first 24 hours. Strong performers roughly double the median at every checkpoint. The practical takeaway: the battle is won in week one, so onboarding flows, activation nudges, and early value delivery move day-30 more than anything you do later.
5. Fintech retention benchmarks
Fintech is quietly one of the stickier consumer categories. Median day-30 retention is 7%, with strong performers at 10 to 15% (UXCam 2026), and Mixpanel's benchmark analysis found elite finance products exceed 25% eight-week retention. On the subscription side, financial services show the lowest churn of any consumer category at 2 to 4% monthly (Churnkey), reflecting the high switching costs once money is parked.
The fintech-specific pattern: retention is bimodal. Users who fund a wallet or set up a recurring action retain at multiples of those who merely browse, so benchmark your activated cohort separately from your signup cohort.
6. Marketplace retention benchmarks
Marketplaces and shopping apps post the lowest day-30 numbers of any category: a 2% median, with strong performers at 3 to 6% (UXCam 2026). That is not failure, it is purchase-cycle math. Nobody buys furniture weekly. The right benchmark for a marketplace is repeat transaction rate per quarter and buyer-to-repeat-buyer conversion, not daily active use.
The levers are different too: reactivation email and push tied to browse behavior, supply-side quality, and category expansion per buyer. We cover the playbook in how to increase customer retention in marketplaces.
7. Food and beverage retention benchmarks
Food and beverage is the retention outlier in the best way. Grocery and food delivery post a 65.2% repeat purchase rate, the highest of any ecommerce category, and consumable CPG (supplements at 29%, coffee, snacks) clusters well above the 28.2% ecommerce average because consumption creates a natural replenishment cycle.
The benchmark to watch here is time-between-orders. If your product is consumed in 30 days and your median reorder gap is 55, that gap is your churn signal, and a replenishment flow timed to actual consumption is usually the highest-ROI automation an F&B brand can build.
How Propel turns benchmarks into retention gains
Benchmarks tell you where you stand. They do not close the gap. Propel is a lifecycle and retention marketing agency for DTC, subscription, health, and consumer app brands, and closing that gap is the entire job: cohort-level diagnostics, churn-reason analysis, and the flows and experiments that move repeat rate and net revenue retention quarter over quarter.
If your numbers trail the tables above, start with our retention marketing services, see how your vertical stacks up in customer retention rates by industry, or go straight to the guide to calculating, tracking, and combating subscription churn. Then let's look at your cohorts together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good customer retention rate in 2026?
It depends entirely on your vertical and metric. For ecommerce, beat the 28.2% average repeat purchase rate for your category (grocery brands should target 60%+, fashion 25%+). For subscriptions, median annual churn is 3.60% across the Recurly network, so anything below that is above average. For consumer apps, doubling your category's median day-30 retention (2 to 12% depending on category) puts you in the top tier.
What is the average churn rate for subscription businesses?
Recurly network data from July 2026 shows a median annual churn rate of 3.60% across all subscription verticals: SaaS at 3.22%, ecommerce subscriptions at 4.25%, digital media at 4.14%, and education at 4.99%. Monthly churn tells a different story for consumer categories: subscription boxes average 10 to 15% monthly, and health and fitness subscriptions 7 to 10% monthly, per Churnkey's industry analysis.
How do I calculate repeat purchase rate?
Divide the number of customers who made more than one purchase in a period by your total number of customers in that period, then multiply by 100. If 2,800 of your 10,000 customers this year purchased at least twice, your repeat purchase rate is 28%. Measure it on cohorts (customers acquired in the same month) rather than a blended base to see whether retention is actually improving.
Why is app retention so much lower than subscription retention?
Because the commitment models differ. A subscription renews by default, so churn requires an active cancellation or a failed payment. An app must re-earn attention every session, so retention decays fast: most apps lose 60 to 82% of new users within 24 hours, and median day-30 retention runs 2 to 12% by category. Comparing app day-30 retention to subscriber churn is a category error; benchmark each against its own vertical.
How often should brands benchmark retention?
Review cohort retention monthly and re-benchmark against external data twice a year, since sources like Recurly's network data and app retention compilations refresh on that cadence. More important than frequency is consistency: track the same metrics (repeat purchase rate, monthly and annual churn, day-30 retention) on the same cohort definitions, and split voluntary from involuntary churn so you can see which lever actually moved.
