ARPPU: Average revenue per paying user.

Most players in a free-to-play game never pay. ARPPU ignores them and looks only at the ones who do. It tells you whether your store, prices and offers are giving paying players enough reasons to spend.

The ARPPU formula

ARPPU = purchase revenue in a period ÷ paying users in the same period

A paying user is anyone who made at least one purchase in the period. Most teams use in-app purchase and subscription revenue only, and leave ad revenue out, because non-payers also generate ad revenue. State which you use, and whether the revenue is gross or net of store fees.

A worked example

In March, a puzzle game has 40,000 monthly active users. 600 of them buy something, and together they spend $9,000 on in-app purchases.

ARPPU = $9,000 ÷ 600 = $15

Payer conversion = 600 ÷ 40,000 = 1.5%

Now suppose a new starter pack lifts payer conversion to 2% (800 payers) in April, but most of the new payers only buy the cheap pack. Purchase revenue rises to $10,400.

April ARPPU = $10,400 ÷ 800 = $13

ARPPU fell, yet the game earned $1,400 more from purchases. This is why you should never read ARPPU on its own. A falling ARPPU can be good news if it comes from more people paying.

How ARPPU links to ARPU

Purchase revenue per user = payer conversion × ARPPU

In March: 1.5% × $15 = $0.225. In April: 2% × $13 = $0.26. Add ad revenue per user and you get ARPU.

Metric	Who is counted	What it tells you
ARPU	All active users	Average value of any player
ARPPU	Paying users only	How much payers spend
Payer conversion	Paying ÷ active users	How many players pay at all
ARPDAU	Daily active users	Daily monetization, fast feedback

What a typical ARPPU looks like

ARPPU varies enormously by genre, country and pricing. Casual games with small purchases sit at the low end. Strategy, RPG and casino games, where a few players spend heavily, can show ARPPU many times higher. Published benchmarks rarely agree, so compare against your own past cohorts and games in the same genre and market rather than an industry average.

Why spending is so uneven

In many free-to-play games a small share of payers, often called whales, produces a large share of purchase revenue. That makes ARPPU sensitive to a handful of people. If one big spender stops, ARPPU can drop sharply without any change to the game.

To see past this, look at the distribution, not just the average:

• Median spend per payer next to the mean.
• Spend bands, for example under $5, $5 to $50 and over $50, with the number of payers in each.
• Repeat purchase rate, the share of payers who buy again within 30 days.

How to raise ARPPU

• Price ladder. Offer bundles at several price points so payers have a natural next step up.
• Value bundles. Packs that clearly beat buying items one by one.
• Season or battle pass. A recurring purchase with visible rewards over several weeks.
• Personalized offers. Show offers based on what a player has already bought and how far they have progressed.
• Events. Limited-time LiveOps offers give payers a reason to spend now.

Push too hard and you hurt retention and reviews. Test price changes on a share of players first, and watch D7 and D30 retention for the test group as well as revenue.

ARPPU and LTV

Payer LTV depends on ARPPU and on how long payers stay. Payers usually retain much better than non-payers, so their lifetime value is far higher than one month's ARPPU suggests. Track it by cohort and by acquisition source, because some channels bring far more payers than others.