35–45% of mobile subscription churn is billing failures — not cancellations.
App Store and Play Store auto-retry catches some. The rest needs dunning. This splits the two so you know which problem you're actually solving.
Mixed iOS / Android — App Store ~40% vs Google Play ~62% involuntary churn; your blended rate is 49% of total churn.
Monthly churn split
Recovery waterfall / month
Recovery waterfall
per month at current inputs
Involuntary / mo
$980
billing failures
Voluntary / mo
$1k
chose to cancel
RC plan cost
$79/mo
Surge · RevenueCat track
Still at risk / yr
$10k
recoverable with Recurflux on top
At your 60% iOS / 40% Android mix, billing failures account for ~49% of churn. Store retries recover only ~15% of those failures, leaving $833/mo — $10k/yr — at risk with no further recovery layer.
Connects to RevenueCat in under 5 minutes. Starts recovering mobile billing failures the same day.
Mobile billing, decoded
Mobile billing, decoded
When a RevenueCat dashboard shows 4% monthly churn, it's tempting to read that as 4% of subscribers deciding your app isn't worth it anymore. Usually a big chunk of that number never made a decision at all — an expired card, a declined charge, a bank flagging a renewal as suspicious. That's billing failure churn, and on mobile it runs higher than most teams assume: roughly 40% of involuntary churn on the App Store and 62% on Google Play, against the much lower failure rates web-based subscriptions see. Splitting the two apart changes what you build next — a cancellation flow doesn't fix a declined card, and a payment recovery layer doesn't change someone's mind about your app.
Both App Store and Play Store billing run their own retry logic when a renewal charge fails — a few attempts spread over a matter of days, then the subscription lapses. It's built into the platform, costs developers nothing extra to use, and it does recover a slice of failed renewals on its own — somewhere around 15% of billing failures, by most estimates. What it doesn't do is reach the subscriber directly: no email telling them their card was declined, no link to update payment details, no second attempt timed to when their bank issue has actually cleared. The store retries the charge; it doesn't talk to the person behind it.
Start with total monthly churned revenue (MRR × monthly churn rate), then split it by cause. If you don't have exact numbers from RevenueCat's churn breakdown, the App Store/Play Store involuntary-churn benchmarks above (~40% / ~62%) give a workable estimate weighted by your iOS/Android subscriber mix. Multiply that involuntary share by your total churned revenue and you've got a monthly figure for billing-failure losses — the calculator above runs this exact chain on your inputs, then layers in what store retries already catch versus what's genuinely still up for grabs.
Past what Apple and Google catch automatically, recovery comes down to reaching the subscriber while the failure is still fresh — a card-update prompt, a payment link that doesn't require reopening the app, a retry timed to when a bank's temporary block usually lifts rather than a flat platform schedule. That's the layer that sits on top of, not in place of, store retries: it picks up the renewals the platforms' own logic was never built to chase down, which is where Recurflux's ~65% recovery rate on the remainder comes from.
Common questions
Mobile app churn averages 35–45% involuntary — meaning it comes from billing failures rather than intentional cancellations. This is higher than web SaaS (25–35%) because card-on-file failures hit more frequently on App Store and Google Play billing cycles.
Yes. Apple retries failed subscription payments up to 3 times over 60 days. Google Play also retries and places accounts in an "account hold" state. Together, these auto-retries recover roughly 25% of billing failures. The remaining ~75% requires additional dunning — emails, card update links, and subscription pause flows.
Recurflux adds branded email dunning (Day 0, 1, 3, 7, 14 after billing_issue), card update links, subscription pause flows (Apple 3.1.2 compliant), and win-back sequences after expiration. On average, this recovers ~55% of what remains after Apple and Google auto-retries — without a percentage-of-revenue fee.
Recurflux offers two flat-rate RevenueCat plans: Rise at $29/month (up to $15k MRR) and Surge at $79/month (up to $75k MRR). There is no percentage of recovered revenue fee.
Involuntary churn happens when a subscriber's payment fails — an expired card, insufficient funds, or a billing error — and they lapse without ever deciding to cancel. Voluntary churn is when a subscriber actively cancels. For mobile apps on RevenueCat, involuntary churn averages 35–45% of total churn and is largely recoverable with the right dunning sequences.
Start recovering billing failures today
Recurflux connects to RevenueCat in under 5 minutes. Dunning emails, card update reminders, and subscription pause — on top of what Apple and Google already retry.