How ARPPU is calculated
Average revenue per paying user divides revenue by payers only:
ARPPU = revenue in period / paying users in period
A worked example: in October 3,000 users made at least one purchase and together spent $45,000. ARPPU is 45,000 / 3,000 = $15.
ARPPU answers one question: when someone pays, how much do they pay? It ignores how many people pay, which is the job of paying user share or conversion rate.
ARPPU and ARPU together
ARPU, ARPPU and payer share are linked:
ARPU = paying user share x ARPPU
If 150,000 users were active in October and 3,000 of them paid, payer share is 2%. With ARPPU at $15, ARPU is 0.02 x 15 = $0.30. This split is useful in reviews because it points to different work. A low payer share points to paywall placement, trial design and onboarding. A low ARPPU points to pricing, bundles and plan tiers.
Where ARPPU is most useful
- Games and commerce with a long tail of purchase sizes, where a few large spenders drive a big share of revenue.
- Pricing tests, to see whether a new price changes what payers spend.
- Source comparison, since payers from different campaigns can spend very different amounts.
For subscription apps with one or two plans, ARPPU stays close to the plan price, so trial-to-paid conversion and renewal rate usually say more.
Measuring ARPPU by campaign
To compare ARPPU across campaigns you need each purchase tied to the install that started it. Linkrunner attributes in-app purchase revenue (with currency) sent through the SDK or server API, and subscription events from RevenueCat, to the campaign, ad set and creative behind each install. Combine that with payer counts from your cohort view and you can tell which campaigns bring big spenders and which bring many small ones. See ROAS measurement for how that revenue rolls up against spend.