How classic retention works
Classic retention, also called Day-N retention, is the percentage of an install cohort that opened the app on exactly Day N. Unlike cumulative or rolling retention, it does not credit returns on nearby days. If you are measuring Day 7 and a user opened the app on Day 6 and Day 8 but not Day 7, they do not count.
The calculation divides the users who opened the app on that specific day by the cohort size, then multiplies by 100. For example, if 1,000 users installed on the same day and 200 of them opened the app on Day 7, classic Day 7 retention is 20%. Because it counts activity on a single day only, classic retention is usually the lowest of the three methods for any given day.
Why classic retention is the benchmark standard
When the industry quotes retention benchmarks, it almost always means classic retention. This is the definition behind the familiar numbers: median Day 1 retention sits around 25 to 27%, Day 7 around 12 to 15%, and Day 30 around 6 to 8% across categories. Because classic retention is defined the same way everywhere, it is the only method you can safely compare against external benchmarks or against a competitor's reported figures.
Like cumulative retention, classic retention is bounded. It measures one fixed day, so once a cohort has passed that day the value is final and will not drift. That makes it dependable for period-over-period reporting and for tracking whether a product or onboarding change moved the needle.
When to use classic retention
Use classic retention for external benchmarking, board and investor reporting, and any comparison where consistency of definition matters more than capturing every return. Its main limitation is that it can understate engagement for apps with naturally intermittent usage, since a loyal user who simply skipped the exact measurement day is not counted. For those apps, pair classic retention with cumulative or rolling retention to see the fuller picture.
In Linkrunner, classic retention is available for Day 1, Day 7, Day 14, and Day 30, and is returned as classic_retention in the Campaign Reporting API.