With the top app stores flooded with AI apps, developers may think their best bet to increase profits is to integrate artificial intelligence technology into their products. But a new study focusing on the subscription app ecosystem across iOS, Android, and the web calls that assumption into question.
RevenueCat, a company with subscription management tools used by more than 75,000 app developers, says in its 2026 State of Subscription Apps report that AI integration does not guarantee long-term sustainability. Instead, AI-powered apps struggle to retain subscribers, with people canceling their annual subscriptions (a metric known as churn) a median of 30% faster than non-AI apps, the report said.
This report is based on an analysis of subscription app providers who use RevenueCat’s tools to manage more than 1 billion in-app transactions, generating more than $11 billion in annual revenue for developers. Being one of the most popular tools in this field, its data represents a healthy sample from a trend analysis perspective.
Among many interesting findings, the report noted that most apps using the company’s platform are not yet leveraging AI. AI-powered apps account for 27.1% of apps across all categories, compared to 72.9% for non-AI apps. Still, the category is growing, with roughly a quarter of apps leveraging AI.
(As a reminder, the AI-powered apps category includes popular AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, as well as apps that advertise themselves as AI-powered.)
Photo and video apps have the largest share (61.4%) of AI-powered apps, while games have the smallest share at 6.2%. Travel (12.3%) and business (19.1%) are also low AI segments.
An even more surprising number concerns the ability of AI apps to retain paying customers. According to RevenueCat data, AI apps have poor retention rates on both monthly and annual levels.
Annual retention, a metric that focuses on an app’s ability to retain subscribers after 12 months, was higher at 30.7% for non-AI apps compared to 21.1% for AI apps. The monthly AI app retention rate was 6.1%, compared to the non-AI app retention rate of 9.5%, a difference of 3.4 percentage points.
The only area where AI led in retention was weekly tables, where AI apps had a 2.5% retention rate compared to 1.7% for non-AI apps. Note that weekly subscriptions are not the most popular option for AI apps.
These metrics can be affected by the rapidly changing landscape of AI technologies. As a result, users may start bouncing back and forth between different AI apps faster, trying to find the one with the latest technology under the hood.
As customers experiment with more AI apps, the likelihood that some apps won’t meet their needs increases as well. The report notes that AI apps have a 20% higher refund rate than non-AI apps (median 4.2% vs. 3.5%).
The upper bound on refund rates for AI apps is also higher (15.6% vs. 12.5%), suggesting “higher fluctuations in realized returns and serious issues with user value, experience, and long-term quality,” the report said.
Data shows that there are several benefits to being part of the group of AI-powered apps.
According to research from RevenueCat, AI apps are 52% more likely than non-AI apps to convert users from trials to paying customers (median 8.5% vs. 5.6%), and AI apps monetize downloads approximately 20% better than non-AI apps (median 2.4% to 2%).
AI apps also generate more than 39% monthly realized lifetime value (RLTV), a metric that measures the actual net worth of the average paying user over time. The median price for AI apps on this metric is $18.92 per month, compared to $13.59 for non-AI apps. AI apps also maintained a 41%+ RLTV on an annual basis, again with a median of $30.16 vs. $21.37.
The overall takeaway from the report’s findings is that while AI can strongly drive early monetization, these apps struggle to maintain customer value over the long term.
