How Adapty analytics works

This article describes how Adapty Analytics works: what data it displays, where the data is from, and how the data is processed. It also explains the design decisions that make Adapty Analytics different, and how these decisions benefit you.

Adapty Analytics vs Store analytics

• Data variety: Stores can only display their own data, and cannot access user behavior inside the app.

  Adapty can combine data from multiple stores, as well as additional sources — marketing platforms and ad networks. The Adapty SDK tracks user interactions with paywalls and onboardings.

• Update frequency: App stores usually update their data once a day, which can limit your ability to make real-time decisions.

  Adapty offers close to real-time analytics.

• Advanced metrics: App stores display basic metrics such as downloads, revenue, and retention rates.

  Adapty also calculates advanced metrics, such as recurring revenue or average revenue per user. Dedicated sections analyze subscription issues: user churn, billing failures, etc. See the Metric comparison table article for a full list.

• Predictions: Adapty uses advanced machine learning algorithms to predict future LTV and revenue.

Data and its sources

Adapty Analytics processes the following data into charts and graphs:

• Subscription events generated throughout the user lifecycle — trial starts, purchases, renewals, cancellations, billing failures, refunds. Adapty aggregates these into the analytics charts and forwards them in real time to webhooks, the event feed, and event-based integrations.
• Transaction data — revenue, refunds, the buyer’s country, etc.
• Application data such as the number of installations or paywall interactions.
• Attribution data for transactions: traffic sources and ad campaigns.

This data comes from the following sources:

• The Adapty SDK iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, Unity, Kotlin Multiplatform, Capacitor reports user behavior data from inside the app. If Adapty handles your purchase flow management, the SDK shares first-hand information about the purchase events. If you use the observer mode, the SDK receives event reports that you set up manually.
• The stores use server-to-server communication to notify Adapty of transactions (trials, subscription renewals, cancellations, etc.).
• Third-party attribution services (Appsflyer, Adjust, Branch, etc.) share data on traffic sources and ad campaigns. If you set up Adapty Attribution, Adapty can handle your ad campaign data on its own, bypassing this step.
• Users can manually import historical transaction data for Adapty to analyze and display.

A problem with one of the sources may impact the overall quality of your analytics data. View the Troubleshooting section for more information.

Third-party integrations

You can enable Adapty Attribution to expand Adapty’s analytics capabilities with ad campaign data. It will help you discover correlations between ad campaign spending and user behavior.

Likewise, you can export analytics data to third-party platforms or a private server, and analyze data from Adapty on a different platform.

Data processing

Adapty offers close to real-time analytics, which allows users to quickly react to changes in key metrics.

• Analytics charts: data appears with a 15–30 minute delay after a transaction occurs. Adapty needs this time to validate the transaction, apply commissions and taxes, and aggregate the data.
• Event feed: updates in real time, as soon as the stores deliver an event.
• Webhooks and event-based integrations (AppsFlyer, Branch, etc.): Adapty forwards events as they occur — the 15–30 minute analytics delay does not apply. The receiving service may introduce its own processing time.

Each surface has its own timing. The same event can appear at slightly different times in charts, the Event Feed, and your integrations. Small mismatches between them are expected.

These delays affect how soon an event appears, not how long a chart keeps changing afterwards. Most charts date an event to the day it happened, so that day’s total is final as soon as the event arrives. Cohort-based metrics work differently: conversion rates, cohorts, and retention group users by an action they took, then keep measuring what those users do afterwards. The metric for a past date keeps rising for weeks or months. Why past values change covers what that means for reporting.

Commissions and taxes

When you view revenue-related charts, you can choose between Gross revenue, Revenue after commissions, and Revenue after commissions and taxes.

Commissions

Stores deduct a commission from each transaction. Adapty applies the commission rate that matches the transaction’s store, store country, purchase date, and subscription age.

Adapty can’t detect membership in a reduced commission program. If your organization is enrolled in one, add the membership period to your Adapty settings:

• App Store Small Business Program
• Google’s reduced service fee program

App Store commission rates

Adapty applies these rates to App Store transactions. The reduced rate applies to Small Business Program members, and to auto-renewable subscriptions after their first year of paid service.

• Transactions made before a storefront’s start date keep the 30% and 15% rates.
• The European Union rates don’t apply to Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein.
• For Japan and Brazil, Apple splits each rate into a commission and a 5% payment processing fee. Adapty deducts both, so the table shows their sum.
• Adapty doesn’t know about membership in the Mini Apps Partner Program or the Video Partner Program, and applies the standard rate to these transactions.

Adapty selects the rate by the store country: the country of the App Store where the purchase was made. This is the country of the buyer’s Apple account, where the buyer pays. The user’s location and IP address don’t affect the rate. For example, a user with a US Apple account who subscribes while in Germany makes a purchase in the US App Store, so Adapty applies the 30% rate, not the 26% European Union rate.

Taxes

Adapty does not calculate taxes. Apple and Google determine the tax rate that applies to each transaction and report it back to Adapty, which displays the value as-is.

The tax rate shown for a given transaction depends on:

• The buyer’s billing country and the local tax rate in effect there.
• The store’s tax-handling rules. In some jurisdictions, the store collects and remits tax on the developer’s behalf; in others, the developer is responsible.
• For App Store transactions, the tax category assigned to the app or in-app purchase (books, news, videos, etc.) — categories can be taxed at different rates depending on local rules.

Tax rates can vary significantly between apps — and even between transactions within the same app — because of the mix of buyer countries, the stores’ handling rules, and (for the App Store) the assigned tax category.

For the authoritative rules, refer to the stores’ official documentation:

• App Store: Understanding taxes
• Google Play: Tax rates and VAT

Troubleshooting

• A misconfigured or missing data source can negatively affect the entire analytics system. If you encounter data issues, make sure your integrations with stores and third-party platforms are configured and active.

• If you compare Adapty charts to other analytics platforms, you may notice discrepancies. This is expected behavior that may result from differences in data processing. Read the discrepancies guide article to learn about common causes of data discrepancies.