Paywall Abandonment Rate: Bounces vs Cancelled Purchases

RevenueDot pairs each customer with each paywall they saw and dates the pair by the first impression. If the customer has no trial start, purchase or one-time purchase on calendar days 0 to 3, the pair is abandoned. If the SDK also reported a paywall_purchase_initiated event in the window, the pair is a purchase cancellation. If not, it is a bounce.

The abandonment rate is bounces plus purchase cancellations divided by viewers, so it plus the initial conversion rate on Paywall Conversion equals 100 percent. You can filter and segment by paywall, app, country, platform and app version. Pairs are marked incomplete until the window ends. You can open it in the dashboard under Charts or fetch it with GET /v2/projects/{project_id}/charts/paywall_abandonment. The response has the same shape as RevenueCat's Charts API, so scripts written for that API keep working. The secret key needs the charts_metrics:charts:read permission. The Charts guide lists every parameter.

One paywall, 1,000 viewers, after the 4 day window.

Abandonment is (620 + 250) / 1,000 = 87.0%, which with the 13.0% conversion adds up to 100%.

The two kinds of abandonment need different fixes. Bounces say the offer did not interest the customer: look at the copy, the price shown and the plans. Purchase cancellations say the customer wanted to buy and the flow stopped them: look at the store payment sheet, the price at the last step and failed purchases.

Segmenting by paywall shows which design loses people and where. A paywall with a high cancellation rate and a low bounce rate has strong intent and a checkout problem.

How to read it

• Most of abandonment is bounce. Do not expect to remove it, aim to move a few points.
• A rise in purchase cancellations without a design change can mean a store sheet problem or a price change in a region.
• Customers who open the payment sheet and back out may buy later. Day 0 to 3 is a short window, so check Initial Conversion at 30 days.
• Purchase initiated events come from the SDK. If your app uses a custom purchase flow that does not report them, all abandonment shows as bounce.
• Read it together with Paywall Encounter: fewer people reaching the paywall is a different problem.