Game Monetization Calculator
Calculate ARPU, conversion rates, and LTV for free-to-play games.
About this calculator
This calculator translates the four numbers every free-to-play game producer tracks -- monthly active users, payer conversion rate, average spend per paying player, and day-30 retention -- into revenue and player-value figures a studio can actually plan around. Monthly Revenue and Annual Revenue come from a straightforward chain: conversion rate applied to monthly active users gives the number of paying players, and multiplying that by average spend per payer gives total monthly revenue, which is then projected to an annual figure. ARPU (average revenue per user) restates that same revenue on a per-player basis across your whole active base, including the players who never pay a cent, while ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) is simply the average spend figure you entered, since by definition it only counts players who do pay.
Player LTV (lifetime value) is the one output built on an assumption rather than a direct multiplication: it estimates an average player lifetime in months from day-30 retention, using the rough approximation that a retention rate translates to an expected number of active months, then multiplies that by ARPU. This is a simplification of real cohort-based LTV modeling, which normally tracks retention curves over dozens of data points rather than a single day-30 snapshot, so treat the LTV figure here as a directional estimate for early planning, not a number to take to investors without a fuller cohort analysis. Because monthly active users, conversion rate, and average spend per payer all multiply directly into monthly revenue, each one moves the top-line number proportionally -- there's no diminishing-returns curve or cap built into the revenue calculation itself.
Inputs
Results
Monthly Revenue
$45,000.00
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter Monthly Active Users and the Payer Conversion Rate percentage.
- Enter Average Spend Per Paying Player per month.
- Enter Day-30 Retention percentage to estimate player lifetime value.
- Review Monthly Revenue, ARPU (average revenue per user), and Player LTV.
- Use Annual Revenue and Paying Users count to plan live service content and marketing budgets.
How the result changes with Monthly Active Users
| Monthly Active Users | Monthly Revenue |
|---|---|
| 50,000 | $22,500.00 |
| 75,000 | $33,750.00 |
| 150,000 | $67,500.00 |
| 250,000 | $112,500.00 |
What each input means
- Monthly Active Users
- Number of unique active players per month.
- Payer Conversion Rate
- Percentage of players who make a purchase.
- Avg Spend / Payer
- Average monthly spend per paying player.
- Day-30 Retention
- Percentage of players still active after 30 days.
How this is calculated
Worked example, using the default values
- Identify Input Parameters4 parametersMonthly Active Users = 100000, Payer Conversion Rate = 3, Avg Spend / Payer = 15, Day-30 Retention = 20 = 4 input(s) provided
- Calculate Monthly RevenueMonthly Revenue45000 = $45,000
- Calculate Annual RevenueAnnual Revenue540000 = $540,000
- Calculate ARPUARPU0.45 = $0.45
Engine last updated . Checked against 1 independently-derived test — how we verify calculators. Built by Paul Gunder, a software engineer, not a licensed financial, medical, or legal professional.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between ARPU and ARPPU?
ARPU (average revenue per user) spreads total monthly revenue across every monthly active player, including the roughly 97-99% who never pay anything in a typical F2P conversion range, so it's always a small fraction of what a paying player actually spends. ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) only counts players who pay, which is why it equals the Average Spend / Payer figure you entered directly -- it's the number that describes what your paying audience is worth, while ARPU describes what your total audience is worth.
How is Player LTV actually calculated?
LTV multiplies ARPU by an estimated average player lifetime in months, and that lifetime estimate comes from your day-30 retention rate using a simplified formula (roughly 1 divided by the monthly churn rate implied by that retention figure). This is a rough approximation standing in for the fuller cohort-retention-curve modeling that real game studios build from actual day-1/7/30/90 data, so use this LTV figure as an early planning signal rather than a precise financial projection.
Why does raising conversion rate by 1% change revenue so much?
Conversion rate multiplies directly into Paying Users, which then multiplies directly into Monthly Revenue, so there's no dampening or saturation in that chain -- a 1 percentage point increase in conversion rate produces roughly the same percentage increase in Paying Users and Monthly Revenue, holding everything else fixed. This is exactly why conversion rate optimization (onboarding flow, first-purchase offers, paywall placement) is one of the highest-leverage levers in F2P monetization, even though the industry-typical range is a narrow 1-5%.
Does Day-30 Retention affect Monthly Revenue directly?
No -- Day-30 Retention only feeds into the Player LTV calculation in this model; it has no direct effect on Monthly Revenue, Annual Revenue, or ARPU, which are all driven purely by monthly active users, conversion rate, and average spend per payer. In a real game, better retention would eventually raise monthly active users and paying users too, but this calculator treats those as independent inputs you set directly rather than deriving one from the other.
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