Mental Health App User Acquisition Cost Benchmarks (2026)

There are no published mental health app user acquisition cost benchmarks that treat meditation, therapy or mood apps as their own group. The public data sets report them inside the App Store's Health & Fitness category, which is where Calm and Headspace are both listed. The closest sourced figure is a median cost per install of $3.77 for Health & Fitness apps on Apple Ads search results in the US (AppTweak, 2025 data, published 2026).

Cost per trial and cost per subscriber are thinner still. No current category-level figure is published for either. What does exist is good conversion data, which lets you work out a cost per subscriber from your own install cost.

Mental health app user acquisition cost benchmarks: the sourced figures

Every row below is for the Health & Fitness category unless it says otherwise.

Three things stand out.

First, the install is not unusually expensive. In the same AppTweak report, Sports sits at $26.70 and Finance at $9.65, while Lifestyle (where some journaling and self-care apps are listed) is $2.62. AppTweak's separate Campaign Manager benchmark puts the US median across all categories at $4.06 and the global median at $1.80.

Second, Health & Fitness has one of the lowest tap to install rates of any US category in that report (50.3%).

Third, the category earns more per install than any other in RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, which covers over 115,000 apps. The all-category median revenue per install at day 14 is $0.23, against $0.48 for Health & Fitness.

RevenueCat and Adapty measure different app samples with different methods, so their per-install figures are not directly comparable.

Mobile app user acquisition cost by platform and region

I could not find a primary source that publishes an Android cost per install for health or wellness apps. The general figures also disagree with each other:

• Business of Apps (2025), citing Mapendo, gives an average of $5.11 on iOS and $4.61 on Android for 2023, a US range of $2.50 to $5.00, and an EMEA range of $1.75 to $4.50 for 2024.
• Business of Apps' cost per install research page gives a global range of $1.50 to $3.50 on iOS and $1.50 to $4.00 on Android, with North America at $2.50 to $5.00 and Latin America at $0.50 to $2.00.

These differ because they pool different years, ad networks and app types. Neither is specific to wellness.

One health-specific regional view comes from a UK agency, The Social Outline (2026), which reports ranges from its own client portfolio: £2 to £7 per install in tier 1 markets (US, UK, Canada, Australia, the Nordics), £1 to £4 in tier 2, and £0.30 to £2 in tier 3. That is one agency's client base, so treat it as a reference point.

Revenue by region is better documented. RevenueCat (2026) reports median revenue per install at day 60 of $0.55 in North America against $0.11 in India and South East Asia, across all categories. Adapty (2026) reports install to trial at 14.5% in North America against 7.6% to 10.2% in other regions, also across all categories. On platform, RevenueCat's median download to paid rate is 2.9% on the App Store and 2.6% on Google Play. A cheap install in a low-revenue region is not automatically a cheap customer.

Cost per trial and cost per subscriber

I found no current, published cost per trial or cost per subscriber benchmark for health, wellness or meditation apps. Two reference points exist, and both need care:

• Airbridge (2026) cites growth consultant Shamanth Rao's view that a healthy blended cost per trial is $20 to $40 for most subscription apps. That is a practitioner's rule of thumb, and Airbridge notes in the same article that no standardised benchmark exists.
• Liftoff's 2017 Mobile Subscription Apps Report, as covered by App Developer Magazine, found that apps priced at $7 to $20 a month had the lowest cost to acquire a subscriber, at $106, with a 7.16% install to subscription rate. It covered 45 apps across all categories between June 2016 and June 2017, so read it as history.

The practical route is to calculate your own customer acquisition cost (mobile app teams usually shorten it to CAC): divide your cost per install on a channel by your install to paid rate on that channel. The RevenueCat medians above tell you whether your conversion rate is ordinary or strong for the category.

What moves app user acquisition cost in this category

Seasonality. Sensor Tower (2025) reported that Health & Fitness in-app purchase revenue rose 10% year on year in January 2025 to a record $385 million, with downloads at their highest since January 2022. Higher demand does not have to mean dearer ads. AppTweak's 2025 US data shows Apple Ads cost per tap running about 9% to 12% below each advertiser's annual average in January, and up to 8.8% above it in November for generic campaigns. That series covers all app categories. I found no monthly cost series for health apps alone.

Trial design. In RevenueCat's 2026 data, trials of 17 to 32 days convert to paid at a 42.5% median, against 25.5% for trials of four days or fewer (all categories). Apps with a hard paywall have a median download to paid rate of 10.7%, against 2.1% for freemium. A higher conversion rate lowers cost per subscriber at the same install cost.

Channel and campaign mix. AppTweak's 2025 US medians for apps on Apple Ads are $2.84 per install for brand campaigns, $3.10 for discovery, $5.31 for generic and $6.78 for competitor campaigns.

Creative and store page. I found no sourced figure tying ad creative to cost for wellness apps. The nearest data point is AppTweak's finding that US apps using custom product pages converted 58.7% of taps to installs in 2025, against 55.5% on the default page.

Where affiliate and creator partnerships fit

Paid channels charge for the tap or the install. Creator and affiliate partnerships can move the payment closer to the result.

Calm is the best-documented example in this category. A Liftoff case study describes Calm moving from pay-per-post influencer deals to a flat cost per install bid across a creator network during 2019, tracking subscriptions per influencer, and reports a return on investment more than 50% higher. It is a vendor case study about one app, so read it as an example.

An affiliate programme goes one step further: commission is owed when a referred user buys. With Insert Affiliate, a partner shares a link or short code, and the purchase is credited when that code or link is carried onto it. Commission can be a percentage or a fixed fee, on the first purchase only or on renewals too.

I found no published figure for what this saves a wellness app, so I am not quoting one. It also has limits: volume depends on recruiting partners whose audience trusts them, which takes time. Insert Affiliate is built for in-app purchases and subscriptions in iOS and Android apps.

For category-wide install costs, see our earlier post, Mobile App User Acquisition Cost Benchmarks by Category.

FAQ

What is a typical cost per install for a mental health or meditation app? No source publishes one for mental health apps alone. For the wider Health & Fitness category, AppTweak reports a US median of $3.77 per install on Apple Ads search results in 2025.

What does it cost to acquire a paying subscriber? There is no current published benchmark. Divide your own cost per install by your install to paid rate. RevenueCat's 2026 median download to paid rate for Health & Fitness is 2.9%.

Is January more expensive for wellness app advertising? Demand peaks in January: Sensor Tower recorded record Health & Fitness in-app revenue in January 2025. On Apple Ads, though, AppTweak's US data across all categories shows cost per tap below the annual average in January and highest in the last quarter.

Is user acquisition cost the same as cost per install? No. Cost per install counts every download. User acquisition cost usually means the cost of a user who does something of value, such as starting a trial or paying, so it is higher than cost per install.