2026 Finance & Crypto App
Performance Benchmark
Finance and crypto apps have entered 2026 with momentum. Here’s what’s driving it.
47%
Finance app user acquisition spend grew +47% from January to December 2025.
[Source: Liftoff Accelerate]
2.15x
Re-engagement spend on finance apps more than doubled over the same period.
[Source: Liftoff Accelerate]
8b
Global finance app downloads in 2025 surpassed 8 billion.
[Source: Sensor Tower]
Three trends. One story.
“Finance app advertisers are moving beyond experimentation. The spend patterns we’re seeing on Accelerate suggest growth teams are finding scalable paths to performance, and they’re doubling down. Cortex is the key to finance advertisers finding scale without sacrificing efficiency”
Andry Supian
SVP of Product, Liftoff
Part 1
The widening spend gap
Every growth team eventually asks themselves the same question: What’s our big bet for the quarter?
Based on 2025 Liftoff Accelerate data, finance app advertisers appeared to increase UA budgets significantly throughout the year. Spend grew +47% from January to December, while non-finance verticals grew roughly +18% over the same window.
That gap didn’t open all at once. For the first six months, the two lines moved in similar patterns. Sometimes, non-finance apps actually led. It wasn’t until H2 that the finance vertical started pulling away, and by Q4, the divergence appeared decisive. December budgets reached 1.47x the January baseline.
This kind of sustained, back-loaded growth suggests advertisers were seeing enough signal to keep scaling.
For finance app marketers planning 2026 budgets
The H2 acceleration patterns we observed in 2025 hint at a strategy worth building around. Based on what we observed, the sharpest growth appeared to come in the final quarter. If the same pattern holds, teams that keep budget flexible for the second half of the year may be better positioned to scale when it matters most.
Now, the crypto story
It’s a different shape entirely.
Crypto app UA spend on Accelerate fell 54% from January to its May 2025 trough. For five months, budgets contracted.
Then, as broader market conditions appeared to shift in mid-2025, so did advertiser behavior.
By July, spend had more than doubled from the bottom. By December, it sat 56% above January levels. Roughly 67% of all crypto UA spend in 2025 appeared concentrated in the second half of the year.
The platform split added another layer. iOS crypto spend appeared to recover faster, reaching 1.73× its January level by October. Android didn’t cross its own baseline until November.
For crypto advertisers
Staying in-market through the trough may have mattered more than timing the recovery perfectly. The H1 dip likely offered lower competition. Building budget flexibility into your plan could position you to capture more efficient installs before competition returns.
8 billion downloads
+6% YoY
40 billion hours
+8.5 YoY
According to Sensor Tower, that’s where global finance app engagement stood in 2025.
People weren’t just downloading finance apps at a slightly higher rate. They appeared to be spending meaningfully more time inside them.
According to Sensor Tower, digital wallets and P2P payment apps appeared to dominate the top 10 worldwide by downloads (8 of 10). Lending appeared to see the fastest subgenre growth at +18% YoY.
Similar demographics, different apps
According to Sensor Tower’s Audience Insights, crypto and sports betting app users in the US appear to share a strikingly similar demographic profile. Both skew male. Both over-index in the 25–34 age group. And the overlap between their personas may suggest cross-promotion opportunities that many finance advertisers haven’t explored yet.
[Source: Sensor Tower | State of Mobile 2026 | Audience Insights, US]
For crypto and fintech growth teams
This overlap could be an underutilized targeting lever. If your users fit this demographic profile, consider testing lookalike audiences built from sports betting and prediction market user segments.
Liftoff Intelligence can help identify these cross-category patterns in your own data.
How to think about the spend shift
Here’s what the 2025 spend patterns on Accelerate looked like quarter by quarter:
Q1-Q2
Flat for finance, declining for crypto
Spend appeared relatively stable across finance apps, while crypto contracted sharply. Competition may have been lower during this window.
Q3
The turning point
Finance spend started climbing. Crypto appeared to double off its trough. iOS led the recovery.
Q4
The Acceleration
Finance spend reached its highest levels. Retargeting appeared to surge. The momentum appeared strongest in the final three months.
The takeaway: If similar patterns hold in 2026, teams that keep budget flexible rather than locking in a flat quarterly split may be better positioned to scale when the window opens.
Part 2
The re-engagement signal
When it comes to mobile growth, much of the industry’s conversation centers on acquisition.
But based on what we observed in 2025, the faster-moving shift actually occurred in re-engagement.
Finance re-engagement spend on Liftoff Accelerate more than doubled over the course of the year.
For comparison, UA grew +47% over the same period. Non-finance retargeting ended the year below where it started, at 0.89x January levels.
AppsFlyer data shows normalized remarketing ad spend for finance apps surged across 2024 and 2025, with iOS climbing from roughly 4% in Q1 2024 to over 35% by Q4 2025. Android followed a similar trajectory, rising from approximately 4.5% to nearly 25% over the same period.
We believe this is a significant signal. When both platform-specific and industry-wide data appear to point in the same direction, it suggests a structural shift in how finance app growth teams allocate budgets.
For growth teams
We’d suggest evaluating your current UA-to-RE budget split against this backdrop. Re-engaging users who already know your product could be significantly more efficient than acquiring cold ones. The data suggests that many finance advertisers may already be making this shift.
But does re-engagement actually work if users don’t stick around?
To get the full picture, we also looked at retention. According to AppsFlyer’s benchmarks for finance apps, the answer appeared encouraging.
Day 1
~25%
~19%
Roughly 1 in 4 iOS users appeared to come back the next day. Android trailed by about 5 points.
[Source: AppsFlyer | Finance – Overall, Global, Q4 2025]
Day 7
~13%
~8%
By the end of week one, roughly half of Day 1 users appeared to have dropped off on both platforms.
[Source: AppsFlyer | Finance – Overall, Global, Q4 2025]
Day 30
~9%
~5%
The users still here likely represent the retained core. iOS appeared to hold at roughly 1.6× the Android rate.
[Source: AppsFlyer | Finance – Overall, Global, Q4 2025]
The most interesting thing about finance app retention in 2025? How steady it was. According to AppsFlyer data, iOS D1 retention for finance apps appeared to hover around 21–25% across all of 2025, offering reliable consistency quarter over quarter. Stable retention may mean fewer surprises when modeling user value, which could make it easier to justify scaling both UA and RE.
Crypto re-engagement went in the exact opposite direction.
+56%
Crypto UA spend on Accelerate grew from January to December.
-88%
Crypto re-engagement spend fell over the same period.
iOS re-engagement spend on crypto apps appeared to reach negligible levels by October.
The divergence is notable. Crypto advertisers on Accelerate appeared to prioritize new users over re-engagement. Whether that’s the right approach likely depends on individual app retention and LTV.
For crypto teams
Our take? Near-total RE pullback could represent a gap. If your app retains users reasonably well, re-engaging lapsed users may offer a more efficient path than competing exclusively for new installs at rising CPIs.
Rethinking the UA-to-RE split
Based on what we observed, here’s how we’d think about balancing acquisition and re-engagement for finance apps:
Start with your retention baseline.
If your D1 retention is in the ~20%+ range (consistent with what AppsFlyer data suggested for finance apps), your existing users may represent a meaningful re-engagement opportunity.
Look at the cost gap.
On Liftoff Accelerate, retargeting spend grew +115% while UA grew +47%. That pace difference may suggest advertisers were finding re-engagement more efficient. Compare your own CPA for re-engaged users versus newly acquired ones.
Don’t abandon UA. Layer RE on top.
The data didn’t suggest finance advertisers pulled UA budgets to fund RE. Both grew. RE just grew faster. The most effective approach may be running both in parallel, using Liftoff Intelligence to identify which lapsed users are most likely to return.
For crypto, the calculus may be different.
The near-total RE pullback in crypto suggests this vertical’s advertisers may be operating with a different thesis. But if your crypto app’s retention looks more like a finance app than a gaming app, the re-engagement opportunity may still be there.
Re-engagement is reshaping how finance apps think about growth. Across markets, we’re seeing re-engagement rates grow three to four times faster than installs, signaling a clear shift from pure acquisition to lifecycle marketing. Looking ahead, success will depend on how well brands can win users back through data-driven strategies. That means investing in advanced audience segmentation, accurate measurement, and highly personalized creatives that reflect real user behavior. The focus is no longer just on growth, but on activation and long-term retention. Achieving this requires tighter cross-functional collaboration between paid, CRM, and product teams to deliver cohesive, relevant experiences that keep users coming back.
Part 3
Are you overpaying for your users?
It’s a fair question
Based on Liftoff Accelerate data from 2025, the answer hinges on two variables: platform and region.
iOS vs Android: A widening premium
7.3x
The iOS-to-Android CPI multiple for finance apps on Accelerate. December 2025.
In January, it was 4.2x
By April, it peaked at 9.8x
It settled by 7.3x year end.
Over the full year, iOS CPI rose
+105%
Android? Just
+19%
For crypto, the gap appeared even wider.
5.2x > 10.1x
iOS crypto rose
+121%
Android rose just
+13%
For performance marketers
iOS costs more. You know that. But do you know whether your iOS users are worth more too? A platform-level cohort analysis could help answer that. And that April spike to 9.8x? If it’s seasonal, it may be possible to see it coming and plan accordingly.
The 4x gap between regions
The gap here may be even bigger than the platform gap.
Based on Accelerate data from December 2025, iOS and Android CPI for finance apps varied significantly by region.
An iOS install in APAC cost roughly 4x what it cost in EMEA. On Android, the spread was narrower but still meaningful.
For teams with multi-region campaigns
A roughly 4x regional CPI gap on iOS is hard to ignore. Based on Accelerate data, even small shifts in regional budget mix could meaningfully impact blended CPI. For teams with flexible geo-targeting, heavier allocation toward EMEA for iOS and APAC for Android may be worth testing.
The platform x region cheat sheet
Based on Liftoff Accelerate data from December 2025, here’s where CPI appeared most and least favorable:
This matrix could serve as a starting point for teams evaluating where to allocate platform-specific budgets. For more granular, app-specific CPI benchmarks by region, Liftoff Intelligence can help.
47%
Finance advertisers appeared to scale with conviction.
2.15x
Re-engagement may be the faster-growing strategy.
~4x regional gap
Where you buy could matter as much as what you buy.
The benchmarks for finance and crypto advertisers are in.
You have the data.
The question now: What do you do with it?
Liftoff → Talk to our team | See Accelerate in action
AppsFlyer→ Get in touch | Explore the latest benchmarks