Google Play install bands, explained

Why Google Play shows 1M+ instead of a number, how the bands step up, and what an exact install estimate adds.

Bands, not counts

Every Google Play listing shows installs as a band: 1K+, 10K+, 100K+, 500K+, 1M+, 5M+ and so on. The band is a floor: 1M+ means at least a million installs and fewer than five million.

Steps on a log scale

The bands roughly multiply by five or by two at each step. An app moving from 100K+ to 500K+ in a month grew by several hundred thousand installs in that month, which is a strong signal for a new app.

The exact estimate

Besides the band, the API returns installs.real, an exact install estimate taken from the store data where it is available. Use the band for filters and the exact number for sorting inside a band.

What bands do not tell you

• Installs are lifetime totals, not active users.
• An install counts once per account, so a re-install does not add to it.
• Bands never go down, even when an app loses its users.