Can You Measure a Competitor's Retention on Roblox? What Public Data Can and Cannot Show

You cannot measure a competitor’s retention on Roblox. D1, D7 and D30 retention describe whether a cohort of new players came back, and Roblox shows them only to people with analytics permission for that experience. What public data does offer is three signals that move with retention: how well concurrent players hold over months, how many visitors favorite the experience, and how recently it was updated. Used together, and with their blind spots in view, they answer the question a studio actually has: is this competitor keeping an audience?

Why retention is out of reach#

Retention is a cohort measure: of the players who first played on a given day, what share returned one, seven or thirty days later. Computing it needs to know which individual players came back, and that record belongs to the experience. Roblox’s analytics documentation states that without analytics permission for a game, only public stats such as concurrent players and like ratio are visible. That boundary applies to every outside tool, ROLearn included: a competitor’s exact D7 quoted by a third party is an estimate, however it is presented.

Three public proxies, and how each misleads#

Concurrent-player persistence is the strongest of the three. Take the average concurrent players over a recent month and divide by the average a few months earlier. A ratio near or above 1 means the experience is holding its audience; a ratio near 0 means it has lost it. Use monthly averages, not single days, because daily readings swing with weekends and events.

Favorites per visit separates experiences that people meant to come back to from ones they tried once. Compare experiences of similar age, because the count only ever grows.

Update recency is a tie-breaker. An experience whose player count is falling and whose last update was months ago is unlikely to recover on its own.

Worked example: one brand, two worlds#

The two Roblox worlds published by e.l.f.’s group show how the proxies read in practice. These are real public figures from ROLearn’s tracking, as of 23 October 2026.

All three signals point the same way. The newer world kept more than its May audience, visitors favorite it more often, and it was updated last week. The older world kept a tenth of its May audience and has not been updated since the end of August. A studio would read the first as an experience that holds players and the second as one that has lost them.

What the example still cannot say is why. Glow Up! may be retaining the same players or replacing them with new ones from discovery; only its owner can tell. The full comparison is in the e.l.f. case study.

How to use the proxies#

1. Read them together. One signal can mislead; three that agree rarely do.
2. Compare like with like: the same genre, a similar age, a similar size.
3. Use months, not days, for anything built on concurrent players.
4. Use your own retention for your own game. For an experience you own, Creator Hub reports real D1, D7 and D30 retention; the player retention analytics framework shows how to read it.

Frequently asked questions#

Can I see a competitor’s D7 retention on Roblox?#

No. D1, D7 and D30 retention are part of an experience’s analytics, which only people with analytics permission for that experience can see. Any tool that quotes a competitor’s exact D7 is estimating, not measuring.

What is the best public proxy for Roblox retention?#

How well an experience’s concurrent players hold over several months, read alongside favorites per visit. Neither is retention: concurrent players can hold while players churn and are replaced by new ones.

Why can concurrent players stay flat while retention falls?#

Concurrent players count who is in the experience at a moment, not whether they are the same people as last week. Strong discovery can replace leaving players with new ones and keep the count steady while D7 retention drops.