Hey everyone!

I'm an indie developer working on a Flutter app (Android + iOS), and I've noticed a pretty strange discrepancy between RevenueCat and Google Play Console.

Over the last 28 days, RevenueCat reports:

  • 258 New Customers (220 Android, 38 iOS)
  • 262 Active Customers
  • All new customers have anonymous RevenueCat IDs.

However, when comparing the exact same period (Oct 11 - Nov 5), the numbers look like this:

  • RevenueCat (Android): 200 new customers
  • Google Play Console: 123 new user acquisitions
  • Google Play Console: 143 total user acquisitions

I understand that RevenueCat's "New Customers" metric isn't the same as app installs, but the difference still seems unusually large.

Here's where it gets interesting:

On October 14 alone:

  • RevenueCat recorded 21 new Android customers.
  • RevenueCat recorded 18 customers from the US across both platforms.
  • Google Play Console showed 0 new device acquisitions from the US that day.

I also exported the full RevenueCat customer reports and found that:

  • 227 out of 258 new customers (~88%) have exactly the same first_seen_at and last_seen_at timestamps.
  • A large number of suspicious records come from the US.
  • Several Android customers appear to use Android API level 30 (Android 11).
  • Many of these customers were never seen again.

I did install and test the app locally using Flutter during development, but definitely not enough to explain such a large difference.

I also don't have any Google Play pre-launch test reports available that could explain the activity.

My questions:

  1. Has anyone experienced similar discrepancies between RevenueCat and Google Play Console?
  2. Could automated testing, emulators, or app store scanning generate anonymous RevenueCat customers without corresponding Play Store installs?
  3. Could this be related to anonymous App User IDs or SDK initialization?
  4. Is there a reliable way to identify whether these customers represent real users or automated/test activity?

I'm not suggesting RevenueCat is necessarily counting incorrectly - I'm just trying to understand where all these additional customer records are coming from.

Would really appreciate hearing if anyone has encountered something similar or knows what I should investigate next.

Thanks!

Disclaimer: I used AI to help polish the wording of this post, as English isn't my first language. The issue and data are real and come from my own app.

submitted by /u/mrK0z01
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