Reading your retention numbers
How clan.me calculates retention, what a healthy retention rate looks like, and how to use week-over-week changes to track server health over time.
Updated 7 June 2026
Player count tells you how busy your server is right now. Retention tells you whether the people who found your server are choosing to come back. Of the two, retention is the better measure of server health over time.
The retention formula
Retention is calculated as: of the players who were new in week N, how many appeared again in week N+1? That percentage is your week-1 return rate.
For example, if 40 players joined your server for the first time in the week of June 1, and 18 of them returned in the week of June 8, your retention rate for that cohort is 45%.
This is a cohort-based calculation, not a rolling average. Each week's new players are a separate group and their return rate is tracked independently.
What healthy retention looks like
Rough benchmarks for Minecraft servers:
- Below 15%: most new players are not finding a reason to return. The first-session experience likely needs work
- 15 to 30%: average. Players are returning at a moderate rate
- 30 to 50%: solid. Your server is doing something that keeps players engaged
- Above 50%: excellent. A large share of new players are becoming regulars
These are general ranges. A niche server with a tight community will naturally have different dynamics than a large public survival server.
Week-over-week changes
Single-week retention rates are noisy. A high-traffic week brings many new players with lower average intent; a quieter week may have fewer but more targeted new arrivals. Read retention trends over 4 to 8 weeks, not individual data points.
The weekly digest compares this week's retention to the same metric from one month ago, giving you a reference point that is seasonally adjusted. A small steady improvement over eight weeks is more meaningful than one good week.
Sessions vs player counts
Watch both metrics together. If weekly uniques are flat but total sessions are growing, existing players are playing more often. If uniques are growing but sessions per player are falling, you are acquiring players but not engaging them deeply. The ideal is both growing together.