Which App Verticals Actually Use Phone-First Signup?
Across the Lazyweb Research corpus, phone auth is rare overall (26% of 289 companies) and concentrated in a few verticals — social networking is the only one where phone (7) beats email (4)[1][2]. Food and drink has the highest phone count outside social (10 of 19)[3]. If your product isn't social or local-commerce, phone-first signup runs against the grain.
Social networking is the only vertical where phone auth (7) beats email (4); food and drink has the highest phone count outside social at 10 of 19 apps — Lazyweb Research, July 2026.
The finding
Phone/OTP auth appears on 26.0% (75/289) of companies overall[1]. It clusters sharply: in social networking (n=11) phone (7) is the leading identifier, ahead of email (4) — the only vertical where that happens[2]. Food and drink (n=19) has the highest phone count outside social at 10[3]. In contrast, productivity (1/21), finance (5/20), and education (1/16) rarely ask for a phone number[4].
Breakdown
| Vertical | n | Phone count | Email count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social networking | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| Food & Drink | 19 | 10 | 15 |
| Finance | 20 | 5 | 10 |
| Health & Fitness | 16 | 3 | 11 |
| Education | 16 | 1 | 10 |
| Productivity | 21 | 1 | 18 |
All per-vertical figures are absolute counts (each n < 70)[2][3][4].
How to apply it
Reach for phone-first signup only if you are building social or local-commerce/food — those are the verticals where users expect it and where it is common. Everywhere else, email is the safer default and phone should be a staged, later ask (it is asked at step 4.3 vs email's 3.5 in signup flows)[5]. Don't import a social-app auth pattern into a productivity or finance product.
Caveats
Social networking is n=11 and food and drink n=19 — both below the 70-company threshold, so these are counts, not percentages[2][3]. Phone detection is vision/text-based; an app may collect phone later in a flow not captured on the auth screen.
The numbers
| Stat | Computed from |
|---|---|
| phone auth 75/289 companies (26.0%) | phone_auth_prevalence stat |
| Social networking n=11: phone 7, email 4, Apple 3, Google 2, guest 0 | vertical_social_networking stat |
| Food & Drink n=19: Apple 12, Google 11, email 15, phone 10, guest 7 | vertical_food_drink stat |
| phone counts: Productivity 1/21, Finance 5/20, Education 1/16, Health & Fitness 3/16 | vertical_productivity, vertical_finance, vertical_education, vertical_health_fitness stats |
| email asked at step 3.5, phone at step 4.3 in signup flows | phone_vs_email_ask_timing stat |
Sources & citations
- [1] Lazyweb Research analysis of 289 companies with vision-covered auth screens, July 2026. Phone/OTP prevalence de-duplicated by company across captured auth screens. ↩
- [2] Lazyweb Research analysis of 11 social networking apps, July 2026. Absolute provider counts; n<70 so counts only. ↩
- [3] Lazyweb Research analysis of 19 food and drink apps, July 2026. Absolute provider counts; n<70 so counts only. ↩
Source: Lazyweb Research — proprietary analysis of real, in-market app screens. Cite as Lazyweb Research, 2026-07-07.