Daily active users / Monthly active users
daw-maw
Metrics tracking how many unique users engage with a product daily and monthly, used to measure engagement and stickiness.
DAU is the number of unique users who use your product in a day. MAU is the number in a month. Together, DAU/MAU ratio measures stickiness: what fraction of your monthly users come back every day.
A DAU/MAU ratio of 50% means half of your monthly users use the product daily. That is very sticky (think Slack or email). A ratio of 10% means most users only engage a few times a month. Neither is inherently good or bad. It depends on what your product does. A daily communication tool should be high. A quarterly reporting tool should be low.
The definition of 'active' matters enormously. Logging in is not active. Performing a meaningful action (sending a message, running a query, making a deployment) is active. Define 'active' clearly and consistently, or DAU/MAU becomes a vanity metric. Product analytics tools help you track this. The ratio is often called stickiness.
Examples
A developer tool tracks DAU/MAU.
MAU is 50,000. DAU averages 12,000. DAU/MAU ratio is 24%. For a deployment tool, this is healthy. Developers do not deploy every day, but nearly a quarter of monthly users engage on any given day.
A team debates the definition of 'active.'
The PM wants to count anyone who logs in. The data analyst argues that only users who perform a core action (create a project, run a build, deploy) should count. They agree on the stricter definition because it better reflects actual engagement.
DAU/MAU ratio declines after a product change.
The ratio drops from 30% to 22% after a redesign. The team investigates: the new navigation makes it harder to find the daily-use feature. They fix the navigation and the ratio recovers within two weeks.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good DAU/MAU ratio?
It depends on the product. Social and communication apps: 50%+ is excellent. Productivity tools: 20-40% is strong. Business tools used weekly: 10-20% is normal. Compare to products in your category, not to Facebook.
Is MAU a useful metric by itself?
MAU alone tells you reach but not engagement. A product with 100k MAU where each user visits once per month is very different from 100k MAU where users visit daily. Pair MAU with DAU/MAU ratio or retention metrics for a complete picture.
Related terms
How frequently users return to a product, typically measured as the DAU/MAU ratio.
The depth and frequency with which users interact with a product, beyond just logging in.
A chart showing what percentage of users continue using a product over time, revealing whether the product has lasting value.
The moment when a new user experiences the core value of a product for the first time, making them likely to return.
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