DAU / MAU | Definition

DAU meaning Daily Active Users, and MAU meaning Monthly Active Users, are popular metrics to measure user engagement. These metrics measure the number of unique app users in a given period (e.g., 1 day, 7 days, 30 days.)

To measure the number of DAU, you must define two things: users and actions. Users, in general, are defined as the number of people who’ve downloaded your app. The definition of actions can vary depending on your app. Common examples of actions are clicks, logins, and downloads.

The DAU to MAU ratio, also called stickiness, is the proportion of monthly active users that engage with your app in a single day. A DAU/MAU ratio of 50% would mean that your users engage with your app, on average, 15 out of 30 days.

App downloads have become a vanity metric in the app space. Many app developers boast with the number of downloads their app has gotten, but it doesn’t reflect the success of the app.

An app with 10,000 downloads and 1,000 active users can be considered to be more successful than an app with 100,000 downloads and 100 active users.

Tracking DAUs and MAUs shifts the mindset to user retention.

Since DAU & MAU are basic metrics, there are tons of tools available that can track them. We want to highlight 3 of them:

• Google Firebase: Firebase is the mobile app version of Google Analytics

• Mixpanel: Mixpanel gives you a strong quantitative analytics foundation

• UXCam: Trusted by 10,000 app experts, UXCam gives you the ability to analyze user behavior