Monthly Active Users (MAU)

What is Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Monthly Active Users (MAU) is a key metric that tracks the number of unique users who engage with a product or service within a given month. It helps businesses measure user engagement, adoption trends, and overall product stickiness. Unlike total registered users, MAU reflects actual activity during the month, making it a more reliable indicator of product usage.

How to Calculate MAU

  • Decide what counts as an “active” user for your product, such as logging in, making a transaction, or completing a key action.
  • Use analytics tools to identify all distinct users who performed the activity during the month.
  • Sum the number of unique active users to determine MAU.
  • Compare MAU month over month to understand user growth, engagement patterns, and potential churn.

Formula

MAU = Number of unique active users in a month

Benchmark

There is no universal benchmark for MAU because it depends on product type and market. Generally, consistent growth in MAU month over month is expected for healthy engagement.

FAQ's

MAU counts unique users over a month, while DAU counts users on a daily basis. DAU is better for measuring short-term engagement.

It shows the scale of active engagement and helps identify whether users are returning and using the product regularly.

Yes. If new users don’t remain active, MAU may stagnate or drop, indicating retention issues.

Improving onboarding, offering valuable features, sending engagement reminders, and creating campaigns to encourage regular use can help increase MAU.

Not directly. MAU measures engagement, not revenue, but higher active users can correlate with more opportunities for monetization.

A stable or growing MAU often indicates good retention, while a declining MAU may signal that users are leaving or losing interest.

No. MAU only counts users who actively perform the defined activity during the month. Dormant accounts are excluded.

Different products have different activity thresholds. For example, a social media app may consider a single login as active, while a financial app might require a transaction to count as active.