Monthly Active Users (MAU)
The number of unique users who engage with your product at least once within a 30-day period. The standard measure of product reach and adoption.
Also known as: MAU
Why monthly active users (MAU) matters
MAU captures the total addressable engagement of your product over a meaningful time window. While DAU measures daily habits, MAU includes users who engage weekly or bi-weekly, giving you the full picture of your active user base.
MAU is particularly important for products that are not designed for daily use - like analytics platforms, expense tools, or monthly reporting dashboards. Growth in MAU indicates expanding adoption.
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How to Track in KISSmetrics
KISSmetrics tracks unique users over rolling periods. Use the Activity Report with a 30-day window to see MAU trends. Compare MAU across segments to identify which user groups are growing or shrinking.
Common Mistakes
- -Using the same "active" definition for all product types - adjust for expected usage frequency
- -Not distinguishing between organic returns and users who only return from re-engagement emails
- -Celebrating MAU growth while DAU stays flat - this means breadth without depth
Pro Tips
- +Track the ratio of new vs returning MAU to understand growth composition
- +Segment MAU by feature usage to identify your most and least engaging capabilities
- +Watch for "hollow MAU" - users who log in but do not complete any meaningful action
Related Terms
Daily Active Users (DAU)
The number of unique users who engage with your product on a given day. A core engagement metric for consumer and product-led SaaS applications.
DAU/MAU Ratio
The ratio of daily active users to monthly active users, expressed as a percentage. Measures how frequently your monthly users return on a daily basis - also called stickiness.
Stickiness
Stickiness is a measure of how frequently users return to a product, most commonly calculated as the ratio of daily active users (DAU) to monthly active users (MAU), indicating how habit-forming and indispensable a product is.
Retention Analysis
Retention analysis measures the percentage of users who continue to return to and engage with a product over time, tracking how well a product sustains its user base beyond initial acquisition.
Further Reading
What Is MAU? Monthly Active Users Defined and Calculated
MAU (monthly active users) counts unique users who take a qualifying action in a 30-day window. Why the definition is the metric, why a clean MAU is still a reach number, DAU/MAU stickiness, and why MAU should never be a target.
Product Adoption Dashboard: The Metrics That Show Whether Users Actually Get Value
Beyond DAU/MAU - building a product adoption dashboard that tracks activation, feature discovery, time-to-value, habit formation, and expansion readiness.
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