DAU vs MAU
AnalyticsAlso: Daily Active Users · Monthly Active Users · DAU/MAU Ratio · Stickiness Ratio
Quick definition
DAU (daily active users) and MAU (monthly active users) measure how many unique users engage with a product on a given day or month. The ratio of DAU divided by MAU, often called the stickiness ratio, tells you what share of your monthly user base comes back on any given day.
How it varies across Australia
Stickiness ratios differ enormously by product type. Daily-habit products like messaging apps sit at the high end. Monthly-intent products like tax tools or travel planners sit far lower, and that is perfectly appropriate for their use case. Chasing a higher ratio without regard for product category is a good way to chase the wrong thing.
See engagement patterns across Australian industries →What it actually means
DAU and MAU are engagement metrics borrowed from the consumer app world and applied, often incorrectly, to every digital product. DAU (daily active users) counts unique users who perform a qualifying action in a 24-hour window. MAU (monthly active users) counts unique users who perform that action at least once in a rolling 30-day window. The ratio of the two is the stickiness ratio: a number between zero and one hundred that tells you what fraction of your monthly base shows up on an average day.
The metric comes from social platforms and messaging apps, where daily engagement is the whole point. For those products, a high stickiness ratio signals that users have built a habit around the product, which correlates with retention and lifetime value. For most other products, the framing is borrowed without the context.
A mortgage comparison tool used once every few years and a meditation app used three times a day are both doing their jobs. Comparing their stickiness ratios is not a useful exercise.
Where DAU and MAU genuinely earn their keep is in tracking engagement trend over time. If your MAU grows but your DAU stays flat, new users are arriving but existing users are disengaging. If both grow proportionally, your product is genuinely expanding its active base. The trend is the insight, not the absolute number.
The biggest thing most teams get wrong is the definition of active. A user who loads a page counts in some implementations. A user who completes a core action counts in others. The definition determines the number, and the number is only meaningful if the definition is consistent.
A low DAU/MAU ratio does not mean your product is failing. It might mean your users only need you once a month, which is fine if that is the job.
How to calculate it
Stickiness ratio = (DAU ÷ MAU) × 100
Worked example. Your app had 8,400 unique users perform a qualifying action in the last 30 days (MAU = 8,400). On an average day last month, 1,260 unique users were active (DAU = 1,260). Stickiness ratio = 1,260 ÷ 8,400 × 100 = 15%. That means on any given day, about 15% of your monthly base shows up.
The Australian context
Australian app and platform businesses often benchmark against US consumer app data, which is not a clean comparison. Australian user bases are smaller, which means DAU figures are noisier and more sensitive to single-day spikes or outages. Monthly smoothing is more reliable at Australian scale. Additionally, Australian privacy law changes under the Privacy Act mean the definition of a tracked user is tightening, and some implementations that once counted anonymous sessions will need to shift to authenticated user counts only.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
What is a good DAU/MAU ratio?
It depends entirely on the product type. Daily-habit apps can sit above fifty percent. Weekly-use tools might sit around twenty percent. Monthly-intent products can be healthy at five to ten percent. The ratio only makes sense compared against your own product category and your own historical trend, not against a universal benchmark.
What counts as an active user?
That is the question you need to answer before the metric means anything. A page view, a login, a core feature action and a qualifying event in your analytics platform all produce different numbers. Define the qualifying action, document it, and never change it silently.
How is DAU/MAU different from retention rate?
DAU/MAU measures engagement frequency within a month: how often the same users come back. Retention rate measures whether users who were active in one period come back in a later period. They answer related but different questions. A product can have high stickiness in month one and poor retention by month six.
Should I track DAU or WAU for my product?
Match the window to your product's natural usage frequency. Daily for habit-loop products. Weekly (WAU, or weekly active users) for tools used a few times a week. Monthly for low-frequency platforms. Forcing a daily metric onto a weekly-use product just generates noise.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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