What are monthly active users (MAU)?
Monthly active users (MAU), a commonly-used metric, identifies the number of unique users who have interacted with a brand’s app or website over a period of 30 days or during the calendar month (e.g. a user who opens the app in April). The MAU metric is a valuable way to measure how many people actively use an app each month. This information can help app developers and marketers improve their apps and the way they market them to users.
Unique identifiers, such as user IDs, usernames, or email addresses, are often used to track MAU.
The way a brand defines an “active user” can vary depending on the needs of the business. For example, some brands define active users as those who registered or created an account, while other brands only include those who completed a specific action in their calculations. Tracking MAU can help brands better measure user engagement and forecast customer churn. To develop an even better understanding of how customers are interacting with the app, MAU should be analyzed in relation to daily active users (DAU).
There are three components that determine MAU:
- Users: A user must perform an action during a calendar month or 30-day period to be considered in the MAU calculation. A unique user is counted only once, regardless of the number of times they have logged in or performed various actions.
- Action: What actions qualify a user as an MAU? It is entirely up to the brand to decide on the methodologies they want to use to identify the MAU. It could be logging in and opening the app or simply performing a specific action, such as liking an Instagram post.
- Time Frame: The last month or 30 days prior to the date for which MAU is being calculated.
