Also called: Daily Active Users
TL;DR
Daily Active Users, the count of unique users who took a meaningful action in the product on a given day.
DAU counts unique users active on a given day. The definition of 'active' matters more than the count itself: 'opened the app' produces inflated numbers, while 'completed the core action' produces a more honest signal.
DAU is most useful for products designed to be used daily, communication, social, productivity. For products with a weekly or monthly cadence (HR tools, finance software), DAU is the wrong frame and WAU or MAU is more meaningful.
A B2B Slack-like app reports 184k daily active users on Tuesdays vs 31k on Saturdays, the gap shows usage is work-week-bound, which informs both the engagement push schedule and how investors should benchmark stickiness.
Consumer and communication apps include DAU on the Engagement slide; B2B SaaS usually replaces it with WAU or MAU.
Monthly Active Users, the count of unique users who took a meaningful action in the product within a given month.
The ratio of daily to monthly active users, a measure of how many days per month the average user shows up.
A qualitative term for how habitual a product is, often quantified as the DAU/MAU ratio or session frequency.
The single metric that best captures the core value the product delivers and the long-term success of the business.
A chart showing what fraction of a cohort is still active week-by-week or month-by-month after sign-up.
Long-form deep dives on the slides DAU most often shows up on.
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