Stickiness

TL;DR

A qualitative term for how habitual a product is, often quantified as the DAU/MAU ratio or session frequency.

Stickiness is the property of a product that earns repeated, voluntary use. It's a function of habit formation — the user has a recurring trigger, the product reliably delivers the reward, and the cost of switching grows with continued use.

Quantitatively, stickiness is most often DAU/MAU, but session frequency, time between sessions, and feature breadth per user are also useful. Sticky products defend better, churn less, and command higher LTV.

Formula

Stickiness = (DAU ÷ MAU) × 100%

• DAU — Daily active users (averaged over the month)
• MAU — Monthly active users (unique users active in the month)

Stickiness is the single-number proxy for how often, on average, a monthly user returns within a month.

Worked example

A consumer messaging app reports DAU 4.1M and MAU 7.6M → stickiness 54% — the average monthly user opens the app on roughly 16 of 30 days, a hallmark of habit-forming consumer products.

Common pitfalls

• Confusing notification-driven 'stickiness' with genuine habit.
• Optimizing for stickiness in product categories where it isn't the right success metric.
• Letting stickiness mask the absence of monetization.

When this shows up in a pitch deck

Stickiness is part of the Engagement narrative; the Defensibility slide may also reference it as a moat element.

Related terms

• DAU/MAU Ratio — The ratio of daily to monthly active users — a measure of how many days per month the average user shows up.
• Switching Costs — The financial, operational, or psychological cost a customer would pay to switch from one solution to a competing one.
• Retention Curve — A chart showing what fraction of a cohort is still active week-by-week or month-by-month after sign-up.
• Moat — A structural advantage that protects a business from competition over time — network effects, switching costs, scale, brand, or proprietary technology.
• North Star Metric — The single metric that best captures the core value the product delivers and the long-term success of the business.

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