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/// Product & User Engagement

Monthly Active Users MAU

CPO VP Product CMO CEO

Monthly Active Users (MAU) counts the number of unique users who perform at least one qualifying action within a 30-day period. MAU is the broader engagement measure compared to DAU and is more appropriate for products that are not designed for daily use (e.g., tax software, travel booking, B2B tools with natural weekly or monthly workflows). MAU is commonly used as the denominator for stickiness (DAU/MAU) and as the basis for usage-based pricing.

MAU can mask declining daily engagement if returning users offset the loss of daily active users; always track both DAU and MAU together.

Formula
Number of Unique Users Performing a Qualifying Event Within 30 Days
Where It Lives
  • AmplitudeMAU cohort analysis and month-over-month trend tracking
  • MixpanelMAU with event-based active definitions
  • Google Analytics 4Monthly active users by product and traffic source
  • SegmentMAU calculation from event data across product surfaces
What Drives It
  • New user acquisition and activation rates
  • Retention rate of previously active users
  • Reactivation of lapsed users via marketing campaigns
  • Seasonal usage patterns
  • Product value improvements increasing return visit frequency
Causal Analysis: Cohort-level MAU analysis separates new user growth from retained user growth, enabling causal attribution of MAU changes to specific acquisition or retention programs.
Benchmark

MAU benchmarks vary widely by product type; growth-stage products aim for month-over-month MAU growth of 5%–15%; established products focus on engagement quality within MAU.

Common Mistake
Using a rolling 28-day window instead of a calendar month for MAU, which creates inconsistent comparisons across months of different lengths.

How Different Roles Think About This Metric

Each function reads MAU through a different lens and takes different actions when it changes.

CPO
The CPO uses MAU alongside DAU to understand the range of engagement depth in the user base and to set product strategy for improving stickiness.
VP Product
VP Product tracks MAU by user segment to identify which cohorts are engaging most and least, and uses that data to prioritize feature development.
CMO
The CMO uses MAU to size the engaged audience for in-product marketing, feature announcements, and upsell campaigns.
CEO
The CEO uses MAU as a top-line product health metric for investor and board reporting.

Common Questions About Monthly Active Users

Click any question to expand the answer.

When should a company use MAU vs. DAU as its primary engagement metric?
Use DAU as the primary metric for products designed for daily use: messaging apps, news feeds, social networks, task managers, and any tool that is part of a daily workflow. Use MAU for products with naturally lower frequency: monthly budgeting tools, quarterly review platforms, travel booking sites, and B2B tools used primarily during specific work cycles. Using the wrong metric creates misleading benchmarks and misaligned product goals.
What is the relationship between MAU and subscription pricing?
Many B2B SaaS companies use MAU as the basis for usage-based pricing (charging per active seat per month). This aligns pricing with actual customer value realized, reduces friction for initial adoption (no need to commit to all potential seats), and creates a natural expansion revenue mechanism as active users grow. Tracking MAU is therefore a revenue-critical function in usage-based models.
How do I interpret MAU growth when DAU is flat?
Rising MAU with flat DAU means more users are engaging at least once per month but engagement frequency is not increasing. This could indicate successful re-engagement campaigns bringing back lapsed users, strong new user acquisition that is not yet translating to daily habits, or a product that serves a genuine monthly use case. Investigate by cohort: are new users starting to engage daily over time, or do they remain monthly-only?
How does churned user reactivation affect MAU?
Reactivated users (previously inactive users who return to the product) contribute to MAU in the month they return. A high reactivation rate can mask declining new user acquisition or declining retention among existing users. Always decompose MAU growth into new users, retained users, and reactivated users to understand the health of each component separately.

Related Metrics

Metrics that are commonly analyzed alongside MAU.

DAU | Daily Active Users DAU/MAU Stickiness Ratio | DAU/MAU Stickiness Ratio Retention Rate | Retention Rate NPS | Net Promoter Score

Role Guides That Include This Metric

See how each role uses MAU in context with the full set of metrics they own.

CPO Guide → VP Product Guide → CMO Guide → CEO Guide →
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