DAU means daily active users. It counts the unique people who use your app in one day. DAU shows repeat use, not just installs. It helps you track if your app is growing or slipping, and catch changes early.
Daily active users (DAU) is a key metric that helps you measure real daily usage. It measures how many unique users were active in your specific product in the last 24 hours.
Each customer counts once, even if they open the app many times. That makes DAU a clear signal of who actually showed up today.
For developers and PMs, DAU is typically a daily business. Installs or sign-ups can spike and fade. DAU measures the active customers who return and interact with something useful. During the app development process, DAU helps you see if new builds change real usage.
Because it updates on a daily basis, you can see the release impact fast. A patch lands, a new level ships, and user engagement shifts the same day.
Daily active users (DAU) are also linked to practical monetization. More daily active users can mean more matches played and ads served. It can also raise server load and the cost of an app. So, DAU helps you balance short-term revenue with capacity planning.
“Active” sounds obvious, but it shifts by app and success metrics. Companies define an active user as someone who does a meaningful action. Common metrics include:
There is no one rule. Your choice should reflect more value for users and the team. A chat service may count a sent message. A finance app may count a balance check.
Let’s take a game app example: a player is active when they start a match. That lines up with the core loop and real user engagement.
Poor definitions distort DAU. If you measure only opens, notifications can spike DAU without real play. If you measure only purchases, you miss free customers who engage daily.
Then, the daily active users (DAU) look low, even while the game is a success. Select a few clear metrics, carefully document them, and maintain stability over time during tests.
To calculate DAU, measure unique users who are active in a 24-hour window. So, DAU equals the number of distinct users who did your chosen action today.
Here’s a step-by-step tutorial:
Tracking can get tricky across platforms. One user may play on a phone and a tablet. If IDs do not merge, you may over-measure DAU. If they merge too much, you may undercount guests.
Separate sessions from people. Sessions show raw usage. A single player can create many sessions. DAU ignores repeats and counts the person once.
Quick example. Today, your logs show:
Distinct players who were active: A, B, and D. Therefore, your DAU is 3 for today.
DAU is useful, but it can mislead alone. It also shifts with mobile app trends, like seasonality, new devices, or platform changes.
A spike in DAU may look like success. Yet many users might open the app once and bounce.
Pair daily active users (DAU) with other metrics that add context:
The Daily Active Users (DAU)/Monthly Active Users (MAU) ratio, or stickiness ratio, helps you read a habit. A percentage usually means better user engagement. In a game app, DAU matters most when retention holds and play time rises, not just when opens go up.
Benchmarks help you read DAU with context. They show what a healthy DAU/MAU ratio looks like. Think of this percentage as a quick measure of stickiness. Higher values usually mean stronger habits and user engagement.
| Industry | DAU/MAU ratio | Engagement insight |
| Mobile games | 20–30% | Good games drive daily play, and live events can push top titles higher. |
| Fintech apps | 8–15% | Many users engage weekly, not daily, but alerts can lift daily usage. |
| SaaS platforms | 10–20% | Work tools cluster on weekdays, and depth of use matters more than raw opens. |
Apps with a higher DAU/MAU ratio tend to deliver more value per user. For a game app, that can translate into steadier ad views or IAP revenue.
If your traffic is already high-engagement, tools like the Honeygain SDK – a background monetization SDK – can be an optional service to monetize the DAU base.