Daily Active Users (DAU)

DAU (Daily Active UsersGlossaryDAU / MAUDaily Active Users = unique users active in a single day. Monthly Active Users = unique users active in a 30-day (or calendar-month) window. The baseline engagement...) is the count of unique users who were active in the app on a single calendar day. "Active" usually means "opened the app at any point in the day" — a sessionGlossaryApp SessionA single period of continuous user activity in an app, from open to close (or background past an inactivity timeout) — the atomic unit on which most engagement metri...-start event. DAU is the most-watched daily engagement signal and feeds into every downstream calculation: ARPDAUGlossaryARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User)Total revenue in a period divided by the average daily active users in that period — the per-day-per-active-user revenue rate. (revenue per DAU), stickinessGlossaryStickiness (DAU / MAU)The ratio DAU ÷ MAU — how often a typical monthly user comes back within the month. 0.5 = average user is active 15 days out of 30. (DAU ÷ MAUGlossaryMonthly Active Users (MAU)The count of unique users active in the app across a 30-day window. The denominator of stickiness and the top-of-funnel reach metric.), retentionGlossaryRetention (D1 / D7 / D30)The percentage of users from a cohort who return to the app N days after install. D1 = day-1 retention, D7 = 7-day, D30 = 30-day. The single most important non-reven... cohort tracking.

The catalog distribution exposes how rare big DAU numbers actually are. Most measurable iOS apps run in the low-thousands DAU; the conversational "our app has 1M DAU" tier is genuinely top-decile territory. Use this distribution as the reference when benchmarking your own DAU — the implied "good" number is much lower than industry chatter suggests.

What counts as "active"

• Lenient: user fired a session-start event (opened the app, app came to foreground). Industry default. Easy to compare across products.
• Strict: user performed a meaningful action — sent a message, completed a workout, played a level. Sharper signal, harder to compare cross-product.
• Authentication-gated: user authenticated (signed in). Useful for products where guest-mode usage exists alongside logged-in usage.

Pick one, document it, never switch mid-quarter without recalculating historical baselines. Definition changes break every trendline.

The DAU distribution is heavily power-law. The bulk of measurable apps cluster between 1K and 100K daily users; the long tail above 1M represents a few hundred mega-apps. If your DAU is in the 1K-10K range, you're squarely in the median band — not failing, just not yet in the visibility tier where chart effects compound.

Reading DAU vs MAUGlossaryDAU vs MAUDAU counts unique users active in a day; MAU counts them across a month. The same product reports both — and their ratio, DAU/MAU, is the standard stickiness metric. together is the real skill. DAU rising while MAU stays flat means existing users engaging more (good). MAU rising while DAU stays flat means new users coming in but not sticking (warning). DAU falling while MAU rises is the strongest signal that something's wrong — your audience is growing but using less.