What Are DAU and MAU? (Stickiness Ratio)
The core activity metrics that show how many people use your app each day and each month.
Book a free callDAU (Daily Active Users) is the number of unique users who use the app in a given day, and MAU (Monthly Active Users) is the number of unique users in a given month. The ratio of the two, DAU/MAU (stickiness), shows how often users come back to your app and measures the product's ability to build habits.
How do you calculate the stickiness ratio?
The ratio really answers a simple question: on how many days of the month do your monthly users come back? 100% means everyone opens the app every single day, a level that is realistically approachable only in a handful of categories such as messaging.
What is a good DAU/MAU ratio?
| Category | Typical stickiness |
|---|---|
| Social media & messaging | %40 – %60 |
| Gaming (casual) | %15 – %25 |
| Finance & banking | %15 – %30 |
| E-commerce | %8 – %15 |
| Travel & booking | %3 – %8 |
Low stickiness isn't always bad. Nobody expects a flight booking app to be opened daily; the right metric there isn't frequency but being top of mind when the need arises, and converting. Evaluate the metric against your category's natural usage rhythm.
What to watch out for when interpreting DAU/MAU
- Define "active" clearly. Does opening the app count as active, or does it take an action? Change the definition and all your historical data becomes incomparable.
- The average hides the distribution. 20% stickiness could mean everyone logs in 6 days a month, or that 20% of users log in every day and the rest never do. The two scenarios call for completely different product decisions.
- Growth skews it. In a product acquiring users quickly, MAU inflates and stickiness looks artificially low.
- It isn't enough on its own. It becomes meaningful when read together with the retention curve and session depth.
How do you improve stickiness?
- Create a reason to come back daily. Daily quests, streaks, refreshed content and timed rewards feed the habit loop.
- Send segmented notifications. Behavior-triggered notifications drive noticeably higher return rates than broadcast messages.
- Keep content fresh. Content that never changes removes the reason to come back.
- Show value early. Users who experience the benefit in their first session are the most likely to form a habit.
Frequently asked questions
Does a low DAU/MAU mean the app is failing?
No. It depends on the category's natural usage frequency. Low stickiness is normal for apps used when a need arises, such as travel, real estate or tax. In these categories the right metric isn't daily frequency but conversion and return rate at the moment of need.
MAU is growing but DAU is flat. What does that mean?
You're acquiring new users but failing to turn them into habitual users. Acquisition is working; retention isn't. In this situation the priority should be onboarding and early retention, not more budget.
How should an active user be defined?
By an action that represents real value in your product. Counting only app opens inflates the metric by including users who tap a notification and leave immediately. Picking a definition once and applying it consistently matters more than the definition itself.
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