Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Monthly Active Users (MAU) is a common performance metric that counts the number of unique users who interact with a website, app, or service within a 30-day period. Identification typically relies on a unique ID, email, username, or login. MAU is used to gauge overall reach, track growth, and evaluate marketing and product performance.

Why MAU matters

• Measures the size of an engaged audience over a month.
• Serves as a baseline for other metrics (retention rates, ARPU, churn).
• Helps investors and management assess platform health and growth trends.
• Useful for benchmarking when definitions are consistent.

How companies use MAU

Companies use MAU to report reach and momentum, but definitions and measurement methods vary:
* Some count any visit or page view as activity.
* Others require a registered account and login.
* Some platforms require specific actions (posting, messaging, viewing content) to qualify as “active.”

Because there’s no industry standard, MAU can be inconsistent across companies and may produce misleading comparisons if definitions differ.

Examples

• Large social platforms commonly report both MAU and DAU (Daily Active Users). DAU counts unique users per day and is used together with MAU to assess engagement (DAU/MAU ratio).
• One platform may report “registered and logged-in users who interacted in the last 30 days,” while another may report only “monetizable daily active users” or skip MAU entirely. Differences like these make direct comparisons tricky.

Limits and common criticisms

• No standard definition of “user” or “active” — results vary by company.
• MAU counts unique accounts, not unique people; users with multiple accounts can inflate totals.
• MAU measures presence, not depth or quality of engagement (session length, actions taken).
• Platform consolidation and cross-platform accounts can obscure true reach; some companies now report “active people” across multiple services to better capture unique individuals.

Defining an active user

An active user is someone who uses your product during the measurement window. How “use” is defined is up to the business and can include:
* Any authenticated login or visit
* Specific interactions (posting, messaging, playing media)
* Transactional actions (purchases, uploads)

Choose a definition that aligns with your business objectives and apply it consistently.

How to calculate MAU

Two common approaches:
* Point-in-time MAU: count unique users who interacted in the last 30 days — this is the standard MAU figure.
* Rolling or average MAU (often used for reporting): sum unique users for each month in a 12-month period and divide by 12 to get an annual monthly average.

Be explicit about which method you use when reporting or comparing MAU figures.

MAU vs DAU

• MAU — unique users in a 30-day period.
• DAU — unique users in a single day.
• The DAU/MAU ratio indicates frequency of use: higher ratios imply more frequent engagement from the monthly audience.

How to use MAU effectively

• Use MAU alongside engagement and quality metrics (DAU, session length, retention, churn, ARPU) to get a fuller picture.
• Compare MAU only when definitions are consistent across time or between peers.
• Monitor trends (growth, decline, seasonality) rather than isolated MAU snapshots.

Bottom line

MAU is a valuable, easy-to-understand metric for measuring reach and trend direction, but its usefulness depends on consistent definitions and complementary metrics. For large, multi-platform companies or services where users have multiple accounts, person-based measures or cross-platform “active people” metrics may provide a more accurate view of real audience size.