What Are Daily Active Users? Definitive Guide to DAU.

How Do You Calculate Daily Active Users (DAU)?

Before finding out how to calculate daily active users, app marketing teams first need to define what their app recognizes as “active users.” 

What action should users complete in order to be considered an active user? Do they need to create an account and log in, click a button, or scroll – or just open the app? 

Once they’ve decided on how to identify their active users, they are ready to calculate their daily active users as follows:

Why are Daily Active Users Important?

An app’s daily active user (DAU) metric comprises both new users and returning users. App marketing teams can simultaneously measure how quickly their app attracts new users and how quickly they return day after day – or how “sticky” their app is. 

An app with millions of downloads but a low DAU metric begs the question: “Are users actually engaging with this app?”

Here’s why the daily active users metric matters in app marketing.

1. User Engagement

DAU allows app publishers to measure both user engagement and calculate potential user revenue. If teams want to increase user engagement rates in the long term, they must also be able to bring in more unique active users. 

When monitored together with MAU, the DAU metric can help apps track whether or not users are churning over time and take appropriate action to remedy the situation. 

2. Use DAU to Calculate Other KPIs

Other key metrics, such as lifetime value (LTV), average revenue per day active user (ARPDAU), and retention rate can’t be calculated without knowing an app’s DAU metric.

No publisher can deny that DAU is a crucial metric to consider to understand app stickiness. Active users however don’t always indicate happy users – so they should keep in mind that combining DAU with other KPIs will give a better holistic picture of users’ in-app experience. 

Besides combining DAU with other related metrics, such as monthly active users (MAU), apps shouldn’t neglect their user acquisition metrics, in-app purchases (IAPs), reviews, and time spent in the app. These are all critical to help app marketers better understand their app’s performance and if there are any problems to address.

3. Use DAU to Estimate App Stickiness

You can only go so far if you’re looking at DAU in isolation from other metrics. It’s like judging a car by it’s max speed only. The biggest value of the DAU metric comes when it works in conjunction with MAU (Monthly Active Users). That’s how you can estimate whether your app is sticky enough. In other words, whether your app is engaging or addictive enough to trigger repeated app launches by the user.

Try this formula:

App Stickiness = (DAU / MAU) x 100%

The resulting percentage of this formula shows how often an average user visits your app per month. For apps that are used daily (think social networks or messengers), a high ratio of 20–50% or more is the standard.

Take a low stickiness rate with a high MAU as a serious user retention issue. Yes, users download your app, but they also forget about it.

💡 Pro Tip: Your app’s success might be more dependent on WAU (Weekly Active Users).

For some app business models, WAU would be the main engagement metric to look into. Fintech, utility or B2B apps are simply used on a weekly, rather than daily basis.

Anyway, to paint a complete picture, use all three comparatively:

• High DAU, Low WAU: Extremely rare, probably a seasonal event or anomaly.
• High WAU, Low DAU: Completely normal for apps used only a couple times a week (shopping apps, banking apps, etc). In this case, it’s simply wrong to focus exclusively on growing DAU. As by doing so, you are working against the logic of your own business vertical.

4. Segment and Compare with Industry Standards

Finally, you can get a sense of how well (or how poorly) your app is performing by looking at how the daily active users number compares against industry averages.

What is a good number of daily active users on mobile apps? Benchmarks will vary depending on the app vertical and the geo in which it is being used – but also on an app’s particular growth goals.

However, you can always consider DAU not only alongside other KPIs, but also against its own segments for deeper insights into performance.

• Cohort DAU: For the most critical analysis, track the DAU of users acquired over a given period (like November 2026 or Week 86). This way DAU provides deeper insights. For example, if the DAU of a cohort acquired via a paid channel declines faster than that of an organic cohort, this is a signal to watch for. This could indicate low-quality traffic or a product that isn’t performing as expected.

• DAU by geo and platform: User activity of users based in Tier 1 and Tier 2 countries, on iOS and Android, won’t be the same. Segmenting by OS and region will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your targeting, as well as the misalignments in your retention strategy. 

• Feature DAU: User activity doesn’t stop at the login. It’s important to track DAU not only among users who open your app, but also separately among those who use your core features. If they log in but don’t use the key features, deem your DAU useless.
  
  In any case, if you want to increase DAU, you will need to increase your app’s user acquisition efforts.

How to Increase Daily Active Users?

Marketers wanting to know how to increase daily active users on mobile apps, should first of all optimize their user acquisition strategy and grow their user base with paid media. This user base should consist of quality users, users to whom the app is most relevant. These users are more likely to convert into daily active users.

After that, they can take steps to keep the users they have already acquired engaged:

1. Add an “Aha!” moment in the onboarding flow

After winning over a user, you need to show them why your app deserves their daily attention. And the sooner they see the value, the better.
Add at least one moment for user to realize that your app solves one of their problems.

For a game, it could be the first successful level; for a productivity app – the first completed task. Use the „learning by doing“ method instead of boring manuals. Practice shows: users who complete an important action independently on the first day are more likely to return the next day.

Optimize onboarding so users reach this moment quickly; in 3-5 steps max. The faster they reach this moment, the sooner they come back, the higher your app’s DAU becomes.

2. Deep personalization and deep linking

Push notifications grab attention. Don’t stop there: make them personalized and add deep linking to show your app creates value.

If it’s social media, instead of „Open the app to connect with friends“, why don’t you use „Your friends just posted 5 new photos. Check them out!“. The message should be based on the user’s previous activity.

For added re-engagement, use deep links to cut unnecessary steps and friction. Make the notification take the user directly to the feature or content it refers to, not the home screen.

Other strategies to consider for growing the DAU numbers include:

• Remind users of an app via email: this could help, particularly, with onboarding 
• Create special events that drive users back to an app: this can be done with live-ops or even seasonal promotions to earn rewards
• Introduce daily rewards: this will require users to open an app every day

Know DAU to Increase DAU

The Daily Active Users (DAU) metric is invaluable for measuring app stickiness and how users interact with an app on a daily basis. App marketers know that an increasing DAU metric, in combination with higher engagement and app retention rates, is a great sign that apps are acquiring and engaging the right users.

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