Monthly Active Users
What are monthly active users?
Monthly active users (MAU) is an engagement metric that measures the number of unique users who engage with a product within a month. It's commonly used by consumer-facing product teams to track how many people are actively using their product or service.
Teams often use monthly active users as a desired outcome when working to increase engagement. The metric provides a simple way to track whether more users are finding value in a product over time.
How do teams use monthly active users to measure engagement?
Monthly active users is often used in combination with daily active users (DAU) in the ratio DAU/MAU to get a more sophisticated measure of engagement. This ratio helps teams understand not just how many users engage monthly, but how frequently those users return.
As teams learn more about their customers, they typically evolve how they measure engagement. A team might start by measuring daily active users, then progress to measuring DAU/MAU, and eventually define specific high-value activities that count as meaningful usage. The goal is to develop better ways of measuring what makes customers successful.
Different ways of defining engagement become the ultimate criteria for evaluating which opportunities to pursue. For some teams, this might mean tracking DAU/MAU, while for others it might mean measuring month-over-month subscription retention or other engagement indicators.
Learn more:
- Empower Product Teams with Product Outcomes, Not Business Outcomes
- Shifting from Outputs to Outcomes: Why It Matters and How to Get Started
Related terms:
- Daily Active Users
- Outcome
- Metrics
- Measure of Success
Last Updated: October 25, 2025