What is the DAU/MAU ratio?
DAU/MAU is daily active users divided by monthly active users, expressed as a percentage. It measures stickiness: how much of your monthly audience shows up on a typical day. A ratio of 20% means the average monthly user opens the product about six days a month.
Formula
DAU/MAU = (average daily active users / monthly active users) x 100
- DAU
- Unique users who performed a meaningful action on a given day, averaged across the month.
- MAU
- Unique users who performed that action at least once in the trailing 30 days.
Worked example
A team collaboration tool in October.
| Monthly active users | 42,000 |
|---|---|
| Average daily active users | 9,660 |
| Calculation | 9,660 / 42,000 |
DAU/MAU = 23%, or about 7 active days per user per month Seven days a month for a workplace tool means people use it on most working days of one week and not the others. For a product positioned as a daily workflow, that is a habit problem, not a growth problem.
What the ratio actually tells you
DAU and MAU on their own are vanity-adjacent: both go up when marketing spends more. The ratio between them cannot be bought, because acquisition raises the numerator and the denominator together. It only moves when behaviour changes.
The interpretation is unusually concrete. A DAU/MAU of 50% means the average monthly user is active on fifteen days out of thirty. At 10% they show up three times a month, which for most products means they are not really users, they are occasional visitors who have not yet churned.
That makes it the fastest read on whether a product has become a habit. Retention tells you people came back at some point. Stickiness tells you how often.
Compared
What ratios look like in practice The right target depends entirely on the natural usage frequency of the category. A tax product is not failing because nobody opens it in June.
| Product type | Typical DAU/MAU | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Messaging and social | 40% to 60% | 12 to 18 days a month |
| Daily workflow tools | 25% to 40% | 8 to 12 days a month |
| Team collaboration | 15% to 30% | 5 to 9 days a month |
| Analytics and reporting | 10% to 20% | 3 to 6 days a month |
| Invoicing, tax, HR admin | Under 10% | Correctly used a few times a month |
Directional patterns from published industry reporting, not measured mrkr data. Below roughly 10%, use WAU/MAU instead: the daily ratio stops discriminating.
Live demo
See it on real data. The live demo is a fully populated dashboard on demo traffic, with no signup and no card.
Open the live demoHow the ratio gets gamed, and how it breaks
A loose definition of active
Counting an app open, or a background sync, or an email click inflates DAU without anyone doing anything. Define active as the action that delivers the value.
Notification-driven spikes
Push notifications raise DAU without raising value. If the ratio climbs while retention is flat, you are buying visits, not building a habit.
The wrong cadence
For products used weekly or monthly by design, WAU/MAU or MAU/QAU is the honest version. Forcing a daily ratio onto a weekly product produces a permanently bad-looking number.
Averaging across very different segments
A power-user segment at 60% and a dormant majority at 4% average out to something that describes neither. Segment before you conclude.
Measuring it with mrkr
Both halves of the ratio require counting unique people across days, which cookieless mode cannot do by design: its identifier is rotated daily so it cannot link anyone to yesterday. For DAU/MAU you either enable mrkr's optional per-site cookie mode, which needs consent, or you attach your own user id to events once someone is signed in.
For a logged-in product the second route is usually the better one anyway: your backend already knows who did what, and the id is stable, correct, and not dependent on the browser.
Once identity is in place, DAU and MAU are event counts over rolling windows, and the ratio is a division you can put on a dashboard next to retention.
FAQ
What is a good DAU/MAU ratio?
Around 20% is the frequently quoted general benchmark, and 50% or more is exceptional. It is only meaningful within a category: a messaging app at 20% is struggling and a tax filing tool at 20% would be remarkable.
Is DAU/MAU the same as stickiness?
Stickiness is the common name for it, yes. Some teams use a weekly version, WAU/MAU, for products that are not meant to be opened daily, and that is usually the more honest measure outside consumer social.
Why is my DAU/MAU falling while users grow?
Almost always a mix shift. New users are less engaged than your existing base, so rapid acquisition dilutes the ratio even when nothing got worse. Check the ratio per signup cohort to separate a genuine engagement decline from growth dilution.
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