What is the DAU/MAU ratio?

DAU/MAU divides average daily active users by monthly active users. It shows what share of your monthly users are active on a typical day, which is why it's called the stickiness ratio.

How do you calculate DAU/MAU?

Take the average number of unique daily active users over a month and divide it by the number of unique users active at least once in that month. 500 average DAU and 2,000 MAU gives a ratio of 25%.

What is a good DAU/MAU ratio for SaaS?

As a rough guide, 10% to 20% is common for B2B SaaS, 20% to 30% is good for a work tool, and above that is very sticky. The right target depends on how often your product's job naturally comes up.

What counts as a daily active user?

A user who did something meaningful in your product that day - the core action the product exists for, such as creating, sending or viewing something. Logins and background activity usually shouldn't count.

What is the difference between DAU and MAU?

DAU counts unique users active on a single day; MAU counts unique users active at least once over a month. The same person counts once in MAU however many days they're active, which is what makes the ratio meaningful.

Is DAU/MAU useful for B2B products?

Yes, with two adjustments. Many teams use weekday-only DAU because work tools are quiet at weekends, and they look at active users per paying account, since one active user can hide an account that's otherwise unused.

DAU/MAU Ratio: Formula, Benchmarks & Examples

DAU/MAU, or the stickiness ratio, divides average daily active users by monthly active users. It shows what share of monthly users are active on a given day, and a falling ratio often shows up before churn does.

DAU/MAU is the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users. It answers a simple question: of the people who used your product this month, how many use it on a typical day? That's why it's often called the stickiness ratio.

It's a product metric, not a revenue one, but it's closely tied to retention. Products people use often are products people keep paying for. This page covers how to define an active user, how to calculate the ratio, what good looks like for SaaS, and where the number can mislead.

What Are DAU and MAU?

Daily active users (DAU) is the number of unique users who did something meaningful in your product on a given day.

Monthly active users (MAU) is the number of unique users who did something meaningful at least once in the last 30 days (or a calendar month).

The critical word is meaningful. Logging in, or a background sync, usually shouldn't count. An active user is someone who did the thing your product is for - created a document, sent a message, viewed a report, ran a job. Decide the definition once, write it down, and keep it stable, because changing it changes every number.

How to Calculate DAU/MAU

DAU/MAU = Average DAU ÷ MAU × 100

Use average DAU across the month rather than a single day, because one day can be skewed by a weekend, a holiday or a launch.

A worked example

A B2B SaaS product had 2,000 unique active users in October. Daily active users across the month averaged 500.

DAU/MAU = 500 ÷ 2,000 × 100 = 25%

A 25% ratio means the average monthly user is active on roughly a quarter of days - about 7 or 8 days a month, or close to two days a week.

Now look at weekdays only. If weekday DAU averages 650 and weekend DAU averages 125, the 25% overall figure hides a work tool used heavily Monday to Friday. Weekday DAU/MAU is 650 ÷ 2,000 = 32.5%. For business products, many teams report the weekday version for exactly this reason.

Why DAU/MAU Matters

It's an early read on retention. Customers who use a product often build habits around it and are harder to churn. A falling DAU/MAU often shows up before cancellations do, which makes it a useful companion to churn rate and customer retention.

It separates growth from engagement. MAU can rise because you're signing up more people while the product gets less sticky. DAU/MAU tells you whether the users you already have are coming back more or less.

It flags accounts at risk. In B2B, tracking active users per paying account shows which customers are drifting before they reach the renewal date.

It shows whether onboarding is working. If new users reach value quickly - short time to value - they tend to show up as regular active users in the weeks after signup.

DAU/MAU Benchmarks

Stickiness varies a lot by product, so these are rough ranges, not published standards:

DAU/MAU	How it usually reads
Under 10%	Occasional-use product, or engagement problem
10% - 20%	Common for many B2B SaaS tools
20% - 30%	Good for a work tool
30% - 50%	Very sticky, typical of daily communication or core workflow tools
50%+	Rare - usually messaging and social products

The right target depends on how often the job your product does actually comes up. An invoicing tool used twice a month can be very healthy at 8%, because nobody needs to invoice every day. A team chat tool at 8% has a real problem. For products with a natural weekly rhythm, WAU/MAU (weekly over monthly) is often a fairer measure.

Where DAU/MAU Misleads

Loose definitions of "active". Counting logins or automated activity inflates both numbers and makes the ratio look healthier than real use.

Products that aren't meant to be daily. Low DAU/MAU isn't a problem if the product's value comes from a weekly or monthly task. Compare against your expected usage pattern, not a social app.

Small user counts. With a few hundred users, a handful of power users can swing the ratio a lot. Look at trends over several months.

Users vs paying accounts. In B2B, one champion using the product daily inside a 50-seat account can look fine at the user level while 49 seats sit idle. Look at active users per account too.

How to Improve DAU/MAU

Shorten time to value. Users who get value in their first session are far more likely to come back.

Build around a recurring trigger. Daily digests, scheduled reports, alerts and reminders give people a reason to return that's tied to the product's real value.

Make the product part of a workflow. Integrations with the tools people already use daily - email, chat, calendars - bring them back without extra effort.

Grow usage inside accounts. Inviting teammates and sharing results spreads the habit beyond one person.

Don't chase empty visits. Notifications that pull people in without giving them anything useful raise DAU briefly and then raise unsubscribes.

How to Track DAU/MAU

DAU and MAU are product usage metrics, so they come from your product analytics tool or your own event data. Chartsy doesn't track in-product usage, so it doesn't calculate DAU, MAU or the ratio between them.

What Chartsy covers is the revenue side that stickiness is supposed to predict. From Stripe, Paddle, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem or Freemius it shows churn, active subscribers and MRR over time, and it can flag at-risk customers based on billing activity. If you pull DAU/MAU from your product analytics and churn from Chartsy for the same months, you can check whether a drop in stickiness really was followed by more cancellations.

Connect Stripe and track the churn side of engagement →