Definition

MAU is an abbreviation for “Monthly Active User”. This metric is used to describe the population of users on a service. If a user comes to a service one day a month, they would be considered a MAU. If a user comes several times during a month or even every day of a month, their status as a MAU remains unchanged. When looking for a more frequent measure of user activity DAUs or WAUs can be monitored.

Practical use

This definition won’t go through the basics of what an active user count is check out DAU (Daily Active Users) for more information on this

MAU is usually the largest measurement of a user’s activity. Monitoring the monthly visitation of the user base is useful to track large macro trends or to understand a less often used application. Many companies also use it as a public reporting metric. For example Facebook often reports on their total MAU count to give investors a perspective on their growth. This metric is often favored for this purpose since it won’t show as large of swings as DAUs or WAUs. For example if one time event occurred towards the end of a financial reporting period it could significantly drop a shorter term metric. On the other hand because MAU is an accumulation of all users who came for one month it will be more insulated from such one off changes.

Formulas

# Raw volume metrics
Authenticated MAUs = Unique sessions with an authenticated token over the course of a month
Unauthenticated MAUs = Unique sessions with no authentication token detected over the course of a month

# Relative metrics
Authenticated MAUs / Total registered users = % of users who use the site monthly