DAU/MAU Ratio

The DAU/MAU ratio measures how sticky your product is. It takes the number of daily active users and divides it by monthly active users, giving you a percentage that shows how often people come back. A higher ratio means more of your monthly users are showing up every day. A low ratio means people check in occasionally but your product isn't part of their daily workflow.

How to calculate DAU/MAU

DAU/MAU = (Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users) x 100

If you have 3,000 daily active users and 20,000 monthly active users, your DAU/MAU ratio is 15%. That means on any given day, 15% of your monthly user base is active.

The definition of "active" matters here. A login? A core action? Time spent above a threshold? Be specific and consistent. Counting logins alone will inflate the number without telling you much about real engagement.

Benchmarks by product type

DAU/MAU varies wildly by category. Consumer social apps like Instagram and TikTok target 50% or higher. That makes sense: people scroll multiple times a day. B2B SaaS tools typically land between 15% and 25%. Most people don't need their project management or analytics tool every single day. Daily-use tools like Slack or email clients push above 40%.

Comparing your ratio to the wrong category is a common mistake. A 20% DAU/MAU is concerning for a messaging app but perfectly healthy for a weekly reporting tool. Know your product's natural usage frequency before setting targets.

DAU/MAU as a churn leading indicator

Falling engagement usually precedes cancellation. If a customer's team goes from daily usage to logging in once a week, that's a signal. Tracking DAU/MAU at the account level (not just in aggregate) can flag at-risk customers before they hit the cancel button.

In practice, a dropping DAU/MAU ratio across your base often shows up 30 to 60 days before a spike in voluntary churn. It gives you a window to intervene with re-engagement campaigns, check-in calls, or onboarding nudges.

What DAU/MAU doesn't capture

Here's the thing: stickiness only predicts one type of churn. A customer can love your product, use it every day, and still churn because their credit card expired. DAU/MAU says nothing about involuntary churn, which accounts for 20 to 40% of all SaaS churn according to Recurly's benchmarks.

High engagement protects against voluntary churn. It does nothing for failed payments, expired cards, or bank declines. Those require a different fix entirely: automated dunning, smart retries, and pre-expiry card alerts. The best retention strategies address both sides.