DAU, WAU, MAU
Active-user metrics count the unique people active in a time window — daily, weekly, or monthly. The same person doing ten things in a day still counts as one. They’re the headline “how many people use this” number for most products, and the denominator for ratios like conversion and stickiness.
What “active” actually means
There’s no inherent definition of active — you choose it, and the choice changes everything. Is a user active if they logged in? Opened the app? Completed a core action? A loose definition (any page view) inflates the number; a strict one (a key event) tracks real engagement. The rule is to pick a definition that reflects genuine value — usually a meaningful event, not a page load — and hold it constant so the trend stays comparable.
Stickiness: the DAU/MAU ratio
Dividing DAU by MAU gives stickiness — roughly, what share of your monthly users show up on an average day. 20% means the typical monthly user is active about one day in five. It’s a quick read on habit, but only for products meant for frequent use; for a tool people reasonably touch once a week, a low ratio is the design, not a failure.
Where active users mislead
The metric is easy to game and easy to misread. A vanity definition makes growth look better than it is, and a rising MAU can hide a churning base masked by fresh acquisition. Active users tells you how many showed up — pair it with retention cohorts to see whether they keep coming back, and a North Star metric to tie activity to value.
Try it: a stickiness calculator
Stickiness is DAU ÷ MAU — the share of monthly users active on an average day.
How Pug measures active users
Because Pug resolves identity, “active users” counts distinct people, not sessions or devices. Define active however your product warrants — any event or set of events — then put DAU/WAU/MAU on a dashboard KPI tile with period-over-period comparison, filtered by any profile trait.