# Daily Active Users (DAU) > Count the unique people who use your product each day, then check how sticky they are against your monthly base. - Type: Calculator: Unique people using you each day - Tags: Metrics, Retention - Growth levers: Retention (primary) - ~979 words --- **DAU / Stickiness Calculator.** Daily actives and how sticky they are versus your monthly base. Inputs: Daily active users, Monthly active users. Outputs: DAU/MAU stickiness, Daily active users. Daily Active Users (DAU) is the number of unique people who take a meaningful action in your product on a single day. Count each person once, no matter how many times they open the app. The raw count tells you reach. The ratio of DAU to monthly actives tells you something more useful: how habitual that usage is, which is why most teams pair DAU with DAU/MAU stickiness rather than reading the daily number on its own. ## How DAU is calculated > **Formula:** DAU = unique users who take a qualifying action on a given day. Stickiness = DAU / MAU x 100, where MAU is the unique users active across the trailing 30 days. DAU itself is a count, so there is no per-industry "good number" for it. A 50-person team tool and a consumer app live in different universes. The comparable figure is stickiness: divide today's DAU by your trailing 30-day MAU. Say you have 9,000 daily actives against 30,000 monthly actives. That is 9,000 / 30,000 = 30% stickiness, which means the average user shows up about 9 of 30 days. The calculator above runs the same math and drops your result onto the benchmark band for your industry. The one thing that decides whether your DAU is trustworthy is the definition of "active". A login is not a use. Pick an action that maps to value (a message sent, a query run, a dashboard opened) and hold it constant, or every DAU trend you read is noise from a changing denominator. ## Daily Active Users (DAU) benchmarks by industry | Industry | Median | Good | Great | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | SaaS | 31.0% | 38.0% | 50.0% | | Fintech | 20.0% | 28.0% | 36.0% | | Dev Tools | 25.0% | 35.0% | 48.0% | | AI/ML | 21.0% | 28.0% | 37.0% | | E-commerce | 20.0% | 25.0% | 32.0% | | Healthtech | 14.0% | 22.0% | 30.0% | | Martech | 18.0% | 26.0% | 35.0% | *DAU/MAU stickiness (%) · Mixpanel 2026 State of Digital Analytics (12,000+ companies, ~3.7 trillion events; North America stickiness medians: B2B SaaS 31%, AI products 21%, ecommerce 20%, fintech banking 20%). Good and great bands set from the 20%-and-up = good, 25%-and-up = excellent thresholds Userpilot and Gainsight cite for B2B products, lifted toward the high-frequency productivity and wealth/crypto leaders Mixpanel reports (LATAM fintech wealth 38%, APAC fintech banking 36%). Dev Tools, Healthtech and Martech are not split out in the Mixpanel verticals; those rows are conservative estimates held between the technical and consumer bands, not sourced cells.* These bands are DAU/MAU stickiness, not raw DAU. The medians come from Mixpanel's [2026 State of Digital Analytics](https://mixpanel.com/blog/mau/?utm_source=productgrowth.blog) report, which read roughly 3.7 trillion events across 12,000+ companies and put North America stickiness near 31% for B2B SaaS, 21% for AI products, and 20% for both ecommerce and fintech banking. The wide spread is real: Mixpanel clocked LATAM fintech wealth apps at 38% and APAC fintech banking at 36%, while consumer-finance and shopping apps sit lower because nobody manages their money or shops every day. The "good" and "great" columns lean on the threshold Userpilot and Gainsight both cite, where 20% is a solid B2B result and 25%-plus is excellent, pulled up toward the high-frequency leaders. Dev Tools, Healthtech, and Martech are not broken out in the Mixpanel verticals, so those rows are held conservatively between the technical and consumer bands rather than sourced cell by cell. The old 40% SaaS benchmark you still see quoted came from a [Gainsight](https://www.gainsight.com/essential-guide/product-management-metrics/dau-mau/?utm_source=productgrowth.blog) estimate built on a handful of high-engagement tools. Hold yourself to it and almost every healthy product looks like it is failing. Compare against your own vertical and, more importantly, your own trend line. ## What a good DAU/MAU ratio looks like A good ratio is the one that matches how often your product is supposed to be used. A messaging app that people open daily should clear 50%. A tax tool people touch once a quarter can be healthy at 5% and there is nothing to fix. The number only means something next to the intended usage frequency. If you want to move stickiness up rather than just measure it, the levers are habit and re-entry, not bigger acquisition: - Tie a daily trigger to a daily job. Find the workflow your product can own every morning and build a reason to return to it, not a generic re-engagement nudge. - Shorten time to value on day one. Users who hit the aha moment in their first session come back; users who do not, do not. Your activation rate caps your ceiling on stickiness. - Watch the denominator. A spike in low-intent signups inflates MAU and quietly drags stickiness down even when nothing about your daily core changed. - Segment before you celebrate. Power users and dabblers average into one ratio that describes neither. Track stickiness by cohort and by feature, then defend the habit your retained users actually have. ## Related calculators - [Monthly Active Users (MAU)](https://www.productgrowth.blog/calculators/monthly-active-users-mau), the denominator in this ratio, and its month-over-month growth. - [Engagement Rate](https://www.productgrowth.blog/calculators/engagement-rate), the share of your audience doing something meaningful in a period. - [Retention Rate](https://www.productgrowth.blog/calculators/retention-rate), how many of the users you acquired are still around at the end of it. - [Churn Rate](https://www.productgrowth.blog/calculators/churn-rate), the leak on the other side of the same bucket. #### What is a good daily active users (DAU) ratio? There is no good absolute DAU count, since it scales with audience size. The comparable figure is DAU/MAU stickiness. Across Mixpanel's 2026 benchmarks, North America B2B SaaS sits near 31%, with AI products, ecommerce, and fintech banking around 20% to 21%. As a rule of thumb, 20% stickiness is a solid B2B result and 25% or higher is excellent. A daily-use consumer app should aim much higher, toward 50%. #### How is DAU calculated? Count the unique users who take a qualifying action on a given day, each person once regardless of how many sessions they have. The qualifying action should map to real value, not just a login. To judge whether that DAU is healthy, divide it by your trailing 30-day MAU to get stickiness as a percentage. #### What is the difference between DAU and MAU? DAU is the unique users active on one day; MAU is the unique users active across a trailing 30-day window. DAU measures daily habit, MAU measures total monthly reach. Dividing DAU by MAU gives stickiness, which shows how many days in the month the average active user shows up. #### Is a low DAU/MAU ratio always bad? No. A low ratio is only a problem if your product is meant to be used daily. Tools that people genuinely need once a week or once a quarter, like a tax filing app or a quarterly review tool, can have low stickiness and still be retained and valuable. Compare against the intended usage frequency, then against your own past trend. --- All posts: https://www.productgrowth.blog/archive · Site: https://www.productgrowth.blog