Glossary
MAU
Meaning and details
MAU is the rolling count of distinct people who used the product in the past month. It is the standard denominator of engagement, DAU/MAU, and the standard numerator of growth reporting, because monthly granularity smoot...
MAU meaning
Monthly active users: unique users who engaged with the product within the last 30 days.
What is MAU?
MAU is the rolling count of distinct people who used the product in the past month. It is the standard denominator of engagement, DAU/MAU, and the standard numerator of growth reporting, because monthly granularity smooths weekly noise enough to show direction while staying honest about who actually returns.
Why it matters to an indie builder: MAU is the metric that pairs with everything. Divide revenue by MAU and you have ARPU; divide MAU by signups from six months ago and you have a retention signal; watch MAU against headcount and pricing and you know whether growth is bought, earned or imaginary. It is also the metric free tiers are judged by, and where freemium debates go to be settled with numbers instead of ideology.
A concrete example: a writing tool reports 40,000 registered users, MAU 6,200. The 15 percent registered-to-active ratio lands below the healthy band for the category, roughly 20 to 40 percent for creativity tools. Segmented, the number splits: users who connected a calendar integration show 48 percent monthly activity, unconnected users 9 percent. The integration, treated as a nice-to-have, is actually the retention mechanism, and onboarding is reordered to make it the first-run step. Two quarters later MAU is 9,800 against 44,000 registered, and the curve bends without a single new feature shipped.
Common mistakes: reporting registered users as if they were MAU, the two numbers differ by a factor of three to ten in most products, letting stale definitions drift (a 30-day window that silently became all-time actives), comparing MAU across categories with different natural frequencies, a monthly-billing tool and a daily chat app share no scale, and celebrating MAU that grows only because acquisition outpaces churn, leaking-bucket growth, which looks identical on the chart until marketing pauses. Pair with dau for the ratio; the analytics blocks on IndieBoot do the cohorting.
How is MAU calculated?
It’s calculated by counting the unique users who interacted with the product during the month.