What is Monthly Active Users (MAU)?

Monthly Active Users (MAU) counts unique users who open and engage with an app at least once in any rolling 30-day window. It's the standard top-level engagement metric reported to investors and used for platform monetization benchmarks.

MAU captures the full retained user base, including casual users who engage a few times monthly, and is therefore a larger, less volatile number than DAU. For apps with irregular use patterns (travel apps, finance apps, health trackers), MAU is a more representative engagement metric than DAU.

In the context of UA, growing MAU is the ultimate output of successful acquisition combined with retention. MAU growth is driven by three levers: acquisition rate, early retention (D1–D7), and long-term retention (D30+). Creative strategy affects all three, creatives that set accurate expectations improve both early and long-term retention.