Daily Active Users (DAU)

TL;DR
Daily Active Users (DAU) measures the number of unique users who engage with your product in a 24-hour period. It’s a foundational SaaS engagement metric that reflects the health of your product usage, especially for products with frequent or habitual use cases.

What is DAU?

DAU refers to the count of individual users who perform a meaningful action within your product each day. What qualifies as “active” should be defined by your product’s core value proposition—it could be logging in, creating a report, sending a message, or completing a key action.

For B2B SaaS, DAU is more relevant for products with daily workflows (e.g., collaboration tools, CRMs, analytics platforms). It's often used alongside MAU and stickiness (DAU/MAU ratio) to evaluate user retention and engagement.

Why It Matters in B2B SaaS

  • Indicates depth and consistency of product usage
  • Correlates with customer satisfaction and stickiness
  • Helps detect churn risk or user drop-off early
  • Informs product development and usage-based pricing
  • Acts as a leading indicator of expansion potential

How to Measure DAU

Formula: DAU = Count of unique users who performed a qualifying action on a given day

  1. Define what “active” means for your product – Choose one or more meaningful product actions
  2. Track user IDs performing those actions daily – Use product analytics tools like Mixpanel, Amplitude, or Segment
  3. Exclude bots or system-generated activity – Clean your data for accuracy
  4. Segment DAU by account type, role, plan, or region – Identify usage patterns and adoption gaps
  5. Visualize DAU trends over time – Daily, weekly averages, or in combination with MAU

Best Practices to Improve DAU

  • Incentivize habitual use – Build daily workflows and “sticky” product experiences
  • Personalize in-app experiences – Serve relevant content, reports, or actions based on role or behavior
  • Use usage reminders and alerts – Encourage return visits via email, in-app, or mobile notifications
  • Integrate into customer workflows – Make your product indispensable, not optional
  • Monitor drop-offs and dormant users – Trigger reactivation nudges or CS interventions
  • Pair with NPS or CSAT – Identify if low DAU stems from dissatisfaction
Final Thought
Quotes

DAU isn more than a vanity metric, it’s a pulse check. When thoughtfully defined and tracked, it reveals the strength of your product’s grip on user behavior. In a crowded SaaS landscape, daily relevance beats feature depth.

FAQs
What’s a good DAU benchmark for B2B SaaS?
It depends on your product category. Daily-use tools (e.g., chat, dashboards) should see 40–60% of users active daily. For others, focus on DAU trends and stickiness, not raw counts.
How do I know if my DAU is healthy?
Compare DAU to MAU (see DAU/MAU Ratio) and track DAU growth over time. Healthy DAU should reflect steady usage, not just spikes.
Should I measure DAU by user or by account?
Track both. DAU by user shows behavior; DAU by account helps assess account health and upsell readiness.
Can DAU mislead me?
Yes. If “active” is too loosely defined (e.g., just a login), you may inflate your DAU. Tie DAU to meaningful engagement.
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