How DAU is calculated
Daily active users is the number of unique users who met your definition of "active" on a given day:
DAU = count of unique users active on day D
A worked example: on 14 October, 52,000 unique users open your app. Some open it five times; they still count once. DAU for that day is 52,000. A seven-day average smooths out weekday and weekend swings: if the last seven days were 48,000, 50,000, 51,000, 52,000, 55,000, 61,000 and 60,000, average DAU is about 53,857.
The definition of "active" decides the number. An app open is the loosest. A sign-in or a core action (placing an order, starting a lesson) is stricter and better tied to value. Use the same definition across teams and over time, and agree on a time zone for the day boundary.
What DAU tells you
DAU is a measure of reach on any given day. Read alone, it can hide problems: a big paid push lifts DAU for a few days even if those users churn by the next week. It becomes more useful when broken down:
- New versus returning DAU: how much of today's activity comes from users who installed today.
- DAU by acquisition source: whether paid campaigns bring users who keep showing up.
- DAU over MAU (stickiness): how many days a month a typical user returns.
What moves DAU
DAU is the sum of new users arriving and existing users returning. New users come from acquisition; returning users come from retention, notifications, content and habit. A 2-point gain in D30 retention can add more steady DAU than a large but short acquisition burst, because retained users keep counting every day.
DAU and attribution
Attribution answers where active users came from. Linkrunner attributes every install to its source and tracks the in-app events you send, with retention reports (classic, rolling and cumulative at D1, D7, D14 and D30) by campaign. That shows which campaigns produce users who are still active weeks later. See Linkrunner analytics for retention and cohorts.