Glossary
DAU/MAU Ratio
Daily active users divided by monthly active users; measures product stickiness and retention.
By Amit Tyagi, Fitoor Capital · AletheiaAI Glossary
Definition
DAU/MAU ratio divides your daily active users by monthly active users to show what percentage of your monthly audience returns on any given day. A ratio of 0.20 means 20% of your monthly users engage daily. It directly measures product stickiness — how habit-forming your app or service actually is.
The ratio matters because growth without stickiness is expensive. You can acquire users cheaply, but if they don't return, your LTV collapses and you'll burn cash on churn replacement. DAU/MAU strips away vanity metrics and reveals true engagement velocity.
Benchmark ranges: 10-20% is weak (low retention); 20-40% is healthy for most consumer apps; 40-60% indicates strong product-market fit; 70%+ is exceptional (typically only messaging, social, or habit-forming apps). WhatsApp historically maintained 70%+ DAU/MAU. A productivity app targeting 30-40% is realistic; a gaming app might aim for 50%+.
India Context
Indian startups face unique DAU/MAU pressures. Data costs remain high for users in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, so retention directly impacts unit economics. An app with 15% DAU/MAU in India burns more on data subsidies and incentives than one with 40% DAU/MAU. TRAI regulations don't mandate disclosure of DAU/MAU, but investors increasingly demand it to validate TAM claims.
Indian consumer app benchmarks differ by category. PhonePe (fintech) and YouTube (video) maintain 50%+ ratios because they solve immediate, daily problems. Social discovery apps (non-endemic) struggle to reach 25%. Paytm and Zomato historically report DAU/MAU ratios in the 35-50% range depending on category segment. Seed-stage Indian startups targeting 20-30% DAU/MAU in year one is realistic; below 15% signals retention risk before Series A.
Example
A music streaming app (like Wynk Music) might have 2 million monthly active users but only 600,000 daily active users: 600K ÷ 2M = 0.30 (30% DAU/MAU). This is reasonable for music, since users don't listen every single day. By contrast, a UPI payments app like Google Pay targeting 80 million MAU but 35 million DAU achieves 43% DAU/MAU — higher because users transact more frequently. An early-stage hyperlocal delivery startup with 100K MAU and 12K DAU sits at just 12% DAU/MAU, signaling users order only once or twice monthly and churn risk is high.
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