Want to grow your app’s user base and keep them coming back each month? This guide is about how to increase active users: the strategies to increase MAU, the formula to calculate it, and benchmarks by industry and platform. These MAU growth strategies tie into your engagement and retention work, and we point out where Pushwoosh push, in-app, email, and journey tools fit as we go.
What is MAU? Monthly active users definition
Monthly active users (MAU) is the number of unique users who opened or interacted with your app at least once within a 30-day period. It is one of the core metrics for measuring user engagement and overall product health.
The number does not tell you whether those are new or returning customers, nor how active they were. You track MAU through unique identifiers: usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, or other authentication. When people search for a monthly active users app metric, this is what they mean. It counts people, not sessions.
Why is MAU important for apps?
MAU is a core metric for gauging your app’s success and understanding its growth rate, if any.
If you don’t know how many people use your app and what affects those numbers, it’s hard to make informed decisions about where to focus development and marketing resources.
A MAU line that climbs month over month usually means you’re taking more of the market. Investors read it that way too, which matters when you’re raising.
Paired with other metrics, MAU is also a benchmarking tool against competitors. And it’s not just vanity: your app monthly active users count often sets the price you pay for martech tools, since most of them bill by active users.
What’s the difference between MAU and DAU?
MAU counts users who are active over a 30-day period. DAU counts daily active users. The ratio between the two (DAU/MAU) is your stickiness rate, covered below.
How to measure MAU: formula to calculate MAU & analytics tools to track it
Since MAU is the total number of monthly active users in a given month, the formula is simple:
How the number of MAU is calculated in Pushwoosh
Depending on the tool, “the past month” can mean the period between the first and last day of a calendar month (1–28 or 1–29 in February, 1–31 in July).
Alternatively, a tool may track MAU between the same dates of consecutive months, for example July 15 to August 15.
In Pushwoosh, both options are available on the Statistics dashboard.
Which tools can you use to calculate MAU? The short answer: you can track your MAU in Pushwoosh.
📈 See what other app performance metrics you can monitor in Pushwoosh
What factors impact MAU growth?
MAU is shaped by several factors: app vertical, use-case frequency, and how consistently the product delivers value. A monthly activity rate under 20% is normal for seasonal or utility apps, while strong social, finance, or gaming apps often beat the average, especially when backed by strategic user communication.
So what’s a strong MAU rate for your app? Context is key. Jump to the benchmark section to explore MAU rates by industry.
The tricky part about tracking MAU
MAU is useful for measuring success and spotting optimization opportunities, but there are traps. Taken out of context, it can skew your read on performance and lead to false conclusions.
If you judge your app on monthly active users alone, you can’t say whether growth is organic or whether people actually enjoy the product. Picture a user who installs after seeing a slick ad, then deletes the app because it didn’t match the promise. That pattern spikes MAU while ad spend is high and drops it fast once campaigns end.
In short, the MAU metric doesn’t prove you’re attracting the right audience or retaining them well.
App categories that should track MAU
Media apps should watch MAU closely, since the share of users opening the app is central to the business. More people in the app means more potential ad revenue. If you’re a media company, or any app leaning on ad revenue, MAU is worth tracking.
For most other app types, tracking MAU is useful but shouldn’t be your headline KPI for business health.
Metrics to track alongside MAU
Sometimes MAU alone doesn’t tell the story. These metrics help you read it in context:
Stickiness rate. Stickiness signals how valuable your app is. A high rate means people rely on or love the app enough to use it daily. Sticky apps tend to show a loyal following, low churn, and high engagement, as in streaming or gaming. Measured alongside MAU, stickiness reveals which features drive engagement.
New vs. returning users ratio. The split between new and returning users exposes audience behavior and engagement. The right balance depends on industry and goals. In the growth stage you may lean toward new users, but returning users usually drive durable growth, especially with a loyal base.
Referral metrics. Referrals show how well users spread the word and give a read on organic growth. Word of mouth is as strong in apps as anywhere:
Examples: referrals work for Italki, a language-learning platform, and GC.SKINS, a game app.
Retention rate. Retention rate is the share of users who keep using an app over time. It tells you how well the app performs and how likely users are to stay. A low rate points to a problem with UX, branding, or both.
🤝 Benchmark your user retention rates against industry medians with the 2025 dataset.
MAU benchmarks: What is a good MAU rate for mobile apps? (2025 study)
According to the Pushwoosh Benchmarks Study 2025, the average monthly active users rate on iOS is 18.99%, while Android apps average a higher 34.27%. This is the most useful monthly active users benchmark to anchor against, since it splits by platform.
Not all apps serve the same audience or purpose, so a monthly active users benchmark will vary by industry and by whether you build for iOS or Android.
Platform insights
For most industries, Android shows higher MAU than iOS, with the widest gaps in Fintech, Games (hypercasual and action), and News. Only streaming shows comparable MAU on both platforms.
Industry insights
The lowest MAU sits in Navigation, Hospitality, and Rewards & Loyalty, all on iOS. The highest is in Banking, Fintech, Games, and Services on Android.
Best strategies to increase MAU
Most of the lift in monthly active users comes from four places: onboarding, push opt-ins, habit loops, and personalized omnichannel messaging. That’s how to grow active users without paying to acquire each one.
If your MAU has sat flat, it’s worth re-evaluating. Boosting DAU tends to pull MAU up with it, so start there. Here are the ways to increase MAU that we’ve seen work.
1. Nail the onboarding
Deliver value from the first session with personalized in-app messages, push notifications, and emails. A strong first run keeps users engaged and curious about what’s next.
👋 Read the guide on how to set up an effective user onboarding flow.
2. Improve your opt-in process
Make opt-in pleasant and rewarding, whether through in-app messaging or push. The more subscribers you have, the more people you’re allowed to re-engage later, and that permission is what quietly grows MAU.
✅ Benchmark your opt-in rates against industry medians and pick up tips to improve them.
3. Tailor communications to user behavior
Keep users informed with personalized, relevant messages. Event-triggered messaging reaches the right audience at the right moment and turns users into loyal customers. With Pushwoosh you can engage users at every stage of the app lifecycle across push notifications, in-app messages, emails, SMS, and WhatsApp.
📝 Learn how to plan and run an effective campaign with Pushwoosh Customer Journey Builder.
4. Re-engage dormant users
Target users who haven’t opened the app in 30 days or more. You can re-engage them through out-of-app channels like push and email:
Before you send, make sure the message can actually reach the user:
☐ Run a reachability check to confirm you can still push to that user. If not, fall back to email.
☐ Track whether the user opened your push. If not, follow up with a similar message.
5. Build habit loops with daily value
People come back when there’s a reason to. Give them a recurring one: a daily reward, a streak, fresh content, a status update on something they care about. Schedule it through push or in-app and the return visit becomes a habit rather than a nudge you have to send manually every time.
👋 See more tactics in the guide on how to increase daily active users, since DAU gains roll straight into MAU.
6. Move web users into the app
If you have a web audience, move it to mobile. The app experience is more personal and far easier to re-engage later. Give people a reason to switch: features or deals they can only get in the app, promoted through web push and email.
📖 Learn how to lift overall app engagement once those users land in the app.
7. Personalize with segmentation and RFM
Blanket sends teach users to ignore you. Split the audience by behavior, lifecycle stage, or value, and write to each group differently. RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) segmentation is a quick way to tell your most active users apart from the ones slipping away, so re-activation effort goes where it actually matters.
8. Strengthen retention as the foundation of MAU
None of the acquisition plays above hold if people leave in the first week. Fix the early drop-offs, remind users of the value they came for, and reach churned users while there’s still a chance to bring them back. Of everything on this list, retention is the one that keeps MAU growing long term.
Start with the users who haven’t opened the app in 30 days or more. A single well-run campaign there moves both daily and monthly active users at once.
How to grow monthly active users in your specific industry
Each industry has its own challenges. Here are tips to increase your DAU and, in turn, boost MAU.
Games
- Re-engage dormant players. Send recovery pushes to players inactive for 30/60/90 days, such as “See what you’ve missed in these [x] days” or “Get back into the action.” A deep link takes them straight to the update screen instead of the home page.
- Promote special offers. Target users who’ve made in-app purchases with offers or items matched to their history.
Below are examples from Pushwoosh customer Beach Bum, which tripled its CTRs, MAU, and subscriber count with well-targeted promos. Read the case study.
EXTRA TIP: add daily offers. Bladestorm, publisher of the GC.SKINS app and a Pushwoosh customer, grew MAU by 16.62% in eight months and lifted revenue. Read the success story.
- Run cross-promos. With several similar titles, promote other games in your portfolio or reward users for trying them: “Like [this type of game]? Check out [a new game].”
🎲 Build a full messaging strategy for your game app with the research-based guide from Pushwoosh.
Media streaming apps
- Recommend more to consume. Use push to suggest content based on viewing or listening history. Finished a favorite drama? Push a show in the same genre. Like Spotify, nudge users back to the artists they replay:
Deep linking is a must in personalized recommendation pushes, and you can use it in Pushwoosh.
A simple “You may also like…” works because it shows you understand the user’s taste and hands them an easy next step.
E-commerce
MAU shouldn’t be a top-priority metric for e-commerce, but it’s worth growing. Active users give you more chances to surface relevant offers that lead to sales.
- Reactivate quiet customers. Bring your least active shoppers back with push about new promotions.
For best results, add a product recommendation targeted by purchase history.
EXTRA TIP: event-triggered messaging drives real purchases. Target cart abandoners and nudge them to finish. More tips for e-commerce sales.
- Move shoppers from web to app. A mobile app offers a faster, more personal experience. People spend between 4h25min and 10h46min a day on their phones, so make some offers and features app-only:
🌟 Pushwoosh e-commerce customers engage users exceptionally well. Bantoa, for one, hit a 94% MAU rate. See how.
Increase active users with on-point messaging
MAU won’t hand you a growth strategy on its own. Read it in context, match the tactics to your industry, and it becomes a useful gauge of app health rather than a number you stare at. The rest is execution: how well you turn your user data into messages people actually want.
If growing MAU is the goal, Pushwoosh has the messaging tools to run that program without stitching five products together. Talk to our team.
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