DAU growth rate

What is saas DAU growth rate?

The rise in Daily Active Users over a time period often expressed as a percentage, is known as the Daily Active Users (DAU) Growth Rate. It may be a reliable sign of effective sales and marketing campaigns as well as a solid product-market fit. It is a crucial measure that SaaS or subscription-based businesses pay close attention to.

A statistic called daily active users is used to count all the different consumers who interact with a product every day. The number of daily active users is a highly revealing indicator of the value a SaaS product is giving. Thus, it’s also utilized to gauge the effectiveness of the business.

A high DAU might be an excellent indication. It demonstrates that company consumers are utilizing the services and are increasingly subscribing. The business could be about to experience churn if the daily active user count begins to decline.

Each business has a unique method for calculating the number of active users. A person who simply signs in does not correspond to anyone who uses the product for a certain purpose and achieves it. Companies often prefer significant engagement indicators versus a simple sign-in.

DAU growth rate formula

DAU growth rate can be calculated with the formula below:

Here,
DAU is calculated using the formula below:

Let’s understand it with an example below.

SaaS DAU growth rate example

Say a SaaS company named MNO provides a platform to choose vendors for dog grooming. They had 5,000 Daily Active Users by the end of Jan. In February, 600 new members signed up. As per the DAU formula, DAU at the end of February will be:

DAU for any period = (Unique new users in the period) + (unique returning users in the period)

Here,
Unique new users = 600
Unique returning users = DAU at January end = 5000

So, DAU for February end = (600) + (5,000) = 5,600
Therefore, DAU for February end = 5,600

With this information, let’s calculate the DAU growth rate for February with the formula below:
DAU growth rate (in percentage) = [(total DAU at the end of the period) – (total DAU at the beginning of the period) / (total DAU at the beginning of the period)] x 100

Here,
DAU at the end of the period = 5,600
DAU at the beginning of the period = DAU at the end of January = 5,000

Therefore,
DAU growth rate for February in percentage = [(5600 – 5000) / 5000] x 100
=12%

This means the daily active users of company MNO grew by 12% in the month of February.

Now let’s take a different example:

Say a SaaS company named EFG provides a platform to choose veterinary care around you. They had 6,000 Daily Active Users by the end of Jan. In February, a thousand new members signed up, and a hundred original members left. Now, how do we calculate the Daily Active User growth rate with this extra information?

Let’s start by calculating DAU at the end of February:

DAU for any period = (Unique new users in the period) + (unique returning users in the period)

Here,
Unique new users = 1,000
Unique returning users = DAU at January end – Users that left = 6,000 – 100 = 5,900

So, DAU for February end = (1,000) + (5,900) = 6,900

With this information, let’s calculate the DAU growth rate for February with the formula below:

DAU growth rate (in percentage) = [(total DAU at the end of the period) – (total DAU at the beginning of the period) / (total DAU at the beginning of the period)] x 100

Here,
DAU at the end of the period = 6,900
DAU at the beginning of the period = DAU at the end of January = 6,000

Therefore,
DAU growth rate for February in percentage = [(6,900 – 6000) / 6000] x 100
=15%

This means that even though EFG lost users in the month of February, their daily active users grew by 15% in the month of February.