Monthly active users (MAU) are the number of unique visitors who have used your app over the last 30 calendar days.
Unique visitors and how they contribute to MAU
In general, a unique visitor is counted as an active user if they engage with your app(s) at least once within a specified time period. In the case of MAU, a unique visitor is counted if they interact with your app at least once within the last 30 days.
Note: Unique visitors are based on Visitor ID values, which your developers configure in the Pendo install script. If you make any changes to your Visitor ID format, this results in the creation of new unique visitors in Pendo, leading to a temporary increase in MAU. If you plan to make any changes to your Visitor ID format, we recommend notifying your Pendo account representative in advance so they can be aware of the update and provide any necessary guidance or support.
Depending on your subscription settings and Pendo plan, how we calculate anonymous and identified visitors and bill for your monthly active users (MAU) might vary. For more information, contact your Pendo account representative.
MAU impact on billing
Pendo subscription plans differ by feature and MAU limit. Learn more about our plans on our Pricing page.
MAU tracking with multiple apps
If your subscription includes multiple apps and you're on the application-level MAU pricing model (our current standard), each app calculates MAU independently. To get an accurate MAU total across all apps, don’t rely on the Total count shown in aggregated charts. Instead, review the individual app lines and manually add the counts together.
If you're still on our older subscription-level pricing model (now only used by legacy contracts), you can rely on the Total count. This legacy model calculates MAU at the subscription level rather than for each app.
See Troubleshoot MAU metrics for a multi-app subscription for an example of how these two pricing models calculate MAU differently on the People > Visitors page.
View your pricing model and MAU usage
You can find out your pricing model by navigating to Settings > Subscription settings and locating the two MAU fields at the bottom of the Basic settings section. The value that contains (Used for billing) determines your pricing model and shows your current MAU used for billing.
In the example below, the subscription has Subscription-level monthly active users as its pricing model and is billed for 6,273 MAU.
If you're an Org Admin or Org Reporter user, you can also view your current MAU count, along with trending MAU across all of your subscriptions, in Settings > Organization settings. For more information, see MAU metrics.
Excluded users and MAU
Excluded visitors and accounts aren't included when calculating your subscription's MAU limit. Pendo still collects and saves events associated with excluded visitors, and excluded visitors still receive guides (if they're eligible), but the associated analytics aren't reflected in Pendo.
Visit the Pendo Academy for a video on Monthly Active Users, which includes information about exclude and include lists.
Anonymous visitors and MAU
Anonymous visitors are only included in your subscription's MAU limit if you have Show anonymous visitor data turned on in your subscription settings.
Tip: If you suspect bot volume in your app and want these excluded from your MAU count, we recommend keeping anonymous visitor data turned off in your subscription. For more information about bot activity in Pendo, see Bot activity in your usage data.
To learn more about how anonymous visitors impact the MAU metric and how you can make necessary changes, see our Pendo Academy video for Monthly Active Users: Anonymous visitors.
What happens when you exceed your MAU limit
If you're not on our free plan and your subscription exceeds the MAU limit, your Pendo account representative will contact you. They'll seek to understand whether the exceeding MAU count is due to expected growth and requires a contract adjustment or if there's a potential configuration issue that we can help you resolve.
If your subscription exceeds the MAU limit, aggregate data is presented as generalized trends based on a daily random sampling of 500 visitors. If you're on our free plan, you also can't create new guides, NPS surveys, or segments until you upgrade to a paid plan. For more information, see MAU limits.
Track your MAU
There are several ways in Pendo to track the number of MAU that are trending for your applications.
If you're an Org Admin or Org Reporter user, you can view trending MAU across all of your subscriptions in Settings > Organization settings. For more information, see MAU metrics.
To monitor MAU trends on a dashboard, use the Weekly Visitors dashboard widget:
- Open your desired dashboard, select Add to dashboard > Widget, then select Weekly Visitors.
- For Metric, select the first dropdown menu and choose Monthly. If monthly isn't available, modify your date range to cover at least 60 days.
- Update the Name and other fields to your preference, then select Save.
You can also track MAU trends on the Visitors page:
- Go to People > Visitors.
- Update your filters to the Everyone segment, a date range that covers at least 60 days, All Accounts, and All Apps (if applicable).
- Locate the first line chart. By default, it shows weekly events. Select the dropdown menus to choose Monthly and Visitors.
Note: If you have multiple apps in your subscription and are on our application-level pricing model, it's important to exclude the Total count from the two latter charts above because it won't provide the expected MAU count. Instead, review each application line individually and manually calculate the total of those counts to obtain an accurate MAU count. If you're on our subscription-level pricing model, you can rely on the Total count for accurate MAU calculation.
If you're unsure which pricing model your subscription uses, see View your pricing model and MAU usage.
Learn more about MAU
We recommend watching our Pendo Academy video on Monthly Active Users: Overview to learn more about how the MAU metric is calculated and how to monitor that metric in your Pendo subscription.
If you're seeing a lower MAU number in Pendo than what your Pendo Account Representative is reporting, follow the steps in Troubleshoot MAU metrics for a multi-app subscription for initial troubleshooting.