What is Daily Active Users (DAU)?
Daily Active Users (DAU) counts the unique people who use a product or service on a given day. In survey and engagement work, DAU can mean the number of participants answering forms that day or the number of administrators actively managing surveys.
DAU is a simple engagement metric: the number of distinct users who perform one or more defined active
actions during a single day (a calendar day or a rolling 24‑hour window). What counts as active
depends on context — for a survey platform it might be submitting or starting a survey, viewing responses, or selecting languages; for administrators it might be creating or editing surveys, reviewing translations, or exporting results. DAU is about unique people, not sessions: a user who performs many actions in one day counts once. Measuring DAU requires a consistent definition of the time window and the actions that qualify as activity; measurement is different for logged‑in users versus anonymous respondents (cookies, device IDs or response IDs are often used to avoid double‑counting anonymous activity).
Usage example
After enabling automatic translations for our parent surveys, our participant DAU rose from 140 to 210 — meaning 210 unique people engaged with at least one survey that day. We also track admin DAU to see how many team members log in daily to review and improve translations.
Practical application
DAU helps you spot changes in real‑time engagement: a sudden drop can indicate a broken survey link or language display bug, while steady growth after adding translated content shows the feature is reaching more communities. Use DAU with related KPIs — completion rate, responses per language and DAU/MAU (stickiness) — to understand whether people are simply visiting or actually completing surveys and returning over time. For Hearo customers, tracking participant DAU is especially useful because it shows whether multilingual access increases daily participation across communities and helps plan capacity and cost under response‑based pricing.
FAQ
How exactly do you define "active" for DAU on a survey platform?
You decide which actions count. Common choices for participants include starting a survey, submitting a response, or switching language; for admins, creating/editing surveys or reviewing responses. Be consistent: once you pick qualifying actions, measure them the same way every day to track trends accurately.
How does DAU differ from MAU and why use both?
DAU counts unique users per day; MAU counts unique users per month. DAU shows short‑term engagement and immediate effects of changes; MAU shows broader reach. The ratio DAU/MAU (stickiness) indicates how frequently users return — higher ratios mean more habitual use.
How do you measure DAU when participants don't need an account?
For anonymous participants you can use response IDs, persistent cookies, or device fingerprints to identify unique users without requiring login. Each method has tradeoffs (privacy, accuracy). For defensible reporting, document the approach and note any likely under‑ or over‑counting.
What is a "good" DAU?
There’s no universal benchmark — a good DAU depends on your audience size and goals. Instead, focus on trends and ratios: rising DAU after launching translated surveys, increased completion rates, and a stable or improving DAU/MAU are signs of success for multilingual engagement.