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Metrics type: Key MetricsCategory: Analytics

At a glance

Daily Active Users is an executive-overview metric tracked from PostHog data. It counts the distinct users who triggered at least one event in a day, the broadest single read on how many real people are touching your store. PostHog derives it from distinct user identities across events, so it is resilient to multi-visit inflation. Watch it for week-on-week trend and as the denominator behind stickiness and retention.

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your PostHog data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A representative reading of Daily Active Users for a typical merchant on PostHog. Suppose DAU runs around 9,400 on a normal weekday. After a paid-search budget pause on 02 Jun 26, the 7-day average falls to 7,600, a 19% drop versus the prior period, which trips the alert. Because DAU moved before conversion did, you have a head start on diagnosing demand rather than checkout. Cross-reference Monthly Active Users and Stickiness to see whether the loss is new visitors or returning ones. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to trace upstream causes; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in PostHog’s own dashboard: In PostHog, the DAU trend is a unique-users insight aggregated daily. Open that insight and align the date range and any property filters with the Vortex IQ profile. PostHog’s identity stitching can merge anonymous and identified users, which affects the count. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ: Cross-connector reconciliation: complement with sibling cards in the same category for the full diagnostic picture. For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Q: How often does Daily Active Users update? The card refreshes on the standard data refresh (typically every 30-60 minutes for live integrations). For real-time signals, force a manual refresh from the dashboard. Q: Is DAU the same as sessions or visits? No. DAU counts distinct people, not visits. One user with three sessions in a day counts once. Use Sessions for visit volume and DAU for audience size. Q: Why did DAU change for a past day? PostHog stitches anonymous and identified identities over time, which can retroactively adjust historical unique-user counts as more is learned about each person. Q: Can I customise the alert threshold? Yes, alert thresholds are configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab. Adjust to match your business baseline rather than relying on the generic default.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Daily Active Users is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across PostHog and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.