Weekly Active Users (WAU)
WAU counts distinct users with qualifying activity in a defined weekly window.
What is Weekly Active Users (WAU)?
Weekly active users is the number of distinct people who perform a qualifying activity during a week. Specify whether the window is a calendar week or a rolling seven days. This makes comparisons interpretable and helps avoid differences caused by reporting boundaries rather than changes in customer behavior.
Example in SaaS
A planning product has 300 active users on Monday and 400 on Tuesday, with 200 appearing on both days. Those two days contribute 500 distinct users to the weekly count, not 700. The full WAU figure deduplicates identities across every day in the chosen window.
What to watch for
Adding seven daily active user counts does not produce WAU because frequent users appear repeatedly. Weekly measurement can suit tools used for weekly planning better than daily measurement, but it still needs a meaningful event. Keep event definitions and timezone consistent over time. A spike driven by an onboarding campaign may not represent recurring use, so inspect returning users separately.
Source and further reading
Related terms: Daily active users, Monthly active users.