# How can I count monthly active users?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-count-monthly-active-users/357574
**Category:** Data & reporting
**Created:** [March 17, 2025, 3:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-count-monthly-active-users/357574 "2025-03-17T15:31:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![alefattorini](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/alefattorini/32/119928_2.png) [@alefattorini](https://meta.discourse.org/u/alefattorini)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2025, 3:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-count-monthly-active-users/357574/1 "2025-03-17T15:31:23Z")

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How can I have this number into [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true) or customize my about section?

 ![The image displays a table with statistics for a community forum, showing 17.4K topics, 193.7K posts, 2.0K new users, and 548 active users over various time periods, with a particular emphasis on the increase in posts over the last 7 days highlighted by a pink arrow. (Captioned by AI)](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/e/0/9/e0913013d3abbe6efa1c219fab215014fafc1a1f.png)

Now I have this but 7 days are not enough for me.

 ![The image shows a dashboard with statistics on site activity, highlighting 100 active users in the last 7 days with a red circle. (Captioned by AI)](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/f/b/f/fbf93824da75b052b3cde71b320cbae9226ce4ca.png)

For active members I mean people who have just logged in, no posts, no like.  
User visits are not the same..

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### Author: ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-count-monthly-active-users/357574/2 "2025-03-18T02:21:44Z")

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Hey Ale!

Our definition of active means they have liked or posted at least once. Otherwise it is just a user visit. Can you explain why user visits are not what you are after?

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### Author: ![Ed\_S](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ed_s/32/134015_2.png) [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2025, 11:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-count-monthly-active-users/357574/3 "2025-03-18T11:17:38Z")

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(For myself, I recently needed Monthly Active Users as a calibration of how “large” my forum is, for legal compliance reasons. I was able to read it from `forum.example.com/about.json` - I very much hope this remains available, and is not ‘decluttered’ as the about page was.)

Edit: for this meta forum, I see these stats in the about.json:

```plaintext
      "users_30_days": 1224,
      "active_users_30_days": 3259,
      "participating_users_30_days": 1031,
      "visitors_30_days": 6980,
      "eu_visitors_30_days": 1399,

```

I don’t know precisely what all of those mean.
