# Total sessions

Measure how many sessions your application receives over time.

> **Automatically tracked**
>
> The SDK automatically tracks the events that feed this widget.

This chart shows how many sessions (or visits) occurred within your applications over the selected period.

This metric helps you understand your application's overall traffic volume, showing whether your audience is growing, stable, or declining over time.

> **Question: What's the difference between sessions and active users?**
>
> - **Active user**: Any visitor, human or bot, who accesses your site at least once in the selected time period. We count each unique visitor only once within that period, no matter how many returns or page views. Anonymous and identified versions of the same person are counted as different users. That is by design to track unique identities, not guessed matches.
> - **Session**: A visit to your site. It can include multiple page views and interactions. It starts when a visitor arrives and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity (by default). One active user can create multiple sessions in the same period.

## Metrics

![Total sessions widget](/assets/reference/analytics/application/total-sessions.png)

The chart includes:

1. **Total sessions**\
   The total number of sessions in your application.
2. **Sessions over time**\
   A trend chart showing how the number of sessions evolved throughout the period.

> **Question: What does the comparison over the last period mean?**
>
> It represents the growth or decline of the metric compared to the previous period.
>
> The *last period* refers to the date filter you selected. For example, if the filter is set to the **last 7 days**, the *last period* will be the **7 days immediately before that range**.

## Interpretation

Imagine your application had 5,000 sessions this month and 3,800 sessions last month. This means your total sessions increased by 1,200, suggesting a growth in user engagement or a successful campaign that brought more users to the application.

Monitoring session trends helps you identify when your application receives more traffic, for example, after a feature release, marketing campaign, or seasonal event. A steady increase in sessions often indicates stronger user retention and growing interest in your application.

### What the number tells you

Here are some common insights you can get from this widget:

- High or growing number of sessions indicates increasing user activity, possibly driven by new content, product updates, or marketing efforts that successfully attracted visitors to your application.
- A stable session volume suggests consistent user engagement and that your application maintains regular traffic patterns.
- A decreasing number of sessions may point to reduced user interest or visibility, or even a seasonal behavior. Review recent changes, releases, or campaigns that might have influenced user activity.

## Explore

- [Events](/reference/event/overview#event-types): Learn how to track user events for analytics and personalization.
- [Audiences](/explanation/audience): Understand how to delivery content to specific groups of users.