# Active users

Explore how many users are active on your applications.

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

This metric provides a broad view of user engagement, helping you understand the overall traffic trends across your workspace. It includes all users (those impacted by experiences or experiments and those who were not), giving you a clear baseline of your total audience over time.

At the workspace level, this is the most comprehensive view of user volume, allowing you to compare overall activity with the performance of specific experiences or campaigns.

> **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

![Active users widget](/assets/reference/analytics/workspace/active-users.png)

The chart includes:

1. **Total active users**\
   The number of unique users who were active on your applications.
2. **Active users over time**\
   Breaks down the number of active users by day or month.

> **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

This chart shows how many unique users were active on your applications during the selected period. It helps you monitor how your audience evolves over time, assess the impact of acquisition and retention efforts, and understand overall traffic patterns and reach.

### What the number tells you

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

- An increase in active users, such as growth from 15,000 to 20,000 users per day, may indicate rising brand awareness, successful acquisition campaigns, or natural seasonality bringing more visitors to your applications. Review which channels or initiatives contributed most to this growth to identify expansion opportunities.
- A decline in active users, such as a drop from 18,000 to 12,000 compared to the previous period, signals that something may require attention. This could be due to seasonal variation, reduced marketing activity, or visibility issues such as lower rankings in search results. Investigate trends across channels to understand what might have changed.
- Stable active user volume despite new campaigns or experiences suggests that current initiatives may not be effectively reaching new audiences. Consider reviewing your targeting, creative strategy, or campaign mix to improve reach and engagement.

## 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.