What Is an Active User in Google Analytics (GA4)?
The number of distinct users who logged an engaged session (or, on web, any session) during the date range. This is GA4's primary user-count metric, replacing Universal Analytics' 'Users'.
Ask it in plain English
"How many active users did my landing page get this week?"
Field details
| Type | Metric |
| GA4 API name | activeUsers |
Good to know
Not a like-for-like swap for Universal Analytics' Users metric despite the framing: because it's tied to engaged sessions, a spike in bounced, non-engaged traffic can pull this number down even while total sessions rise - the two metrics can diverge noticeably during a bad-traffic-quality period.
Ask your own Google Analytics about this
Connect once, then ask in plain English. No tokens, no setup.
Get started freeUsed in these recipes
- How do I see traffic by channel in GA4?
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- How do I see users by operating system in GA4?
Related fields
Sources
- Google Analytics Data API - dimensions & metrics reference (official Google documentation)