MAU pricing — Monthly Active User pricing — is a model where you pay based on how many distinct users actually log in to the software during a given calendar month, rather than how many accounts exist in the system. If you have 100 user accounts but only 30 of them log in in a given month, you pay for 30 — not 100. The people who didn't use the tool that month don't cost you anything, and their access is still there when they need it.
A Monthly Active User is any individual account that performs at least one login or interaction with the software within a given calendar month. Users who have accounts but do not log in during the month are not counted as active and do not contribute to the MAU total.
How MAU Pricing Differs from Per-Seat
The structural difference is what you're paying for. Per-seat pricing sells you access rights. MAU pricing sells you actual usage. Here's how that plays out in practice:
Under per-seat: you provision 50 accounts, you pay for 50 seats every month. In January, 45 people log in. In February, 12 people log in. In March, 50 people log in. Your bill is the same all three months.
Under MAU: you provision as many accounts as you need. In January, 45 people log in — you're charged for 45. In February, 12 log in — you're charged for 12. In March, 50 log in — you're charged for 50. You pay for what gets used.
The practical implication: MAU pricing lets you give access to more people without paying for the ones who rarely show up. That removes the financial disincentive to add users, which means more people can have access to data without inflating your bill.
How DashboardFox Uses MAU Pricing
DashboardFox's pricing is structured around MAU tiers rather than named user seats. The Starter plan ($99/month) covers up to 5 monthly active users. Growth ($249/month) covers up to 30. Scale ($499/month) covers up to 100. You can add capacity in blocks of 10 MAUs at $49/month per block.
The key thing this enables: you can create accounts for as many people as you want. The 30 people you need every month on Growth are covered at $249. The 10 people who only check in quarterly don't add to your bill in months they don't log in. You're not paying a per-seat rate for idle accounts.
This is directly relevant for organizations where data access needs to be broad — multiple departments, external partners, occasional reviewers — but daily active usage is concentrated in a smaller core. You're not penalized for distributing access.
The Math: MAU vs Per-Seat for a Typical Team
Let's run the numbers for a company with 60 total users, where 25 log in regularly each month and the other 35 are occasional.
Per-seat (Power BI Pro model): 60 × $14 = $840/month
You're paying for all 60 seats every month. The 35 occasional users cost you $490/month whether they log in or not.
MAU (DashboardFox Growth): $249/month covers 30 MAUs
Your 25 regular users fit within the Growth plan. Even if usage spikes to 35 in a busy month, adding one $49 block of 10 MAUs brings you to $298 — still significantly less than $840. And in a quiet month where only 15 people log in, you're still paying $249 but you're not being charged for the 45 who didn't show up.
Over a year, the difference is $840 × 12 = $10,080 vs roughly $249–$298 × 12 = $2,988–$3,576. The gap is real.
Seasonal Business Example
MAU pricing particularly benefits organizations with seasonal usage patterns. Consider a landscaping or construction company where field managers are active in the system during the busy season (April–October) but largely absent during the off-season. Or a retail business where regional managers are heavy BI users in Q4 but minimal users the rest of the year.
Under per-seat pricing, you pay peak rates year-round. Under MAU pricing, your bill naturally contracts when usage drops and expands when it picks up — without requiring you to manually add or remove licenses. The access is there when it's needed; it just doesn't cost anything in the months it goes unused.
When MAU Pricing Works Against You
MAU pricing isn't universally better — there are situations where per-seat or capacity pricing is more favorable:
When nearly all your users are active every month. If 90%+ of your provisioned users log in regularly, MAU and per-seat pricing converge. You're paying for actual usage either way; the main difference is billing structure, not cost.
When you have unpredictable usage spikes. If usage varies dramatically month to month, MAU pricing can produce variable bills that are harder to budget for. Per-seat gives you a fixed number regardless of fluctuation. That predictability has value for some finance teams.
At very large scale. At 1,000+ active users, capacity-based pricing (like Power BI Premium) often becomes more economical than per-user or per-MAU models. MAU pricing scales well through mid-market but isn't necessarily the best model for enterprise-scale deployments.
What Counts as an Active User?
This question matters because the answer determines your actual monthly cost. For DashboardFox, a monthly active user is any account that logs in at least once during the calendar month. Viewing a report, running a query, checking a dashboard — any authenticated session counts. Accounts that exist but do not log in during the month are not counted.
Scheduled reports that run automatically do not count as a user session — scheduled jobs run as system processes, not as user logins. So if you have automated report delivery set up for 20 clients who don't directly log into the system themselves, that automation doesn't consume MAU capacity.
If your actual monthly active user count is lower than your provisioned seat count, the cost difference is likely significant. DashboardFox's 7-day free trial lets you run the comparison without committing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a monthly active user?
Any user account that logs in at least once during the calendar month. Accounts that exist but are not used in a given month do not count toward your MAU total. Automated scheduled jobs do not count as user sessions.
What happens if I go over my MAU limit?
In DashboardFox, if your active users exceed your plan's MAU cap in a given month, additional MAU capacity is available in add-on blocks of 10 MAUs at $49/month (or $39/month on annual billing). Your account won't be cut off — you just add capacity as needed. Some MAU-based tools do enforce hard caps or charge significantly higher overage rates, so it's worth understanding a specific vendor's overage policy before committing.
Can I create more accounts than my MAU limit?
Yes. You can provision as many accounts as you need. Your MAU cap determines how many of those accounts can be active in a single month, not how many accounts can exist in your system. This is what makes MAU pricing flexible for organizations with large total user populations but variable active usage.
Is MAU pricing always cheaper than per-seat?
Not always — it depends on your active usage ratio. If the majority of your users log in every month, the cost difference between MAU and per-seat narrows. MAU pricing delivers the most savings for organizations where a meaningful portion of provisioned users have irregular login patterns.
