# Analytics

The [**Overview**](https://dashboard.clerk.com) page of the Clerk Dashboard gives you visibility into how users are engaging with your application over time. It provides a variety of reports covering both [Users](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/users/managing.md) and [Organizations](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/organizations/overview.md), helping you track sign-ups, sign-ins, active usage, and retention.

## Viewing and customizing reports

You can customize how your reports are displayed using the following controls. Your personal preferences are saved across all future sessions.

- **Date range**: Choose a preset date range (e.g. last 3 months) or set a custom date range.
- **Interval**: Choose between daily, weekly, or monthly reporting intervals. This affects all reports, including active users (e.g. weekly active users) and retention (e.g. weekly retention).
- **Show incomplete period**: When enabled, your reports will include a projection for the current, still-in-progress period.

## User and Organization analytics

Clerk provides separate reports for Users and Organizations. To switch between them, select the toggle in the top-right corner of the [**Overview**](https://dashboard.clerk.com) page. Your toggle preference is saved across all future sessions.

Organization analytics are available if your application uses [Clerk Organizations](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/organizations/overview.md).

## Data methodology

| Metric                  | How it's counted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Active user**         | A user is counted as active on any day they complete a session activity (signing in, refreshing a token, or any authenticated request). Each user is counted once per period regardless of sessions or devices. This differs from MRU, which excludes sign-up day activity. |
| **Active organization** | Organizations must have two or more members to be eligible to appear in the report. An eligible organization is counted as **active** if one or more members have any authenticated session event during the period.                                                        |
| **Sign-in**             | Recorded each time a user completes the authentication flow and a new session is created. Session refreshes are not counted as additional sign-ins.                                                                                                                         |
| **Sign-up**             | Recorded when a new user account is created (at the point of account creation, not at email verification).                                                                                                                                                                  |
| **Retention**           | Measures the percentage of users who signed up in a given period and returned for an active session in a subsequent period. Uses a standard cohort-based model with bounded retention.                                                                                      |
| **Data freshness**      | Updated daily. Complete metrics reflect activity through the end of the previous UTC day. Projections are calculated up to the second.                                                                                                                                      |

## Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

### Does data from my development instance appear in analytics?

No. Analytics are scoped to your production instance only. Activity in your development instance is excluded from all reports.

### Are impersonated sessions counted?

No. Sessions initiated via [user impersonation](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/users/impersonation.md) are excluded from all analytics reports. Only authentic end-user activity is counted.

### Are bot or automated sign-ins counted?

No. Machine-to-machine (M2M) sessions (for example, those authenticated with machine tokens) are excluded from user-facing analytics. Only sessions tied to real user accounts are counted.

---

## Sitemap

[Overview of all docs pages](https://clerk.com/docs/llms.txt)