Monthly Unique Visitors (MUV)

What MUV counts

MUV identifies a unique visitor through a browser cookie, or a fingerprint in its absence. One
person visiting from a phone and a laptop counts as two visitors unless signed in. One person
visiting 30 times in a month counts as one.

That makes MUV a simple and reproducible metric with one important limitation: it does not reflect
the real number of people, only the number of unique browsers and devices.

MUV as a SaaS billing metric

Most personalization, A/B testing and recommendation platforms bill on MUV rather than on requests
or events. The logic is that MUV reflects the real scale of the work: how many unique profiles have
to be served, stored and personalized.

Typical tiers:

MUV and A/B test speed

MUV directly determines how quickly statistically significant results arrive. At low MUV tests
stretch across weeks or months, and the risk of seasonal distortion grows.

MUV = 100K/month → ~3,300 uniques a day
Test: CR 2%, MDE 15%, alpha 0.05, beta 0.2
Required sample: ~9,000 per variation → about 3 days at a 50/50 split

Tip: plan tests against real MUV from the last two or three months rather than peak values.
Uneven traffic from seasonality or promotions produces an unrepresentative sample.

MUV versus sessions versus page views