How does a dormant user differ from a churned user?

Dormancy is an observed, reversible state that only says no activity was recorded in this period. Churn is a declared definition the team chooses, usually a longer silence or a cancelled subscription, and it removes the user from the base. A user can go quiet and return many times without ever being counted as churned.

How should the dormancy threshold be chosen?

From your own users' natural return interval. Look at the distribution of gaps between consecutive activities and place the threshold where most real returns have already happened; a number that fits a daily product is meaningless for a seasonal service.

Dormant User

Intermediate

Updated Jul 11, 2026 Shahin editorial 2 min read

PronunciationEN/ˈdɔːrmənt ˈjuːzər/

A dormant user is someone who was active before and recorded no qualifying activity in the period being reported.

On a lifecycle chart dormant users are drawn below the axis, because they are the period's outflow rather than part of its active population. The word is used in two different ways and the difference matters: the lifecycle definition is strict and counts only someone active in the previous period and absent now, while product teams often call anyone dormant who has been silent longer than a chosen threshold such as 30 or 90 days. Dormancy is not churn. Churn is a declared decision that a user is gone, whereas a dormant user is merely quiet and may come back next period as a resurrected user. Treating every dormant user as lost inflates the churn figure and aims win-back campaigns at people who were away for a week.

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