New User
BeginnerA new user is a person whose first ever recorded interaction with the site or product falls inside the selected reporting period.
The tool keeps a first-seen timestamp for every user identifier and compares it with the boundaries of the selected range. The label is therefore relative to the range: the same person is a new user in the week of the first visit and a returning user in the week after. Because it rests on an identifier stored in the browser, anything that resets that identifier counts one person twice, so cleared cookies, private windows, a second device and a blocked tracking script all push the number up. Read the trend against the previous period rather than the absolute value.
How it is calculated
New users = count of unique users whose first-seen timestamp falls inside the reporting period
The count is over unique user identifiers, not sessions, and the unit is people. Within one period a person is counted as new only once, no matter how many times they return.
FAQ
Sources:GA4 — Users metric