What is the difference between a user and a session?

A session is a continuous block of activity that ends after inactivity; a user persists across sessions. One user can have dozens of sessions, but a session always belongs to exactly one user.

Does one user in a report equal one human?

Not necessarily. Until the product sends an account identifier, the unit is effectively a browser on one device; one person with three devices becomes three users, and a shared household device shows several people as one user.

User

Beginner

Updated Jul 11, 2026 Shahin editorial 2 min read

PronunciationEN/ˈjuːzər/

In analytics, a user is a distinct identifier that all of one person's events are attributed to, not necessarily a verified human being.

On the first visit an identifier is stored in a cookie or in browser storage, and from then on events from that browser are grouped under one user; if the site also sends an account identifier at login, the same behavior moves to an identified user. That identifier disappears when cookies are cleared, when private browsing is used, and when a browser caps cookie lifetime, so the user count usually overstates the number of real people. In B2B products the word carries a second sense: a member of an organization account, where account-level analysis is not the same as person-level analysis.

FAQ

Sources:GA4 — Users metric