# How does Mozilla calculate daily users in the statistics panel?

**URL:** <https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-does-mozilla-calculate-daily-users-in-the-statistics-panel/147087>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [January 5, 2026, 8:26pm UTC](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-does-mozilla-calculate-daily-users-in-the-statistics-panel/147087 "2026-01-05T20:26:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![daddiofadio](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/discourse.mozilla.org/daddiofadio/32/75635_2.png) [@daddiofadio](https://discourse.mozilla.org/u/daddiofadio)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2026, 8:26pm UTC](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-does-mozilla-calculate-daily-users-in-the-statistics-panel/147087/1 "2026-01-05T20:26:20Z")

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I’m a new add-on developer trying to understand the stats panel. For context, my add-on was first published around December 12th.

I’ve noticed a persistent discrepancy: the downloads from the Mozilla add-ons page don’t add up to anywhere near the number of active users. My stats show only a handful of downloads over the past week, but daily active users have been climbing steadily, sometimes by 20 per day, and I’m now at 70+ users with only approximately 25 total downloads. If anything, I would have expected the opposite: more downloads than active users.

Two questions:

1. How does Mozilla calculate daily active users for the statistics panel?

2. Should I be concerned that someone is redistributing my add-on elsewhere? Specifically, if my add-on were hosted on a third-party site, would those installs still appear in my user stats? Does telemetry or some other mechanism capture users who didn’t download directly from AMO?

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**Author:** ![dotproto](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/discourse.mozilla.org/dotproto/32/62957_2.png) [@dotproto](https://discourse.mozilla.org/u/dotproto)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2026, 8:04pm UTC](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-does-mozilla-calculate-daily-users-in-the-statistics-panel/147087/2 "2026-02-10T20:04:08Z")

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> [@daddiofadio](#):
>
> I’ve noticed a persistent discrepancy: the downloads from the Mozilla add-ons page don’t add up to anywhere near the number of active users.

There isn’t a ton of information available on the exact meaning of these values. One of the few resources I found is a pair of blog posts from 2020:

- [Download Statistics Update - Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/17/download-statistics-update/)
- [Improvements to Statistics Processing on AMO - Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/06/10/improvements-to-statistics-processing-on-amo/)

These posts say that AMO’s stats are derived from Firefox’s telemetry data, and that download stats are only recorded when the download originates from [addons.mozilla.org](http://addons.mozilla.org). I don’t know if an installation triggered by syncing a user’s Firefox profile would be counted as an AMO download.