Activation Rate: Percentage of users who signed up in the period that reached the activation milestone.
Formula
Activation Rate = Users reaching activation / New users × 100Computable definition
The canonical formula in the GASP formula grammar. The MCP server compiles it to SQL over the datasets listed below.
count_distinct(field.user_id where in_period(field.signup_date) and field.activation_date is not null) / count_distinct(field.user_id where in_period(field.signup_date))Unit: percent (the formula yields an unscaled ratio)
Notes: Users who signed up in the period and reached the activation milestone. The milestone is product-specific and must be defined explicitly.
Data requirements
Grain: Per event, aggregate monthly · Frequency: Daily · Aggregation: aggregate (month) · Staged: no · Main source: Product Analytics.
| Field | Dataset | Type |
|---|---|---|
activation_date | user | date |
signup_date | user | date |
snapshot_date | user | date |
user_id | user | string |
Example SQL (Postgres)
SELECT (CAST((SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) FROM user WHERE snapshot_date = :period_end AND ((signup_date >= :period_start AND signup_date <= :period_end) AND activation_date IS NOT NULL)) AS DOUBLE PRECISION) / NULLIF((SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) FROM user WHERE snapshot_date = :period_end AND (signup_date >= :period_start AND signup_date <= :period_end)), 0)) AS product_activation_rate From an agent: with the GASP MCP server, call
lookup_metric({ "name": "product_activation_rate" }) or generate_query({ "metric": "product_activation_rate", "adapter": "<your adapter JSON>" }).
Benchmarks
- Below 20%: Low activation, onboarding issue
- 20-40%: Average
- 40-60%: Good
- Above 60%: Strong activation
What It Tells You
Whether new users reach the product's core value, the first step to keeping them.
Related Metrics
Connected in the GASP relationship graph.
Upstream: what drives this
- Onboarding Completion Rate drives Activation Rate (Onboarding)
Downstream: what this drives
- Activation Rate drives Feature Adoption Rate (Product)
- Activation Rate measures Customer (Entity)