Understanding Discrepancies in First Seen Cohorts vs App Downloads

·Oct 08, 2025 02:18 PM·

Hi there I have a question about first seen property within mixpanel. The number of first seen cohort for the last 28 days is much higher than our overall app downloads for the same time period. How can this possible?

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Julianne Bozzini
APP
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Hi Joe- Julianne from Mixpanel Support here. The 'First Seen' property is determined based on the time of a users first tracked event. If there events besides 'App Download' that are being tracked for users (ie, anonymous web activity prior to app download), that could lead to a higher count. Another thing to confirm is that the ID management is working as expected. The Identifying Users doc goes over how anonymous and identified user identities are connected together. If the ID management isn't working as expected, it can lead to higher user counts. If neither of those are the cause, I recommend submitting a ticket via our web form. When you submit the ticket, it would be helpful if you include a link the the report where you see the count for the first seen cohort, along with info on the total number of overall app downloads.

Julianne Bozzini
APP
·
·
Hi Joe- Julianne from Mixpanel Support here. The 'First Seen' property is determined based on the time of a users first tracked event. If there events besides 'App Download' that are being tracked for users (ie, anonymous web activity prior to app download), that could lead to a higher count. Another thing to confirm is that the ID management is working as expected. The Identifying Users doc goes over how anonymous and identified user identities are connected together. If the ID management isn't working as expected, it can lead to higher user counts. If neither of those are the cause, I recommend submitting a ticket via our web form. When you submit the ticket, it would be helpful if you include a link the the report where you see the count for the first seen cohort, along with info on the total number of overall app downloads.