Roblox Corp

We manage our business by tracking several operating metrics, including average daily active users (“DAUs”), hours engaged, bookings, average bookings per DAU (“ABPDAU”), average monthly unique payers, and average bookings per monthly unique payer. As a management team, we believe each of these operating metrics provides useful information to investors and others. For information concerning these metrics as measured by us, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”

While these metrics are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our platform is used. These metrics are determined by using internal data gathered on an analytics platform that we developed and operate and have not been validated by an independent third party. This platform tracks user account and session activity, and its accuracy and precision may be and, at times, has been impacted by implementation challenges, methodological limitations, and operational constraints. If we fail to maintain an effective analytics platform, our metrics calculations may be inaccurate. These metrics are also determined by certain demographic data historically provided to us by the user, such as age or gender and increasingly using age-check data, as further described below. If our users provide us with incorrect or incomplete information or if our age-check systems misrepresent user ages, then our estimates may be inaccurate. Our estimates have changed and may continue to change as our methodologies and platform evolve, including through the application of new data sets or technologies or as our platform changes with new features and enhancements.

We believe that these metrics are reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, and that the methodologies we employ and update from time to time to create these metrics are reasonable bases to identify trends in user behavior. Because we update the methodologies we employ to create metrics, our current and future period metrics may not be comparable to those in prior periods. For example, historically our reported age demographics were based on age information self-reported by our users. We continue to develop, test, and implement new systems designed to check the ages of our users, which we refer to as “age-checking,” and currently we incorporate facial age estimation technology, identity verification, and parent or caregiver provided age data. Age-checked metrics are not comparable to historical periods that relied on self-reported data.

Our metrics may differ from estimates published by third parties or from similarly-titled metrics from other companies due to differences in methodology. The accuracy of our metrics may be affected by certain factors relating to user activity and our platform’s systems and our ability to identify and detect attempts to replicate legitimate user activity, often referred to as botting.

As our platform evolves, we regularly review our methodologies for calculating the number of legitimate users and the time spent on our platform. We have implemented and may continue to implement new calculation methods based on changes in technology, user behavior, and other factors in a constantly evolving environment. We also continually seek to upgrade our systems to detect and deter invalid user activities, including botting, non-active time, and unauthorized platform use across all devices. These ongoing refinements to our methodologies and systems impact our user metrics, such as DAUs and hours engaged.

For more information on the risks relating to our user metrics and behavior, see the sections titled “Risk Factors—Our user metrics and other estimates are subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in those metrics may significantly harm and negatively affect our reputation and our business” and “Risk Factors—Some creators and users on our Platform may make unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal use of Robux and other digital goods or games on our Platform, including by use of unauthorized third-party websites or “cheating” programs.”

DAUs

We define a DAU as a user who has logged in and visited Roblox through our website or application on a unique registered account on a given calendar day. If a registered, logged-in user visits Roblox more than once within a 24-hour period that spans two calendar days, that user is counted as a DAU only for the first calendar day. We believe this method better reflects global engagement on the platform compared to a method based purely on a calendar-day cutoff. DAUs for a specified period is the average of the DAUs for each day during that period. As an example, DAUs for the month of September would be an average of DAUs during that 30-day period.

We track DAUs as an indicator of the size of the audience engaged on our platform. DAUs are also broken out by geographic region to help us understand the global engagement on our platform. The geographic location data collected is based on the IP address associated with the account when an account is initially registered on Roblox. The IP address may not always accurately reflect a user’s actual location at the time they engaged with our platform.

Because DAUs measure account activity and an individual user may actively use our platform within a particular day on multiple accounts for which that individual registered, our DAUs are not a measure of unique individuals accessing Roblox. References to “user” or our “user base” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q refer to users as described in our definition of DAUs. Additionally, if undetected, fraud and unauthorized access to our platform may contribute, from time to time, to an overstatement of DAUs. In many cases, fraudulent accounts are created by bots to inflate user activity for a particular creator’s content on our platform, thus making the creator’s game (which refer to the titles that have been developed by creators) or other content appear more popular than it really is. We strive to detect and minimize fraud and unauthorized access to our platform.

Hours Engaged

We define hours engaged as the time spent by our users on the platform. We calculate total hours engaged as the aggregate of user session lengths in a given period. We estimate this length of time using internal company systems that track user activity on our platform as discrete events, and aggregate these discrete activities into a user session. A given user session on our platform may include, among other things, time spent in games, in Roblox Studio, in platform features such as chat and avatar personalization, in the Creator Store, and some amount of non-active time due to limits within the tracking systems and our estimation methodology. User sessions on our platform may be tracked differently across devices and platforms, including mobile, tablet, web, desktop, and game console due to inherent differences in functionality and user behaviors.

We track hours engaged as an indicator of the user engagement on our platform. Hours engaged are also broken out by geographic region, based on the IP address associated with the account when an account was initially registered on Roblox, to help us understand the global engagement on our platform. The IP address may not always accurately reflect a user’s actual location at the time they engaged with our platform.

Bookings represent the sales activity in a given period without giving effect to certain non-cash adjustments, as detailed below. Substantially all of our bookings are generated from sales of virtual currency, which can ultimately be converted to virtual items on the platform. Sales of virtual currency reflected as bookings include one-time purchases or monthly subscriptions purchased via payment processors or through prepaid cards. Bookings are initially recorded in deferred revenue and recognized as revenues over the estimated period of time the virtual items purchased with the virtual currency are available on the platform (estimated to be the average lifetime of a paying user) or as the virtual items purchased with the virtual currency are consumed. Bookings also include an insignificant amount from advertising and licensing arrangements.

We believe bookings provide a timelier indication of trends in our operating results that are not necessarily reflected in our revenue as a result of the fact that we recognize the majority of revenue over the estimated average lifetime of a paying user, which was 27 months as of September 30, 2026. The change in deferred revenue constitutes the vast majority of the reconciling difference from revenue to bookings. By removing these non-cash adjustments, we are able to measure and monitor our business performance based on the timing of actual transactions with our users and the cash that is generated from these transactions. Over the long term, the factors impacting our revenue and bookings trends are the same. However, in the short term, there are factors that may cause revenue and bookings trends to differ.

We use this non-GAAP financial information to evaluate our ongoing operations and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. We believe that this non-GAAP financial information may be helpful to investors because it provides consistency and comparability with past financial performance. However, non-GAAP financial measures have limitations in their usefulness to investors because they have no standardized meaning prescribed by GAAP and are not prepared under any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles. In addition, other companies, including companies in our industry, may calculate similarly titled non-GAAP financial measures differently or may use other measures to evaluate their performance, all of which could reduce the usefulness of our non-GAAP financial information as a tool for comparison. As a result, our non-GAAP financial information is presented for supplemental informational purposes only and should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, financial information presented in accordance with GAAP.

Bookings are also broken out by geographic region based on the billing country of our payers, to help us understand the global engagement and monetization on our platform. The billing address may not always accurately reflect a payer’s actual location at the time of their purchase.

ABPDAU

We define ABPDAU as bookings in a given period divided by the DAUs for such period. We primarily use ABPDAU as a way to understand how we are monetizing across all of our users. ABPDAU is also broken out by geographic region to help us understand the global monetization on our platform.

Average Monthly Unique Payers

We define monthly unique payers as user accounts that made a payment on the platform or redeemed a prepaid card during a given month. A user account that makes multiple purchases during a given month is counted as a single monthly unique payer. Average monthly unique payers for a specified period is the average of the monthly unique payers for each month during that period. Because an individual user may pay on our platform within a particular month on multiple user accounts for which that individual registered, our monthly unique payers are not a measure of unique individual payers on Roblox.

Average Bookings per Monthly Unique Payer

We define average bookings per monthly unique payer as bookings in the specified period divided by the average monthly unique payers for the same specified period.