Firefox add-on stats: how to read your AMO statistics dashboard and track any add-on's users

Firefox add-on stats live in two places, and most developers only know about one of them. Your own numbers sit in a private statistics dashboard on addons.mozilla.org (AMO), with daily users, downloads and campaign breakdowns. Everyone else's numbers, including your competitors', are available through AMO's public API, which returns the user count, rating and release history of any listed add-on as plain JSON.

This guide covers both. You will learn where the AMO statistics dashboard is, what each report actually counts, why the numbers drop when nothing changed, how to export the raw series, and how to track any add-on's users, ratings and versions from the public API with a few lines of code.

Key takeaways

• Your AMO statistics dashboard is private. Open it from Manage My Submissions, then the Statistics link next to the add-on. Mozilla stopped allowing public dashboards in 2020.
• "Daily users" is aggregated from Firefox telemetry, so users who turned telemetry off are not counted. The number is a trend line, not a census.
• Downloads only count installs from your AMO listing page. An .xpi installed from your own site is not included, even if the file is hosted on AMO.
• UTM parameters on links to your listing show up as source, medium, content and campaign breakdowns. Each value is cut off at 40 characters.
• For any public add-on, GET https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/{slug}/ returns average_daily_users, weekly_downloads and the full rating summary with no API key.

Where to find your Firefox add-on stats#

The statistics dashboard is only visible to the add-on's authors and to AMO admins. To open it:

1. Sign in to addons.mozilla.org with the account that owns the add-on.
2. Open the Developer Hub and go to Manage My Submissions.
3. Click Statistics under the add-on you want to inspect.

The dashboard lives at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/<your-slug>/statistics/. If you share that link with a teammate who is not listed as an author, they get a permission error. Mozilla removed the old option to make a dashboard public when it rebuilt the statistics pipeline in 2020, as described in Improvements to Statistics Processing on AMO. To give someone access, add them as an author, or export the data and share the file.

What the AMO statistics dashboard shows#

The dashboard is split into two families of reports: usage (how many Firefox profiles have the add-on) and downloads (how many installs started from your listing). The report list below matches the routes in AMO's open source code, mozilla/addons-server.

Every report can be grouped by day, week or month, and you can pick a preset range (for example the last 30 days) or a custom date range.

Two reports are worth checking after every release. By add-on version tells you how quickly users move to the new build, which is your early warning if automatic updates are failing for some reason. By application shows whether a change hit Firefox for Android differently, which is easy to miss if you only test on desktop.

How daily users are counted on AMO#

Mozilla's monitoring extension usage statistics guide says the stats "are aggregated from Firefox telemetry data and do not include any personally identifiable user data." That one sentence explains most of the confusion around the number.

• Telemetry opt-outs are invisible. A Firefox user who disabled telemetry still runs your add-on but does not show up in daily users. When Mozilla switched to telemetry in 2020, uBlock Origin's count fell from about 5.5 million to 3.94 million overnight, as gHacks reported, without a single real uninstall. Privacy tools lose more to this than average, because their users are the most likely to switch telemetry off.
• Only browsers that ran count. A laptop that stays closed all week contributes nothing for those days, which is why weekends and holidays show dips for work-focused add-ons.
• Days are calendar days. In a 2025 Mozilla Discourse thread, a Mozilla developer advocate said he expected AMO to use UTC to define the start and end of a day. Keep that in mind when you line Firefox up with a dashboard that runs on local time.

The practical rule: compare daily users with itself over time, never with downloads, and never with another store's number without a label. A Discourse thread about downloads versus users shows how often developers read a gap between the two as a bug. It is not one. They measure different things from different sources.

Downloads and UTM tracking for your AMO listing#

The downloads report counts installs that start from your AMO listing page. Mozilla is explicit about the limit: "Installs from other sources, such as .xpi downloads from a website or blog, are not counted on the dashboard." If you self-distribute a signed build, those users can still appear in daily users, but they never appear in downloads.

Since October 2020 the downloads breakdown uses standard UTM parameters instead of AMO's old custom src parameter, according to Mozilla's download statistics update. Add them to every link you control:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/your-addon/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-release&utm_content=header-button

Keep every value under 40 characters, because AMO truncates longer ones. Use lowercase and hyphens consistently, or Newsletter and newsletter will show up as two sources. The same discipline applies on Chrome, where the developer dashboard breaks listing page views down by utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign; the Chrome Web Store conversion rate guide covers that side.

How to export your AMO statistics#

Each report has CSV and JSON downloads. Under the hood they follow one URL pattern, visible in the addons-server stats views:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/<slug>/statistics/<series>-<group>-<start>-<end>.<format>

• series is one of usage, downloads, versions, apps, locales, os, countries, sources, mediums, contents or campaigns.
• group is day, week or month.
• start and end are dates written as YYYYMMDD.
• format is csv or json.

So the daily users for September 2026, as CSV, are at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/your-addon/statistics/usage-day-20260901-20260930.csv

These URLs use your AMO session, so open them in a browser where you are signed in as an author. There is no API key for private statistics. If you want a long history, export it on a schedule and keep the files, because the dashboard is the only copy and you cannot re-derive old numbers later.

How to see Firefox add-on stats for any add-on#

Private dashboards stop at your own add-ons. For everything else, AMO publishes a documented, keyless add-ons API. The detail endpoint accepts a numeric id, a slug or a GUID:

curl -s "https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/ublock-origin/" \
  | jq '{slug, average_daily_users, weekly_downloads, ratings, last_updated, version: .current_version.version}'

When we ran that on October 4, 2026, it returned an average_daily_users of 11,329,596, weekly_downloads of 244,411 and a 4.80 average from 22,176 ratings. The fields that matter for tracking are:

Three more endpoints round out the picture:

• Release history: GET /api/v5/addons/addon/{slug}/versions/ lists public versions, newest first, with the file creation time for each.
• Reviews: GET /api/v5/ratings/rating/?addon={slug} returns individual ratings and review text, newest first, with the score and the version it was left on.
• Rankings: GET /api/v5/addons/search/?q=tab%20manager&type=extension&app=firefox&sort=users sorts matching add-ons by average daily users. Note that sort=users reorders everything the query matches, so popular add-ons that only loosely match can rise to the top. Use it as a rough leaderboard, not as AMO's search ranking.

The detail response we fetched carried a cache-control: max-age=360 header, so polling more than every few minutes gains nothing. Once a day is plenty, because average_daily_users itself only changes daily.

A small daily snapshot script#

Here is a minimal Node.js script (Node 18 or later, for the built-in fetch) that appends one row per add-on per day to a CSV. Run it from a scheduler you already have.

import { appendFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const ADDONS = ['your-addon', 'competitor-addon'];
const API = 'https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/';

const today = new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10);

for (const slug of ADDONS) {
  const res = await fetch(`${API}${encodeURIComponent(slug)}/`, {
    headers: { 'User-Agent': 'addon-stats-snapshot/1.0' },
  });
  if (!res.ok) {
    console.error(`${slug}: HTTP ${res.status}`);
    continue;
  }
  const a = await res.json();
  const row = [
    today,
    slug,
    a.average_daily_users,
    a.weekly_downloads,
    a.ratings.average.toFixed(3),
    a.ratings.count,
    a.current_version.version,
  ].join(',');
  await appendFile('amo-stats.csv', row + '\n');
}

A failed request is skipped, not written as zero. That matters more than it looks: a single timeout recorded as "0 users" will ruin every chart and every alert built on the file.

Comparing Firefox add-on stats with Chrome and Edge#

If your extension ships to several stores, resist the urge to add the numbers up into one "active users" figure. Firefox reports daily users from telemetry. Chrome and Edge report weekly users, and Chrome's own documentation says its users stat "only captures installations; it doesn't monitor whether users are active or not." Adding them together mixes three definitions.

What does work:

• Compare trends, not totals. A 10% week-over-week drop on Firefox and a flat line on Chrome is a Firefox-specific problem, whatever the absolute numbers.
• Compare ratings on the same scale. All three stores use 1 to 5 stars, but AMO's average is computed over all time, so a recent problem moves it slowly.
• Compare versions. If Firefox is still on the previous release three days after Chrome updated, check your AMO review status before anything else.

The full method for lining up three stores is in how to track one browser extension across Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and the companion piece on Edge add-on analytics explains what Microsoft's Partner Center counts. If you need retention rather than reach, measuring extension retention and uninstall rate shows how to get it without over-collecting data. And if you add your own telemetry on Firefox, read Firefox data collection consent first, because Firefox asks users to consent to data collection at install time.

Why your Firefox add-on stats suddenly changed#

Before you assume users left, rule out the measurement:

1. A telemetry or reporting change. Check the Mozilla Add-ons blog for announcements. A step change across many add-ons at once is almost always methodology.
2. Self-distributed installs. If you recently pushed users to an .xpi on your site, downloads fall while daily users hold steady.
3. A Firefox release. Firefox now ships frequently, and a platform change can break an add-on for a slice of users. Compare the drop date with Firefox release notes and read the two-week release cycle guide for a testing routine.
4. Your own release. Look at By add-on version. If the new version's users rise while the total falls, the update itself is pushing people away. Read new reviews for that version through the ratings endpoint.
5. Seasonality. Weekends, holidays and school terms move work and study tools every year. Compare against the same weeks last year before acting.

A Firefox add-on stats checklist#

1. Bookmark your statistics dashboard and confirm every teammate who needs it is an author.
2. Export usage, versions and downloads as CSV every month and store the files.
3. Add UTM parameters to every link you control, under 40 characters, in lowercase.
4. Check By add-on version two to three days after each release.
5. Snapshot average_daily_users, ratings and the current version for your add-on and your main competitors once a day.
6. Never record a failed fetch as zero.
7. Label cross-store charts with each store's definition: daily on Firefox, weekly on Chrome and Edge.

Frequently asked questions#

What does "daily users" mean in Firefox add-on statistics?#

It is the number of Firefox profiles that had your add-on installed on a given day, aggregated from Firefox telemetry. Users who disabled telemetry, and browsers that did not run that day, are not included, so the true number of people with your add-on is higher.

Why are my Firefox add-on downloads so much lower than my users?#

Downloads only count new installs that start from your AMO listing page in a given period, while daily users counts everyone who already has the add-on. An established add-on can have millions of users and a few thousand downloads a week. Installs from your own website are also excluded from downloads.

Can I see the statistics of someone else's Firefox add-on?#

Not the private dashboard; Mozilla made all dashboards private in 2020. You can see the public numbers through the AMO API: average daily users, weekly downloads, rating average and count, review text and version history for any listed add-on.

Can I make my AMO statistics dashboard public?#

No. Since the 2020 rebuild, Mozilla says dashboards "will only be accessible to add-on developers and admins." Export the CSV files, or add collaborators as authors.

Does the AMO API need an API key to read add-on stats?#

Not for public data. The add-on detail, versions, ratings and search endpoints all work without authentication. Send a descriptive User-Agent, cache responses, and poll no more than you need.

Summary#

Firefox add-on stats come in two layers. Your private AMO dashboard gives you daily users split by version, application, language, platform and country, plus downloads split by UTM source, all exportable as CSV or JSON. The public AMO API gives you the headline numbers for any add-on: users, weekly downloads, ratings, reviews and releases. Read daily users as a telemetry-based trend, keep UTM links tidy, export your history, and never compare Firefox's daily users with another store's weekly count without saying so.

If you would rather not maintain snapshot scripts, Extenify's browser extension analytics dashboard tracks Firefox add-on stats next to your Chrome Web Store and Edge Add-ons listings, for your own add-ons and competitors alike, and sends daily change alerts when users, ratings, reviews or versions move. Tracking your first extension is free, and the pricing page lists what the paid plans add.

Image credits#

• Cover photo: Red Fox in a Falling Snow by Ray Hennessy on Wikimedia Commons, CC0.