Real user monitoring (RUM) is a passive monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

or client interacting with a server or cloud-based application. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website or an application is important to operators to determine if users are being served quickly and without errors and, if not, which part of a business process is failing.

Software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

(SaaS) and

application service provider An application service provider (ASP) is a business providing application software generally through the. ASPs that specialize in a particular application (such as a medical billing program) may be referred to as providing software as a service. ...

s (ASP) use RUM to monitor and manage service quality delivered to their clients. Real user monitoring data is used to determine the actual service-level quality delivered to end-users and to detect errors or slowdowns on websites. The data may also be used to determine if changes that are propagated to sites have the intended effect or cause errors. Organizations typically use RUM to test changes within the production environment or to anticipate behavioral changes in a website or application by using

A/B testing A/B testing (also known as bucket testing, split-run testing or split testing) is a user-experience research method. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment that usually involves two variants (A and B), although the concept can be also exte ...

or other techniques. As technology shifts more and more to hybrid environments like cloud, fat clients, widgets, and apps, it becomes more and more important to monitor the usage of applications from within the client itself. Real user monitoring is typically "passive monitoring" i.e., the RUM device collects web traffic without having any effect on the operation of the site. In most cases, a form of

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

is injected into the page or native code within the application to provide feedback from the browser or client. This data is collected from various individuals and consolidated. RUM can be very helpful in identifying and troubleshooting last-mile issues. RUM differs from

synthetic monitoring In software design, web design, and electronic product design, synthetic monitoring (also known as ''active monitoring or proactive monitoring'') is a monitoring technique that is done by using a simulation or scripted recordings of transactions ...

in that it relies on actual people clicking on the page to take measurements rather than automated tests simply going over a given set of test steps. RUM feature is available in various observability products such as Dynatrace, New Relic. For example, New Relic provides RUM as a part of its Browser monitoring feature in which it captures, processes and visualizes the data in RUM dashboards.

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