Online Dating Blog

What is the difference between eHarmony and Chemistry.com? Is eHarmony better than Chemistry.com?

While the two services appear very similar, I will discuss what I consider the biggest difference between them. Then I’ll discuss some additional feature differences and why in some cases one of the two services may serve you better than the other.

Before I start, if you are brand-new to online dating or are not familiar with either of these services at all, I would recommend you read these two articles where I discuss each service in detail:

How Does eHarmony Work?
Chemistry.com Review

Finally, these are just my opinions. I imagine both of these services might disagree with some of the points I make here but this is how I see things.

Matching Systems – The Biggest Difference

Both services offer to help you find dates and relationships based off your personality. Both services accomplish this by testing your personality type and then matching you with other singles based on the results of the test.

Sounds pretty similar, doesn’t it? In my opinion, though, the two services have very different approaches on how they accomplish their goal, particularly in how they provide matches. First, let me discuss each service and how I view its matching model and then I’ll compare these two methods.

eHarmony Personality Matching
eHarmony is very concerned (some would say obsessed) with only giving you the very best, highest quality matches. This doesn’t mean that they don’t get things wrong sometimes, but they do go out of their way to only select the closest matches according to their system. Their matching could be considered very specific as they use 29 dimensions to create personality matches.

Their commitment to this is very recognizable by the fact that the service will sometimes provide you with no matches at all. eHarmony would rather give you a no matches than risk giving you a bad match.

Chemistry.com Personality Matching
Chemistry.com seems to have taken the approach with a less strict matching system while providing larger numbers of matches. They still match on personality but less rigorously. This can be seen by the fact that Chemistry.com’s personality test splits your personality into one of four areas: builder, explorer, negotiator and director. You will be assigned a primary personality type and, at least in my case, a secondary personality type. Their system actually said that I would get along quite well with two of the four personality types. Compare that to eHarmony’s 29 areas and you begin to see why I would consider their matching to be less strict.

How These Differences Matter

Even having explained the differences, you may be thinking to yourself that it really sounds like no major difference at all. To highlight how important these differences can be, I will discuss the biggest complaints of each of these two services.

eHarmony Complaints
The biggest complaint that I hear from singles regarding eHarmony is the fact that they are stingy with their matches. Most people feel that the matching system itself is solid. However, what often happens is they subscribe and shortly after that they stop receiving matches. Many singles in this situation feel that they have been tricked.

If you’re interested, you can see this pattern for yourself: search the term “eHarmony gives me no matches”. See what you find. Now run this search term: “Chemistry.com gives me no matches”. You’ll see that these complaints exist for eHarmony where next to none exist for Chemistry.

Chemistry.com Complaints
The biggest complaint for Chemistry.com is different. In a roundabout way, people complain that Chemistry.com is giving them too many matches. Well, that’s not exactly correct: what people actually say is that many of their matches are not great matches and they must review each match to judge for themselves on compatibility.

I believe that this is a complaint for Chemistry.com because many view it as if it is exactly the same as eHarmony. These are two different services, though, each approaching the issue in different ways. In my mind, Chemistry.com is more of a hybrid between the eHarmony system and the Match.com system. It is personality-based, but there is also going to be more reviewing and possibly rejecting involved.

What Matters Most to You?
I believe that understanding the complaints of each service discussed above is perhaps the most important area to consider when deciding between these two services. Consider the following statements and decide which one best describes how you feel about an online dating service:

• I want an online dating service that only provides me with the best matches according to their personality testing system. I would rather have no matches at all than have matches that the personality system thinks may not work for me.
  

• I want an online dating service that provides me with personality-based matching but also provides some flexibility in the number of people I can contact. I don’t want to put my faith entirely in a matching system and would rather have some bad matches if I am able to review a larger number of singles.

Obviously if you fit more with the first statement you would choose eHarmony; if the second statement, you would choose Chemistry.com.

Other Thoughts on Matching Differences
eHarmony was the first (or at least the first majorly successful) personality-based online dating service. Chemistry.com came on to the scene later and appears to have been created keeping many of the complaints about eHarmony in mind. I feel that many people are being unfair when they criticize how Chemistry.com matches people: for years people complained that the personality-based matching was too restrictive and then when Chemistry.com addressed this, people now complain that their matches aren’t good enough.

Until the perfect service comes along, I feel that these two services give you good options to have it one way or the other: matches that are extremely personality sensitive but limited or a larger number of matches that are based on personality with less strict rules that may include some bad matches.

Other Areas of Differences Between eHarmony and Chemistry

Pricing (Winner: Chemistry)
If you’re looking to date online using a personality matching service but are also in a position where you need to spend as little money as possible, then Chemistry.com is the better choice. While the difference may not be a huge, Chemistry.com’s prices are lower. Chemistry also has two promotions that are always available (as far as I know): trying the service for free for several days and also a promotion where you get 3 months for the price of 1. eHarmony does have free weekends but with Chemistry you can basically get 3-and-a-half months for the price of one if you are able to take advantage of both of promotions.

Marriage-Minded (Winner: eHarmony)
eHarmony has marketed itself as the premier service for singles that are looking for long-term relationships, particularly marriage. Many marriage-minded singles are attracted to eHarmony because of this. The abundance of like-minded individuals then attracts more people also looking for relationships that lead to marriage. Because of this, if your main concern is finding a long-term relationship leading to marriage, eHarmony is the better choice.

Photo by Captivating Imagery

Personality Rejection (Winner: Chemistry although most will not have this issue)
eHarmony is far more “severe” when it comes to your personality. What I mean by this is that eHarmony will actually reject some people if they feel they cannot match them well. eHarmony also rejects people based on sexual orientation, the number of divorces that they have had, and a few other areas. Chemistry.com is far more accepting and does not reject anyone.

Number of Members (Winner: technically eHarmony but in my mind it is a tie)
The last set of statistics that I saw showed that eHarmony is the biggest online dating service when measured by number of visits. That being said, I do not think that this area should affect your decision. While eHarmony may have more members, the fact that it limits matches you can see with strict rules, Chemistry.com can provide as many or even more matches. Just because eHarmony has more members does not mean you will always get more matches when using their service.

The Best Way to Decide between eHarmony and Chemistry.com

As I stated above when discussing the differences in how these services match people, I believe that choosing a service based on the matching system is the best place to start. If you fall into one of the other differences I just discussed and you feel strongly about that area, then your decision is pretty easy.

If you’re just curious about both services, then the easiest way to decide which service is best for you is to simply try them both. Using the Chemistry.com free trial allows you to easily gauge how well you feel that service works for you. While eHarmony does not offer any type of free trial, they do offer frequent reoccurring free weekends. If you’re a frequent reader, you know I recommend signing up for eHarmony in advance (even if no free weekend is coming soon) so that when the free events occur you will have collected a healthy number of matches.

So basically my recommendation is to test out for both services:
eHarmony Sign Up
Chemistry.com Free Trial

You’ll be able to start using the Chemistry.com free trial right away and hopefully within a few weeks you should be alerted of the next free weekend at eHarmony (eHarmony should alert anyone with an account of upcoming free weekends). Given enough patience I believe you can get a good feel for both services without having to spend a dime.

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Both eHarmony and Chemistry.com are solid services. If you still find yourself undecided after trying both services, just go with your gut. In my opinion, you can have success with either service so don’t get too hung up on which service is “best”. Finding the best service for you is far more important that finding the “best” service.

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