How Does eHarmony Match You? FAQs & 100% Free Trial (2024)

If you’re looking you create and online dating account, you may want to know how does eharmony match you and how it can help you build a serious relationship.

Our dating experts have tested the online dating site to find out what it’s secret sauce is, and we’ve found that eharmony is really something special. The way eharmony identifies compatibility and matches people with long-term relationship potential has proven success for over two decades. In fact, eharmony creates a new love connection every 14 minutes, and you could be next.

I’m sure you’re familiar with this longstanding dating site — it’s been around since 2000, after all. You’ve probably seen the commercials, heard the jingle, and know a friend or a friend of a friend who has used the site or even found love on it. But what remains a mystery to some singles is exactly how eharmony does its matching. Well, we’re here to let you know how it works and what to expect.

What makes eharmony so successful and famous? It all starts with its signature 32 Dimensions® of Compatibility Matching Quiz — which was originally created by Dr. Neil Clark Warren, an American clinical psychologist, Christian theologian, and seminary professor who also co-founded the site.

When you sign up to eharmony, you have the option  to undergo a personality test to kick things off. It takes about 20-45 minutes to complete the 80-question multiple-choice quiz (depending on how much self-examination you want to do during the process), and eharmony goes to great lengths to cover deeper topics than what you’ll find on most other dating sites, including self concept, adaptability, vitality, and conscientiousness.

Here are some of the questions you can expect to answer:

• What are you passionate about?
• What two or three things do you enjoy doing with your leisure time?
• What are the three things you’re thankful for?
• Are you open to meet a partner who already has children?
• If your best friends had to pick four words to describe you, which four would they pick?

As you can see, eharmony doesn’t just ask your standard yes-or-no questions, so you’re more likely to bare your soul and find your soul mate on the dating website. For more information about the kinds of questions eharmony could ask you, check out our article here.

When you’re responding to eharmony’s questions, you’ll want to take your time and really think about your answers — don’t just type the first thing that comes to your mind. Be honest with the site and with yourself because that’ll be better for you in the long run.

The eharmony site uses the information from your questionnaire and dating profile when it’s scouring its user base for potential dates and partners who fit your criteria. Obviously, eharmony won’t disclose every single detail about how the algorithm works, but we can safely assume that what you tell them plays the biggest role in its compatibility scores because it actually shows users a breakdown in how their personalities and lifestyles line up.

Every day, you’ll want to log into eharmony and take a look at the matches the site has sent you. You can expect to receive a handful of suggestions or so, and then the ball is in your court.

Every day, you’ll see profiles of other members in your eharmony inbox. These are the people the site thinks are a good fit for you.

These Daily Matches give you a chance to review compatible members and see if eharmony hit the nail on the head (they probably did). You’ll see the person’s photos, age, location, height, occupation, education level, religion, political standing, and smoking and drinking habits, among other traits, interests, and identifiers.

Note that there are very few search filters (just age, location, and other basics) on eharmony because the goal is to deliver the best matches to you — rather than require singles to do the searching themselves.

Perhaps the most impressive and important part of the profiles eharmony sends you is that the site shows you several scores for how compatible you two are according to a list of traits. Any score over 100 is exceptionally good, and the bigger the number, the more you have in common. Profiles with a score of 80+ typically appear in your Daily Matches list, and eharmony encourages users to assess one another deeply to discover common ground.

Once you decide whether you’re interested in the person or not, you can start communicating with them, or you can pass. eharmony’s flirting and messaging features are also unique. You can go ahead and send standard messages if you want, but, if you’re not sure how to kick off the conversation, the site offers pre-written icebreakers (e.g., “Your profile brought a smile to my face!”) and quick questions (e.g., “How often do you lose your temper?”).

Guided Communication is eharmony’s messaging feature that includes pre-written icebreakers and more get-to-know-you questions, so it’s easy to have a conversation with your matches.

To get to know your matches even better, eharmony recommends using its patented Guided Communication process. First, you’ll exchange five multiple-choice questions from a list of 57 (e.g., “Do you enjoy debating the issues of the day with your partner?”). Next, you’ll exchange several must-haves and can’t-stands to see what you agree and disagree on. It’s easy, quick, fun, and insightful!

Another aspect about eharmony’s matching options is that you can’t search on your own. You can filter your matches by match preferences, and premium members can sort them by registration date and other factors, but that’s about it. A lot of people enjoy that because they don’t have to do any work, and it relieves some of the pressure and stress. If that’s not your thing, you can always check out other sites, like Match and Zoosk, white allow you to browse through profiles and make filtered searches yourself.

Exactly how eharmony matches you is a little bit of algorithm magic, but we’ve spent many long hours dissecting that secret sauce and figuring out what makes it so good. The eharmony Compatibility Quiz is at the heart of the matchmaking process, and psychological principles are embedded in its roots.

The eharmony dating website and app have powered a personality-drive matching system that prioritizes compatible temperaments, family values, relationship habits, and future goals, so singles can find the perfect match for them. Plus, the eharmony dating pool is populated almost exclusively by serious relationship seekers, so pretty much anyone you meet here is going to have good relationship potential.

We know for a fact eharmony works because the online dating site is responsible for 4% of US marriages. You could be next!