When it comes to looking for help with your search to find a partner, there are multiple different professional help options you may encounter. Two of the most popular you’ll hear are professional matchmakers and dating coaches.
What’s interesting is that if you ask people about the differences between these two professions, you’ll get a lot of answers like “aren’t they the same thing?” And while some of their goals and even some of their methodology may be the same, there are some stark differences between matchmakers and dating coaches that are worth exploring.
Let’s start by defining each of them
As a helpful starting place, here are our definitions of each of these professions. Once we have that done, we’ll look at the major differences, similarities, and how this applies to you as someone who might be looking for help
A professional matchmaker is someone whose job is to get to know who you are and what you’re looking for in a partner and then use that information to find and curate matches for you to go on a date with.
Ultimately a matchmakers goal is to get you dates by doing most, if not all of the work for you.
A dating coach is someone whose job is to help guide you on your path to finding someone. Instead of actually finding you dates (like a matchmaker would), they teach you strategies and share advice for you to find and get dates yourself.
With these definitions laid out to set the groundwork, let’s dig deeper.
The major differences between matchmakers and dating coaches
While the goal of matchmakers and dating coaches is to help you get more dates, there are some major differences. To start, we’ll share a big list of the differences, and then we’ll talk about the most important ones.
- Dating coaches may work with people who are already in relationships, whereas matchmakers only work with people who are single.
- Dating coaches teach you strategies to get dates, but you have to “do the work”. Matchmakers do the work for you, but don’t teach you strategies to get your own dates.
- If you stop working with a dating coach, you may be able to continue utilizing the strategies they taught you. If you stop working with a matchmaker, your results will stop as well.
- The amount of work you have to do to find a date is much greater with a dating coach than it would be with a matchmaker.
- In the short term, dating coaches may be less expensive than a matchmaker, but they may be a longer-term ongoing cost. (We will discuss this in detail shortly).
- Matchmakers rarely work with people who are looking for casual relationships. Dating coaches will work with people who are looking for casual encounters, casual dating, and long term relationships.
Which option is right for you?
The big question you’re most likely looking to answer is whether a professional dating coach or a professional matchmaker are the right fit for you. As we’re supportive of both professions, the answer lies within your goals and personality traits.
Let’s help you make the right choice.
Who a matchmaker is better for
- If you’re an introvert and don’t care to challenge yourself in this area
- If you’re a busy professional who doesn’t have time to dedicate to learning new dating skills and to going out to find new people
- If you’d prefer that someone else do the searching work for you
- If you live in or around a bigger city
- If you want to guarantee that you will go on dates
- If you’re looking for a serious and committed relationship
Who a dating coach is better for
- If you’re an extrovert who is okay with approaching people to meet
- If you’re interested in learning new skills to meet other singles
- If you’re okay doing the searching work to find and get dates
- If you’re looking for a casual relationship or a serious relationship
- If you’re okay with no guarantee that you’ll go on dates
Can you hire both?
Technically, yes, you can hire both a dating coach and a professional matchmaker. Is this a good idea? It depends on your level of disposable income. As both tend to not be inexpensive, hiring both may be a steep bill. That said, if you’re getting taught new skills while having someone look for top-quality dates for you at the same time, your chances of finding someone special are pretty strong.
Pricing differences need a deeper explanation
To start, let’s define how much a matchmaker costs and how much a dating coach costs. But—before you jump off, we’d encourage you to read the nuances that we cover around pricing next.
The average cost of a dating coach ranges from $100 – $500 an hour. The average cost of a matchmaker ranges from around $3,000 up to $80,000, with some more expensive options, and a slightly different option that starts around $20 per month.
At quick glance, outside of the slightly different option, you might think these two options aren’t even in the same atmosphere. However, here’s what you have to keep in mind. The price of the matchmaker services is a one-time payment that gets you service for 3 months to a year without the need to pay again. This also comes with a guaranteed number of dates.
The dating coach, on the other hand, is a per session fee. That means if you do 10 sessions, the average cost is really $1,000 to $5,000, making it as expensive, if not more expensive in a lot of situations.
How many sessions are you going to need? Well, here’s one way to look at it. As dating coaches closely mirror therapy (we’d argue they’re a form of it), we can look at the average number of therapy sessions someone goes to as a rough benchmark.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), around half of patients (50%) need 15 to 20 sessions to see recovery results. The data further says that many patients need 20-30 sessions to start to see results.
So, if we compare those numbers with the cost of a dating coach, the high end of that could be nearly $15,000.
It’s not all bad for dating coaches
While that sounds like a hard hit to dating coaches, there are a lot of caveats that need to be mentioned here.
- You can dip your toes in with a dating coach. – You don’t have to sign up for 30 sessions out of the gate. You can try it once or twice and decide how deep you want to go.
- If the dating coach works, the results extend. – If a dating coach is good, you’ll ideally not need them past a certain point. You’ll have developed skills to be able to handle your dating life yourself.
Ultimately, they’re both expensive purchases for most people. Yes, you should consider price in the equation, but make sure you don’t just choose the less expensive option if it’s not the right fit for you.
The reason this matters is expectations
There are two main reasons we’re covering this. First, it actually gets asked more often than you might think. For example, here’s a recent Reddit thread on the topic: (spoiler, there’s not really anything of interest in there; we’re just showing you that the question does get asked.
The second, and more important, reason that we’re covering this topic is that we find a lot of people go into hiring a matchmaker or hiring a dating coach with the wrong expectations. In some of these situations, they just don’t truly understand how a matchmaker works or vice versa. But in a lot of situations, had they just hired the other profession (matchmaker instead of dating coach, and vice versa), they would have been a lot happier with the results.