How Many Matches Do You Get on eHarmony?

There is no fixed number. eharmony does not promise a certain count a day or a week. It says you start matching the moment you finish the Compatibility Quiz, and that every member who fits your search preferences appears in your Discover list. How many that is depends on how tightly you set your preferences and who lives near you.

On eharmony, a Match happens when both of you like something on each other's profile. Your matches then appear in your Messages tab.

That is a higher bar than on a swipe app. A Match here is two people who each reacted to something specific. A conversation that starts that way has a better chance of going somewhere than a reply from a stranger you swiped on in a second.

Matches are also a different thing from the Discover list. Discover is everyone who fits your preferences. A Match is the smaller set where the liking went both ways.

Once you finish the quiz, eharmony begins suggesting singles it feels fit your criteria, and it says new members join every day. The Discover list is where they collect.

eharmony advises checking it regularly, because you never know when a good match will appear. That is about as precise as the company gets on timing, and a man who wants a number will not find one on its help pages.

The biggest cause of a small list is the man's own settings. eharmony warns that very specific preferences can leave you with few potential matches. It names geographic range, ethnicity, religion, smoking and drinking.

Each setting removes a slice of the population. Stack four of them and the pool near you can fall to a handful. A man who writes that he wants a woman within ten miles, of one background, who does not drink, has described a very small group, and then wonders why the site feels empty.

Two other things shrink it. eharmony removes a member from your Discover list if that member has not logged in for two months or more. And the number of members in your area is a fact you cannot change.

To see more members, widen your preferences. eharmony names age, location and height as the ones to loosen, and you change them under Member Preferences.

Start with the setting that costs you least. Distance is usually the easiest, because a woman twenty minutes further away is still a woman you can take for a drink. Height and age ranges are next. Keep the settings that truly matter to you, and drop the ones you added out of habit.

Do this once, and then leave it for a week before judging the result.

A small number of matches that you work properly will beat a long list you ignore. This is where most of the results come from.

Open with something specific from her page, one detail, in a sentence or two. a dating coach's approach is to get from the first message to her number in four to seven messages and to bring up meeting early. On a site where she has told eharmony she wants something serious, a clear invitation to coffee or a drink is welcome.

Do not wait for her to take the lead. A match that sits in the Messages tab for a week goes cold, and the first message from you is the part you control.

Keep a simple count for three weeks. How many Likes did you send. How many came back as a match. How many matches answered you. How many answers turned into a plan to meet.

The numbers point at the weak step. Few matches means your photos or your preferences need work. Matches with no replies means your first message needs work. Replies with no plans means you are waiting too long to suggest a time.

eharmony says Basic includes unlimited matches and lets you send and receive Likes. You can see how many matches you get before you spend a cent, so find out first. Premium adds things like unlimited messaging and seeing every photo, and coach treats a paid feature as a multiplier on the results you already have. If the free version gives you no conversations, a paid plan will not fix that.

Count what the free account produces first. Then decide.