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About the Author: Steve Ward
Steve Ward is the Owner and CEO of Master Matchmakers and a second-generation matchmaker who built the firm alongside his mother and co-founder JoAnn Ward. He hosted and executive-produced VH1's Tough Love for six seasons, co-authored Crash Course in Love (Simon & Schuster), and has been featured as a dating expert by CNN, the Today Show, Oprah, Glamour, People, and Cosmopolitan. He has spent more than 25 years personally coaching and matching relationship-minded singles nationwide.
Quick answer: Master Matchmakers breaks a professional matchmaking fee into five paid components, sourcing, screening, verification, coaching, and feedback, each backed by identity and background checks on every introduction, starting at $3,500. What the fee does not buy is a guaranteed relationship, a fixed total, or a deadline you have to beat.
"Professional matchmaking" gets used as one word for a fee that is actually five separate jobs stacked on top of each other. Most explanations of what you are paying for stop at a single vague verb, usually "vetting," and leave it there. That is not specific enough to judge a price against, so this is the itemized version: what is actually being done, in what order, and what none of it can honestly promise.
Every engagement runs through the same five lines of work. The starting fee is $3,500, and it moves lower the more open a client is about who and where they are willing to be matched. What follows is what that number is actually paying for, one line at a time.
The Sourcing Line: Work Done Before You See a Name
Sourcing is the part that happens before you ever hear about a candidate, and it is the least visible line on the whole invoice. A matchmaker goes looking, deliberately, in places your own life and your own network do not reach. That is different from posting a profile and waiting to see who shows up, and it is different from a search limited to whoever happens to be active that week.
This is also where the contrast with dating apps is most concrete. An app shows you whoever else opened it, filtered mostly by proximity and stated preferences. Sourcing through Master Matchmakers works from your actual criteria, values and relationship goals included, and keeps working on your behalf whether or not you had the energy to look that particular week.
The Screening Line: Why Most People Never Reach You
Sourcing produces candidates. Screening is the separate, judgment-heavy work of deciding which of them are actually worth your time, and it is where most of the people a matchmaker finds get filtered out before you ever hear their name. This is not the same task as verification. Screening asks whether someone's values, lifestyle and relationship goals genuinely line up with yours. Verification, covered next, asks whether the facts about them are true.
That distinction matters because it is the difference between a service that hands you volume and one that hands you a small number of people worth meeting. The fee pays for a real conversation and a real judgment call on every candidate, not just a database query that returns everyone who technically qualifies.
The Verification Line: What Has to Check Out First
Before anyone becomes eligible for an introduction, they go through identity, age and photo verification, a criminal and public-record background check, and a personal interview. When a real fit surfaces on the other side of that process, you receive their verified profile, their photos and their phone number, and you speak with them and approve the introduction yourself before it happens. There are no blind dates.
Worth separating out: screening judges fit. Verification judges truth. One tells you whether a person is worth meeting; the other tells you whether what you were told about them is accurate. A fee that only does one of the two is doing half the job.
The Coaching Line: Preparation, Not Just Introductions
Every client is paired with a dedicated coach in addition to the matchmaker sourcing their introductions, and that coaching runs on both ends of a date, not only at the start of the engagement. Before an introduction, it is about what you are walking into and what to pay attention to. It is not a single onboarding call that happens once and is never mentioned again.
The reason this is its own paid line, rather than something bundled quietly into the introduction itself, is that preparation changes outcomes in ways introductions alone do not. Two people can be well matched on paper and still have an average evening because one of them walked in unprepared for a conversation they had not had in years.
The Feedback Line: What Happens After Each Date
After each introduction, both sides give feedback to the coaching team, and it travels in both directions. That feedback is what refines the next introduction, rather than each one being sourced from scratch with no memory of the last. Dating on your own rarely has this step at all. An evening goes averagely, nobody says anything honest about why, and the same unexamined pattern repeats into the next one.
This is a loop, not a one-time satisfaction question after the engagement ends. It runs after every single introduction, for as long as the search continues, which is what makes the tenth introduction sharper than the first.
| The line item |
What actually happens |
What it buys you |
| Sourcing |
Active outreach against your stated criteria, not a posted profile |
Candidates you would not otherwise encounter |
| Screening |
A judgment call on values, lifestyle and relationship goals |
A short list instead of a long one |
| Verification |
Identity, age and photo checks, a background check, an interview |
Knowing who you are meeting before you meet them |
| Coaching |
Preparation before an introduction, ongoing through the search |
Fewer evenings lost to being unprepared |
| Feedback |
Both sides debrief after every date, routed to your coach |
A search that sharpens instead of repeating |
What the Fee Does Not Include
The five lines above are what the fee pays for. It is just as important to be precise about what it does not, because a service that is vague on this point is usually vague on purpose.
It does not include a guaranteed relationship. Under the law, no matchmaking service can promise that outcome, and Master Matchmakers does not try. What the fee does guarantee is narrower and checkable: the reliability of the information you are given about every person introduced to you.
It also does not include a fixed total at the moment you sign. The $3,500 figure is the starting point, and the final number is shaped by how many introductions and coaching sessions the search actually needs, how specific your criteria are, how open you are, your own marketability, and which matchmaker leads the engagement. Anyone quoting a single flat number for every client is simplifying past something real.
And it does not include an expiration date. Contracts do not run on a clock, which means a slow month during a demanding quarter is a pause rather than a loss, and nobody on either side is under pressure to produce an introduction just because a deadline is close.
Not On Any Invoice
The One Line No Firm Can Honestly Sell You
In business since: 2001 | Private network: 65,000+ singles | Fees from: $3,500
Attraction cannot be itemized, priced, or delivered on schedule, and any firm that prices it into the invoice is selling you something it cannot produce. The five lines above are real, checkable work. Whether two people want a second date is the one variable none of it controls.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly does a professional matchmaking fee pay for?
Five separate lines of work: sourcing candidates you would not otherwise meet, screening them for genuine fit, verifying their identity and background, coaching you before and after each date, and collecting feedback that sharpens the next introduction. Master Matchmakers itemizes all five, starting at $3,500.
What is not included in the price of professional matchmaking?
A guaranteed relationship, which no firm can legally promise; a fixed total at sign-up, since the final cost depends on how many introductions and coaching sessions your search needs; and a deadline, because Master Matchmakers contracts do not expire. The starting fee is $3,500, not the final one.
What does screening actually involve, beyond verification?
Screening is a judgment call on whether someone's values, lifestyle and relationship goals genuinely fit yours. Verification is separate: it confirms identity, age, photos and background are accurate. Screening decides who is worth introducing; verification confirms what you are told about them is true.
Does coaching happen before an introduction, after it, or both?
Both. Your coach prepares you before each introduction and follows up with feedback after it, and this repeats for the length of the engagement rather than happening once at the start. At Master Matchmakers, coaching and post-date feedback are built into every introduction, not sold as an add-on.
Why does the total cost change from client to client?
Because the five lines of work scale differently for each search. The number of introductions and coaching sessions needed, how specific and open your criteria are, and your own marketability all shape the total. Fees start at $3,500 and move lower the more open a client is willing to be.
Put Your Own Search Through the Five Lines
Any firm should be able to walk you through its own version of these five lines in plain language: who sources, how screening is done, what gets verified and when, what coaching actually covers, and what happens with feedback after a date that did not land. If a firm cannot answer one of those five without changing the subject, that line is probably not getting done. For the fuller picture of what a professional matchmaker is and how the process runs end to end, we have written that up separately in Professional Matchmaker Services, and if you are still weighing whether the investment is right for you specifically, that question gets its own honest answer in Are Matchmakers Worth It.