Men report cheating more than women overall, but the gap is smaller than many people think and varies by age and type of cheating.

Quick Scoop

The headline answer

  • Across large surveys, about 20–23% of men say they’ve cheated versus roughly 13–19% of women, depending on the study and whether we’re talking about marriage or any relationship.
  • So, men do cheat more on average, but women aren’t far behind, and the difference is narrowing among younger generations.
  • Emotional vs physical cheating also differs: men lean more toward purely physical affairs, while women are more likely to report emotional or emotional-plus-physical affairs.

What the numbers say

For married people (global and U.S.-style survey data):

  • Around 20% of men say they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse while married.
  • Around 13% of women say the same in comparable surveys.
  • One analysis also found 23% of men and 19% of women admitting to cheating when you look beyond just marriage (e.g., serious relationships).

Cheating frequency:

  • Men are more likely to cheat multiple times rather than just once.
  • In one breakdown, 67% of men and 53% of women who cheated on a spouse did so more than once.

How age and trends change the picture

Cheating isn’t flat across life:

  • Infidelity tends to rise in midlife for both genders, but older men show the highest reported rates, even into their 70s and 80s.
  • Women’s infidelity peaks earlier (often reported in the 50s–60s) and then drops more sharply with age compared with men.

Younger generations:

  • Among millennials and younger adults, the gap is smaller: one recent breakdown shows about 15.9% of men vs 13% of women in younger cohorts admitting to infidelity, suggesting attitudes and opportunities are converging.

Emotional vs physical cheating

Several sources point out that “who cheats more” depends on what you call cheating:

  • Men are more likely to report purely physical affairs or one‑night stands.
  • Women more often describe affairs as both emotional and physical, and are especially represented in emotional affairs.
  • One survey of thousands of people found women significantly more likely than men to say their affair was both emotional and physical, while men were more likely than women to report “just physical” or “just emotional.”

Why it’s hard to get a perfect answer

A few reasons the “who cheats more men or women” question will never have a 100% clean scoreboard:

  • Most data comes from self‑reports, and people may lie or under‑report, especially on something as sensitive as cheating.
  • Different surveys focus on different things: some ask only about married people, others about any committed relationship, some only about sexual cheating, others include emotional cheating.
  • Online polls or app-based stats can be skewed toward specific types of users (for example, people already interested in affairs or in relationship-repair content).

That said, across multiple, more rigorous surveys, the consistent pattern is:

  • Men cheat more often than women.
  • The gender gap is real but not huge, and it’s shrinking in younger generations.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.