Inequality (!=)
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The inequality (!=) operator checks whether its two operands are not equal, returning a Boolean result. Unlike the strict inequality operator, it attempts to convert and compare operands that are of different types.
Try it
console.log(1 != 1); // Expected output: false console.log("hello" != "hello"); // Expected output: false console.log("1" != 1); // Expected output: false console.log(0 != false); // Expected output: false Syntax
x != y Description
The inequality operator checks whether its operands are not equal. It is the negation of the equality operator so the following two lines will always give the same result:
x != y; !(x == y); For details of the comparison algorithm, see the page for the equality operator.
Like the equality operator, the inequality operator will attempt to convert and compare operands of different types:
3 != "3"; // false To prevent this, and require that different types are considered to be different, use the strict inequality operator instead:
3 !== "3"; // true Examples
Comparison with no type conversion
1 != 2; // true "hello" != "hola"; // true 1 != 1; // false "hello" != "hello"; // false Comparison with type conversion
"1" != 1; // false 1 != "1"; // false 0 != false; // false 0 != null; // true 0 != undefined; // true 0 != !!null; // false, look at Logical NOT operator 0 != !!undefined; // false, look at Logical NOT operator null != undefined; // false const number1 = new Number(3); const number2 = new Number(3); number1 != 3; // false number1 != number2; // true Comparison of objects
const object1 = { key: "value", }; const object2 = { key: "value", }; console.log(object1 != object2); // true console.log(object1 != object1); // false Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification # sec-equality-operators |
