Fuzzy Matching

What is fuzzy matching?

Fuzzy matching is a data-matching technique that identifies records likely referring to the same real-world entity, even when the underlying data isn’t identical—such as typos, abbreviations, or inconsistent formatting. Rather than requiring an exact match, it uses similarity algorithms (like Levenshtein distance or Jaro-Winkler) to score how closely two values align.

For supplier data teams, fuzzy matching is key to cleaning up vendor master data—catching duplicate or mismatched supplier records that differ only in spelling, spacing, or legal suffixes.