# JavaScript Comparison Operators

> Learn how the JavaScript comparison operators less than, greater than and their or-equal variants compare numbers, and how they order strings by Unicode value.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2019-05-10 | Topics: [JavaScript](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/js/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/javascript-comparison-operators/

You can use the following operators to compare two numbers, or two strings.

The operation returns a boolean.

- `<` less than
- `<=` minus than, or equal to
- `>` greater than
- `>=` greater than, or equal to

```js
const a = 2
a >= 1 //true
```

When comparing strings, those operators check for the letter ordering, encoded in Unicode. The bigger the letter value, the bigger the letter is to the operator when comparing.

You can find the [list of Unicode Codes for characters on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters).