What is the difference between agender and non-binary?
Agender is one answer under the non-binary umbrella: no gender at all. Non-binary covers a lot more.
Short version: non-binary is the umbrella, and agender is one of the things under it. An agender person is outside the gender binary, so agender is usually counted as non-binary. Not every non-binary person is agender, because plenty of non-binary people do have a gender. It just is not only man or only woman.
The two definitions
Dictionary.com defines non-binary as relating to a gender identity "that does not fit into the binary male/female division". That is deliberately wide. It takes in people with two genders, a gender that moves, a partial connection to one, or none.
It defines agender as describing "a person who does not have a gender identity or whose gender identity is neutral". Not everyone draws that line in the same place. akt, a UK charity for LGBTQ+ young people, notes that some agender people feel they have no gender identity, while others treat agender as a gender identity in itself. Our glossary entry sets out the case for keeping "none" and "neutral" apart.
Where they overlap
Both The Trevor Project and akt place agender under the non-binary umbrella. The flags say the same thing from each side: the agender flag has a green stripe for non-binary genders, and the black stripe on the non-binary flag stands for agender people.
Agender also has close neighbours. Genderless, neutrois and gendervoid each describe an absent or neutral gender a little differently, and some people use more than one of them.
Where they differ
Non-binary says what someone is not: only a man or only a woman. Agender says something more specific: no gender at all. A genderfluid person, a bigender person and a demigender person can all be non-binary, and none of them is agender.
The two words are also used at very different rates. In The Trevor Project's 2021 US survey of LGBTQ people aged 13 to 24, 72% of those who identified as non-binary used the word non-binary, and 15% used agender. The two groups overlap, because many people chose more than one word.
Do you have to pick one?
No. Agender, non-binary, both or neither are all available, and so is changing your mind later. On a profile, write the word you would say out loud, and add the other if it saves a conversation.
Whether you also use the word trans is a separate question: see is non-binary trans?. If you are still working out what fits, am I non-binary? is a gentler place to start.
Pronouns: neither word comes with a rule
Neither word tells you someone's pronouns. In the 2025 Gender Census, a community survey of more than 43,000 people outside the binary, 75.0% were happy to be called they/them, 40.6% he/him, 34.1% she/her and 22.8% it/its, and people chose 2.2 sets on average. The organiser calls they/them a safe bet when you are not sure, and points out that it still leaves a quarter of participants who do not want it.
The survey describes its own sample as self-selected, mostly young and more than half based in the US, so read the numbers as a picture of that group rather than a rule. Use what the person tells you. They/them is a reasonable guess; it/its is for people who have said so themselves, not a default for agender people.