The short version
FAQPage is for a page where the author has curated a set of anticipated questions and provided authoritative answers. Multiple Q&A pairs per page. Every answer is the definitive answer, written by the site owner (or attributed to a credentialled expert).
QAPage is for a page focused on a single user-submitted question, with one primary user-generated answer (and optionally, other suggested answers). Think of a discussion forum thread or a doctor Q&A submission page. One question per page, community-style attribution.
They are designed for different content shapes. Marketing pages, treatment explainers and money pages nearly always want FAQPage. User-submitted-question pages, patient Q&A submissions and expert-response pages want QAPage. Using the wrong type does not just produce a rich-snippet miss; it can mislead the AI Overview retrieval into treating the page as user-generated content when it is authored, or vice versa.
The structural difference at the JSON-LD level
FAQPage — multiple curated Q&A pairs
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [
{ "@type": "Question", "name": "Is LASIK painful?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "..." } },
{ "@type": "Question", "name": "How long is LASIK recovery?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "..." } }
]
}
QAPage — one question, community-style answer(s)
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "QAPage",
"mainEntity": {
"@type": "Question",
"name": "Can I do LASIK if my prescription changed 6 months ago?",
"answerCount": 3,
"acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "...", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Dr X" } },
"suggestedAnswer": [ { "@type": "Answer", ... } ]
}
}
The structural differences are not decorative. mainEntity is an array in FAQPage and a single Question in QAPage. answerCount and suggestedAnswer exist only on QAPage — they signal community-style multiple-answer surfaces. Author attribution matters differently: FAQPage answers are implicitly authoritative (the site owner), QAPage answers carry explicit per-answer Person attribution.
When to use which — the decision rule
| Page pattern | Right schema | Why |
|---|
| Treatment explainer with 6–10 curated FAQs | FAQPage | Author-curated, definitive answers, multiple Q&A per page |
| Money page with a "quick answers" section | FAQPage | Same reason — authored, definitive, multi-Q&A |
| Doctor Q&A submission page (one user question, one expert reply) | QAPage | User-submitted question, single primary answer, per-answer attribution |
| Patient forum thread | QAPage | User-generated, one question, multiple community answers |
| Comparison page ("FUE vs FUT") | Neither — use Article + comparison table | Not a Q&A pattern; comparison-table structure earns citation more cleanly here |
| Standalone "is X painful" page | Article + FAQPage with the Q as the H1 | Authored explainer; FAQPage supports extraction of the direct-answer block |
