The traditional perspective on analogical thinking has shown that relational similarity is key in determining analogical relatedness, outweighing entity similarity. However, evidence supporting this perspective comes from studies where the combination of the elements composing the compared facts does not activate schema-governed categories whose mismatch could compete with similarity between relations during the evaluation of analogical relatedness. In Experiment 1, we assessed the relative impact of common category membership and relational similarity on judgments of analogical relatedness. Pairs of events where only a common category was present received higher scores than pairs where neither a common category nor similar relations were present, and also than pairs maintaining only similar relations. In Experiment 2, we examined the extent to which judgments of analogical relatedness were affected by whether the compared situations fared similarly along relevant dimensions of the schema-governed categories to which they belonged. Ratings were higher for pairs where the analogs matched compared to pairs where they did not match. We concluded that in comparisons in which at least one of the events activates a schema-governed category, people assess analogical relatedness through criteria that depart from those postulated by traditional studies.