This paper deals with the quantitative estimates for the difference of operators having the same basis functions. The results essentially improve the earlier known results. In the end, some applications for the differences of Szász-Mirakyan operators with its different variants are presented. KEYWORDS difference of operators, modulus of continuity, positive linear operators, Szász-Mirakyan operators 1 DIFFERENCES OF OPERATORS Gonska et al 1,2 and Gonska and Raşa 3 established the estimates on the differences of positive linear operators. Acu and Raşa 4 developed an approach suitable for operators constructed with the same fundamental functions, and Aral et al 5 discussed about the difference of the operators in weighted space. Also, some of the results on this topic are collected in the recent book by Gupta et al. 6